February 1, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[5:06] do [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] sharon and my personal account so appreciate it yeah i mean when i get that 300 you know i'm going to open the meeting like this right [Music] want to get your trophy do that yeah uh well folks good evening i see it's six o'clock and i believe we have all my council members and our critical staff members here in present so can we

[6:02] go ahead and get started channel 8 is ready so i will go ahead and hit record [Music] all right well good evening everyone and welcome to the february 1st meeting of the boulder city council and i want to start uh i'm going to go off script a little bit before we get started on the regular announcements i just wanted to say we had a very um frightening and potentially dangerous situation uh here in the city of boulder today um where we had a lockdown and people evacuated to potentially very dangerous suspect and just wanted to thank very much the boulder police department and all the other first responders who were on the scene and were able to resolve that issue quickly and peacefully with no injuries so i'm just grateful on behalf of the city and then i'll just say personal note both my kids attend

[7:01] classes within a quarter mile of that spot so a personal thank you as well to to that amazing work and i just wonder if maybe chief harold might be able to come on screen and say a few words uh yes sir thank you mayor i appreciate the opportunity and i appreciate the kind words um i am just so proud of our police department ability to analyze intelligence very quickly um and get with our partners across um not locally but the county as as well as our federal partners identify where this uh suspect was shut down everything evacuate uh needed uh people and um really take this person into custody with uh without any issues whatsoever so i'm very proud of the police work and um thank you so much for uh for saying those kind words mayor absolutely well thank you for for you are in the department's phenomenal work along with our partners so

[8:00] good well with that i will um move on to our regular announcements unless anyone else wants to jump in we have to do our roll call first uh before the announcements no do we do it afterwards okay you're right i always mix that up usually it's me okay so uh some announcements covet 19 testing and vaccinations so testing for information and provider locations for free kova 19 testing you can go to www.boco.org covet testing and the boulder site is at stazio drive here in boulder it's open seven days a week 8 a.m to 6 p.m it's very convenient and that is a free service so please go there if you need to and for vaccinations if you need vaccine information and provide provider locations you can go to www.boco.org covet vaccine

[9:02] and the next announcement is if you're looking for an opportunity to get involved in city affairs the boards and commissions of the city of boulder are a great way to do so the recruitment period is now open for this year started on january 10th and will run through february 21st so you can find all the descriptions or various boards and commissions as well as the vacancies they each have online at www.boilercolorado.gov boards dash commissions if you have any questions whatsoever or need assistance please do contact the city clerk's office at city clerk's office at boulder colorado.gov and another announcement that we have this is about price gouging um so we wanted to get this announcement out here in the wake of the marshall fire because we've had some reports of potential price gouging on rent or other services so i wanted to make an announcement here

[10:01] to make sure that everyone know that colorado law prohibits charging excessive prices for certain essential products goods or services during a disaster period such as we've just experienced it makes clear that such price gouging is a deceptive trade practice under the colorado consumer protection act so if you um witness price gouging or think you might be a victim of price gouging you should file a report with the attorney general's office you can do so at 800-222-4444 or at the website stop fraud colorado.gov and appreciate uh council member benjamin for for requesting this it's a good announcement to get out there all right and with those announcements over i believe we will go to the roll call all righty thank you sir and good evening everyone councilmember benjamin present mayor brockett

[11:00] president council member folkert here mayor pro tem friend here council member joseph here spear here wallach present winer here and yates delighted to be here mayor we have our quorum thank you alicia rachel i see you have your friend your hand up yeah i just wanted to pass a line that a community member said that the links are not live to get on for testimony yet i don't know if they usually would be but just wanted to make sure that someone was looking at that okay thanks for following up on that alicia and all right so now uh we need a motion to amend the agenda let's see we have two changes one of them i'll just notice we don't need a motion for that just to notice that item 3c from the consent agenda was moved to a public hearing

[12:00] item 5c at the request of council member folkerts and then the one other agenda change we have is adding item 8a which is the boards and commissions subcommittee update on proposed process changes and bureau recruitment anyone like to make that motion iso move second we have a motion in a second any objections to that motion not seeing any we'll call that passing union obviously alright the agenda has been amended and um our next thing is that we're going to go into a declaration recognizing black history month which just started today to be read by council member weiner thank you so much for that this is an honor for me black history month february 2022 the origin of black history month began in 1915 half a century after the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the united states

[13:00] the month of celebration and honor was created by carter g woodson and other founding members of the association for the study of african american life and history the second week in february was chosen for its overlap with the birthdays of abraham lincoln and frederick douglass with the civil rights movement and a growing awareness of black identity black history month or national african american history month evolved to an annual celebration of achievements by black americans and a time for recognizing the central role of african americans in u.s history this year's theme for black history month recognizes black health and wellness acknowledges the legacy of not only black scholars and medical practitioners in western medicine but also other ways in which the black community has contributed to health care in roles such as birth workers doulas midwives naturopaths and herbalists despite the historic atrocities and

[14:00] continued inequities faced by black americans their contributions hail from all walks of life and have made unforgettable marks in our nation as artists scientists educators entrepreneurs influential thinkers members of the faith community athletes and civic leaders and are reflected in the greatness of our community we the city council of the city of boulder colorado declare february 2022 as black history month and encourage everyone in the community to join in honoring and celebrating by seeking out and taking in black culture and history supporting black owned local businesses and taking time to reflect on what black history means to each of us this month and all year thanks so much for that tara important declaration okay so we'll move on to open comment um

[15:03] and i believe brenda you will read our regulations guidelines i will thank you mayor i appreciate it my name is brenda ritnauer and i am part of our engagement team here at the city as well as your neighborhood liaison and can you see my screen yeah okay great so um we do have some rules that help guide our public participation at our council meetings um the city engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive civic conversations this vision is designed to support physical and emotional safety for community members staff and council as well as promoting democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives for more information on the vision you can visit our website boulder colorado.gov

[16:00] use the search function to put in productive atmospheres the following are examples of rules of dickhorm that are found in the boulder revised code and other guidelines that support this vision these will be upheld during tonight's meeting all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct this meeting are prohibited and participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they are commonly known by and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online and currently only audio testimony is permitted so thank you so much for cooperating with us as we uphold these rules and values this evening thank you mayor we're ready to begin

[17:01] thank you for that brenda okay we have patrick murphy then mark eller then james o'neil my name is patrick murphy i've lived in boulder 52 years this presentation is about using the boulder occupation tax a carbon tax in an equitable way my previous presentations prove that it is a carbon tax and that over time boulder has collected over 88.2 million dollars in carbon taxes and more than half of that was never used for real carbon reduction and the four million dollars of carbon tax that is collected each year and not used for carbon reduction could enable all boulder residences and businesses to be 100 renewables today using wind source incentives solar incentives would provide value that lasted over 20 years this presentation is about renewable energy certificates also known as wrecks

[18:01] renewable jet energy certificates wrecks are the currency of renewables every megawatt of renewable electricity is assigned one wreck that megawatt can be sold separately or bundled with the wreck only the owner of the wreck can claim that they have credit for that renewable the only way excel or boulder can claim that they have utilized renewables is by retiring those wrecks the only way boulder can claim 100 renewables electricity is with rex period there is no other alternative boulder can either generate renewable electricity right here in town and own and retire the wrecks probably with solar or somehow own wrecks from other sources wrecks are a tiny premium that the renewables industry uses to make profit and as we all know every industry needs to make profit or it dies boulder in the past has denigrated buying wrecks directly that is ludicrous wrecks stimulate the renewables industry and we should be doing that the

[19:01] occupation carbon tax should be doing that now the planet burns floods and dies while boulder fiddles with climate change rex can help us achieve what we want thank you patrick next we have mark eller james o'neill and lynn siegel hello council this is mark eller i'm a 20-year resident of the city of boulder and i'd like to direct your focus tonight to the rapidly rising costs imposed by the city's park and recreation department for access to and use of the boulder reservoir i'm a board member with boulder community rowing a decades-old non-profit that provides coaching equipment and a supportive community i'm also speaking tonight for a broader coalition representing multiple

[20:01] activities rowing paddling open water swimming and more our participants range across many generations ages 16 through 80 approximately and we regularly enjoy the reservoir together slide many of the groups in our coalition pay for access outside of normal reservoir hours including my group bcr bam the open water swimmers and colorado junior crew our water sports coalition is united in saying tonight that the costs being proposed by the city this year are insurmountable the hourly rate for early access to the reservoir has climbed from 40 an hour just a few years ago to the most recent proposal which anticipates fees of nearly four hundred dollars per hour despite our best faith efforts to negotiate more reasonable costs the parks and rec staff has double tripled and even further increase a range of charges that they want to impose not just for access but also for both

[21:01] storage and other fees slide these drastic price increases are largely due to an exclusive use label that we believe has been erroneously applied we are being charged far too much for a mistaken belief that we do not serve the broader community and offer narrow benefits for a small number of people slide we are willing to pay reasonable fees we implore the city to expand public access hours in the mornings and afternoons and evenings the demand for our quiet activities is extremely high we look forward to renewing and revitalizing our talks with the boulder park and recreation staff and we appreciate council support in these matters thank you thank you mark next we have james o'neil lynn siegel and then after that i understand evan rabbit says withdrawn so james hello my name is james o'neill thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak

[22:01] with you tonight i'm 65 years old and i've been a member of boulder community rowing since 2004. as mark just mentioned the reservoir sports clubs include the non-profit organizations of boulder community rowing our affiliate for middle school and high school kids colorado junior crew and the pac-12 cu men and women's crews as well as boulder aquatic masters since i only have a couple minutes to speak i have to be rather blunt in my remarks and i i don't mean to offend anyone uh as mark stated the fees for aquatic sports teams at boulder reservoir are unaffordable and current proposals will force us to close our programs or attempt to move to another location not only will this be difficult for our organizations it'll be a great loss to the boulder community we've negotiated in good faith with reservoir management over the past 10 plus years with very little success

[23:00] it's been frustrating for everyone involved fees for us are up 82 percent over the past three years current proposals from reservoir management this year will more than double our fees as a point of reference rowing with boulder community rowing already costs more than twice that of comparable clubs and there are not many alternatives in this area it appears that the root cause of this negotiation impasse is the inappropriate classification of our programs by parks and rec as exclusive rather than recreational this has caused reservoir management to treat us as a profit source similar to ironman triathlons or concert promoters this is just wrong i'm asking for your support to have our service type reevaluated to the proper category of recreational we're absolutely willing to pay our fair share but we cannot afford to be a cash cow for the reservoir i'll be happy to work with anyone you

[24:00] designate to resolve this issue thank you very much thank you james uh before i call the next person just want to make a note um that we have a couple people who've called in on the phone and we haven't been able to identify all of them so if you've called in and are registered to speak please press star 9 on your phone so that we know you're here and with that next we have lynn sequel then amy rosenblum and then sami lawrence iv do you have my slide we just thank you thank you thank you um yes i'm sorry i couldn't get in on either link um and i'm scheduled to speak um and so i was rushing around but i got to eat my cauliflower so i'm not as cranky as i usually are um and i was rushing to eat just in time

[25:00] but then all this upset trying to get the link um it's 54 degrees in my house but that's the main part of the house to keep my pipes from freezing but i raised it to 56 because it's even colder and it's about 35 in the part of the house where i live um and my refrigerator even gets ice in it um so um the idea is energy and i i i think i'm being pretty conservative you know staying pretty cold piled under two comforters in my bed and um and look how solar survives see that house that's completely toasted and those are um a pack of three and two solar thermal off of cherryvale road um it's one of the last houses if you're coming from the north on cherryvale um that and that part of the fire just petered out but look at solar survives and you see there's so many ironies here because

[26:01] it's a coal seam that caused this fire along you know and we've got climate change we shouldn't have been doing coal for a long time but remediating these coal mines is extremely expensive um i want to also know where the north what started the north fires there's north foothills highway and south footy hills highway i think the fire crews got mixed up or something because there's also north marshall road and south well there's old marshall road and new marshall road but they aren't called that they're parallel to marshall roads it's very confusing we need to name our streets better and um i highly recommend you get some olive tea at the yellow deli the 12 tribes did not start the fire the fire was at their place and it came from the coal seam thank you bye all of t is good for immunity for kovid bye thank you then next we have amy rosenblum sammy lawrence the fourth and larry mcq

[27:04] hi council can you hear me yes great uh thank you so much for your work uh especially as our communication our community has navigated so many challenges over the past year a couple years uh my name is amy rosenblum i've lived here for about 18 years and i'm raising two kids with my husband i wanted to share with you the importance of maintaining collaboration with the colorado junior crew cjc and the boulder reservoir as a resident living in south boulder my kids are currently processing a mass shooting at our local grocery store less than a mile from our house they are supporting friends teachers and their community after a devastating fire that started just over a mile away in the other direction and all of this while navigating an ever-changing pandemic for the past two years i know we are all concerned about the mental health and of our community members and especially our children right now our daughter started rowing last fall

[28:01] and she plans to row through high school she's going to attend fairview in the fall in such a turbulent time cjc has studied her through a team that's built her confidence with exceptional coaching and a welcoming team culture not to mention she gets the opportunity to be outside and enjoy the reservoir which provides mental health and has helped her excel at school the cjc rowing program is one of the few on the front range and it makes boulder really special friends from around the country and even within boulder county are surprised we have this wonderful rowing community to maintain our mission as a non-profit and keep cjc accessible to all regarding regardless of their ability to pay we cannot commit to a revenue sharing model with the reservoir you've heard some of this earlier tonight and other comments this will position our program for financial hardship and force us to look for another practice location or even close and i request that you strike the stipulation from our agreement given all that families are navigating right now i would hope to see city council and parks

[29:01] and rec work more actively work to see actively to seek ways to get families to the reservoir more to build community help us connect and play in some of our greatest assets in boulder thanks so much for listening thank you next we have semi lawrence iv larry mchugh and noah greenberg sammy you may need to press star 6 on your phone to unmute and that phone number has disappeared sam so perhaps there was a disconnect there okay we'll move on and see if sammy can reconnect before the end of open comment so next we have larry mcqueen um i'm sure i'm just pronouncing your name apologies noah greenberg and bella lynch thank you and hello city council my name is larry mckeow i'm representing

[30:00] boulder aquatic masters as our city liaison for historical context i was formerly the band president and city liaison from 2006 to 2010. i'm here to share why this city council should be concerned about the health and well-being of purpose-driven groups like ours 15 years ago the blue ribbon commission was set up to evaluate how to provide the same services in 2030 as was offered in 2006. this influenced the border park and rex master plan and it also instituted a user categorization process credit groups were deemed to be exclusive despite our nonprofit statuses user rates were raised despite voicing concerns that these were unsustainable this was the start of a slow deterioration of our groups when i stepped down from when i stepped down as band president in 2010 our program was in a relatively healthy state sadly that cannot be said today many of our past members can no longer afford to be part of our organization

[31:01] robert putnam in a 2000 book bowling alone used the decline of bowling league and the rise of individual bowling as a metaphor for the changing nature of american society participation in all kinds of community groups characterized the rich civic fabric that existed during the 20th century but noticed a close correlation between sick engagement and prosperity communities didn't become civic because they were rich either they were rich because they were civic same logic can be applied here older purpose-driven non-profit groups such as bam and lowers and others are more than just niche athletic groups we come together to offer support provide encouragement and in this cove time a little sense of normalcy we are the persistent fabric that sets boulder apart from other towns our nonprofit charters compel us to create an inclusive and supportive environment and pick up where the city's physical facilities leave off we are working with city staff to find ways to continue but it is getting tougher very early

[32:00] i apologize thank you so much for your testimony next we have noah greenberg bella lynch and giselle hurts i didn't get that in zoom but hello my name is noah greenberg and i appreciate the opportunity to provide the following comments requesting council assistance and ongoing negotiations between the city of boulder parks and recreation department and boulder community rowing my family is associated with the colorado junior crew program and we've grown to value rowing as a positive outlet for bolder teenagers i'm speaking tonight to ask your help because bcr is in a painful and dangerous negotiation process with park staff whereas the previous agreements between parks and the bcr included an 85 per hour fee structure used for of the reservoir park's current proposal includes a 300 rate increase to 255 dollars per hour additionally parks is demanding an 80 20 revenue sharing model that would apply to bcr classes camps and programs this

[33:00] revenue sharing was originally proposed by parks in 2019 but was eventually abandoned because city language identified it as a profit share and as a non-profit organization bcr clubs have no profits to share parks is now trying to force this issue again after rewording the model to be a revenue share many of the issues surrounding the negotiations appear to hinge on park's erroneous designation of the three rowing clubs that form bcr as exclusive users versus recreation users for the purposes of cost recovery park's designation of pcr clubs as exclusive users has profound consequences on the cost structure and appears inconsistent with the intent of the rule set forth by the city in response to a letter my family sent to parks advisory board we received an email from park staff indicating that parks is working to find a solution that allows bcr clubs to continue rowing at the reservoir currently this feels like a hollow commitment from park staff based on their current posturing and considering previous negotiation efforts which have been similarly arbitrary and painful

[34:00] my request to city council is that you can help parks negotiating good faith effort to find a solution that allows bcr to offset city costs but where bcr is not expected to be an additional revenue generating machine for parks bcr cannot bear these additional costs and we'll be forced to either close move outside city limits or become cost prohibitive to many of the bankers that valued this organization thank you really your time oh there you go thanks so much for your testimony now we have bella lynch and then gisele hartsville hi my name is bella lynch i'm a team captain of colorado junior crew a rowing program outside of boulder reservoir thank you for giving me a moment to speak i would just like to start off by saying that cjc is not only a club sport that i participate in but it's been my family for the past six years i joined when i was in middle school and it's been the backbone of my life ever since the thing that's so special about tjc is that it's truly its own unique team rowing is a small sport in colorado and there are very few youth programs i found that in my time on the team this

[35:01] team in the sport has given so much to kids that haven't found their place yet when i think about why rowing is so important i think about the strength and confidence it gives younger kids and i think about the friendships that are built because of it the thing that's so cool about our program is that kids can do whatever they want with the sport we've had some kids that only come once a week because of their own commitments but remain with the team because being at practice being out on the water with the teammates gives them a positive outlet in their life we've also had kids that have dedicated most of their time to rowing myself included rowing for many of us is something that we worked hard at for all of high school and will most likely take to a competitive level in college i know that without this team i couldn't have accomplished nearly as much as i have and wouldn't be the same person that i am today when i graduate this spring i'll have to say goodbye to my teammates and my friends without rowing i wouldn't have met these amazing people that have played such a vital role in my life i'll just end by saying that being out

[36:00] on the water is truly magical and there's no feeling quite like it at early morning practices or late afternoon when i look up from the stern of my boat i see the rocky mountains and the flatirons and their beauty is inspiring i will always be grateful for having had the opportunity to row at boulder reservoir in such a special place and proposed fee updates would potentially shut down our program and eliminate this opportunity for other kids thank you thank you next we have gisele hertzfeld and then we'll check on sammy lawrence again gazelle it looks like you're speaking but we're not hearing you you try again

[37:02] which is how i'm afraid we're not hearing you giselle i'm going to mute you and then invite you to unmute again and we'll see if that works any better okay you should be able to unmute now and i see you are unmuted well giselle i apologize we're just not able to hear you but i'd invite you to um to go to the boulder colorado.gov website and submit your testimony to us in writing and do we have uh sammy did he call back in or i am not seeing that number has called back in nor am i seeing that sami has joined um by computer so i think um we don't have sami tonight aaron

[38:01] okay thanks for letting us know all right well with that i think we will end open comment and then do we have any um staff responses to any of the testimony thanks mayor i'm going to invite our director of parks and recreation allie rhodes to step up step up as if we were in council chambers folks i'm allie rhodes i'm the director of parks and recreation um thank members of council and i want to thank the members of the community that came to speak to council on a tuesday evening um i recognize you're very concerned about the increasing cost of operating the reservoir and how they impact the fees that we charge for access we too are very interested in continuing the conversations that we've been having since september to come to mutually beneficial agreements and i want to make sure that um everyone hears that i i mean personally i'm a huge fan of both the open water swims at the reservoir and the roaring groups if you have not seen it it's

[39:00] gorgeous it's a great place to see the sunrise and it's very zen inducing professionally we love what these groups do too they spoke to how they promote physical and mental well-being which we know is more important than ever this council will learn more in the second quarter when we come talk to you about our master plan we have been working for years to clearly and transparently identify the cost of service delivery and then set fees appropriately and fairly depending upon the degree of community benefit the service provides this same process was recommended in the blue ribbon commission process that mr mckia recommended in 2008 that was instated by the city manager at that time as a result of the recession this methodology has allowed us to ensure that we're the individual benefits the individual pays and thus free up very limited subsidy to deliver programs that provide community benefit like our expand program for people with disabilities and operating the parks we shared current um analysis of our costs based on 2021 expenditures with the user groups in january and

[40:00] understand that that was created alarm they're a lot higher than the fees that they've been paying this is a reflection of similar factors um including the rapidly escalating costs of labor and materials and also that the five to six a.m hour that these groups prefer is no longer part of general reservoir operating hours this is a reflection of reductions related to the pandemic and our analysis that identified that the general public does not visit the reservoir from five to six a.m it's primarily these user groups and that's in 2021 these groups paid for those hours that were outside of the general operating hours and that really did contribute to a significant increase in their expenses and we understand despite all that methodology that sounds like we're supporting um 300 an hour the part i think that is key for folks to hear is that our understanding was that these conversations were ongoing we have no intention for any of these user groups to be a cash cow to support other operations and our goal is that fees are fairly applied consistent with what others pay and that these groups can continue to operate and keep people moving and physically i spent several

[41:00] time several hours both this week and last with members of our team to help write responses to the emails you're receiving to help understand where we're at we have uh reached out to the user groups to make sure we know who our points of contact are with all these folks uh interested hope to sit down in the middle of february and keep cheap keep charging keep trucking forward thanks for that at least it sounds like conversations are ongoing right things are not finalized at this point yeah i think we could have done a better job in communicating in january not only one the analysis of the cost but that a document that we shared and i understand there was a clause in there about a potential for profit sharing has created alarm our intention was that that was a draft let's have this be a starting place to start a conversation but we obviously should have been more clear about that thanks for that anything else from city staff see none any uh city council members want to respond to anything

[42:02] all right let's see oh there's a couple we got matt then lauren and mark thanks aaron and uh ali thanks for your update on that and also i do appreciate and everyone that came forward to talk about um rowing and the use at boulder res i have a specific question maybe about the junior rowing program and whether or not their program would be applicable to apply for the uh programs we have around the sugary beverage tax which focus on on health um and stuff so i'm wondering if that program might find ways to uh apply for that grant and then have some resources that might be able to go to help subsidize some of the fees that they might be incurring on this and just support the program and work overall because uh that seems like a great program for a lot of kids and certainly that testimony we got um seems like that that is right up our alley so just looking for ways maybe to encourage finding some other resources to help with those programs establish themselves but also strengthen some of their bottom

[43:01] line yeah i think that's a great suggestion matt i know that some of the groups have mentioned they're interested in sponsorships and other partnerships obviously in the face of advancing expenses we have to pay those and there's there's user fees but then there are subsidies either from grants philanthropy or or taxes obviously that's uh lauren and then mark thanks ali i just had a couple of additional clarifying questions um you know i understand kind of the fear of when your activity relies on access to space that you worry you might lose so um one just quick one um to start off with so the they me there's a couple people who mentioned the categorization being linked to more expenses and so and you said that that's just because they use exclusive hours or is it there's two things here one what i mentioned the five to six a.m the user

[44:00] groups are the in our analysis the general public was not using those so our operating hours were prior to the pandemic we did open at 00 a.m now are we open at 6 00 a.m that's that's reflection again of two things one is that all activities have not returned to the reservoir um prior to the pandemic special events was a key source of revenue not all of them have returned so our operating hours are still very much balanced with what we expect to bring in in revenue so we we anticipate opening at 6am which means the user group should pay for the direct cost from 5 to 6am the other thing that folks have mentioned was the exclusive categorization so following up on what mr mcchia recommended and something we've developed with the prab since the master plan we have a a tool that tries to objectively categorize programs that we provide based upon degree of community benefit so there's ways that programs can demonstrate that whether they serve targeted populations like underrepresented communities people with disabilities and so that's a tool we use to help set fees for our internal

[45:00] programs and some of our communications we've shared that were we to score this program it would score as exclusive however it's not necessarily to be applied with user groups it was it was again i think storytelling that maybe got lost in email and should be part of the conversation as we continue with these groups because as matt mentioned for cjc for sure and supporting the youth there might be a way to find some sub subsidy to offset some of those costs thank you um and then just to clarify what steps are going to happen like will this come back before us before fees are decided or what's kind of how are the how does that finalization process looking yep um that's a really good question so user fees are not codified they are not set by city council they are guided by policy that you um that council sets so right now we use policy set in the 2014 master plan so this item won't necessarily come back to you what will come to you again in the second quarter as we'll be talking to you about the master plan update a key element that i

[46:02] can tell you now as a policy issue is that we increasingly hear from community members that they're concerned about the prices of our recreation services and so that's that's one of the policy items we'll be talking to you when we come to you in late april okay thank you thanks mark ali when you next speak to us will you be able to give us more information about the services actually being provided to these groups in that five to six a.m time slot if if council is interested in a report i can do that whenever you like we've outlined the services that are provided not only directly at that time but any any visitor to the reservoir is using that facility and those who don't pay for the access and the use would would be free riders on that right so it's a it's the use of the reservoir and the services that support the five to six am access okay i would be interested in knowing what the scope of those services are sure okay thank you okay i think that's it for

[47:02] council hands so we'll move on just before we do i i'll just mention that uh we got noticed that bvsd has canceled school for tomorrow so if you are an area child you get a snow day i hope you enjoy it and everybody else be careful out there with all the snow that's coming down did you get that noticed by my kids screaming joy i heard a shriek in the background somewhere in addition to the text email and phone call that i got from from the school district uh okay so uh alicia i think we're moving on to our consent agenda that is correct sir and under the consent agenda item for tonight's approval is items a and b okay we have any questions comments or emotion on this bob i move uh items uh three a and three b from the consent agenda second

[48:00] okay second for mark um this is a believe by show of hands so which i think we handle these days by saying does anybody object any objections doesn't look like it all right well with that the consent agenda passes unanimously and we can move on to our first public hearing all right sir thank you very much first on our public hearing list is item 5a the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8496 designating the property at 1 300 canyon boulevard in the city of boulder colorado also known as the midland savings and loan atrium building a landmark under chapter 9-11 historic preservation brc 1981 and setting forth those related details james you take this away for us i will thank you and good evening city council i'll just share my screen

[49:00] [Music] maybe just introduce yourself to get us started please certainly i'm james hewitt historic preservation planner with the historic preservation program uh planning and development services um this is a quasi-judicial hearing and mayor i can go through the procedure for quasi-judicial um hearings or if you'd like to do it that's fine too just well sure real quick i guess we will start by revealing any ex parte contacts then we'll have a staff presentation with questions an owner presentation with questions public hearing for public comment which we can also ask questions about and an owner response and then public hearing clothes city council discusses and eventually emotion of some kind and i'll just get us started with does anyone have any ex parte communications to reveal about this item

[50:01] and bob i think you've got an old handout it's actually a new hand um i don't know if it's an ex part of communication but james are already aware of this we had some community members who wrote into counsel um and i i didn't respond to any of them but then we had a follow-up communication from uh that group of community members who wanted to make sure we got their emails and so i wrote back and said yes we got their their emails and and i copy james on that i don't know if that's next sex party but i wanted to disclose that thanks lauren yeah so my office does a lot of work in modern architecture um and you know this has been something that i've been aware of coming up um before i even considered running for council i've had a number of community of um conversations about this build thing um and um i think prior to the to it being on our agenda one of had a discussion with one of the groups um

[51:01] bringing this forward but i still feel like yeah sorry i can be um what's sorry what's the word aaron impartial i think i believe i can be fair and impartial thank you thanks so much and nicole um yeah i also read some of the emails um that came in about this and uh had a conversation with mr carl anuda about this as well um and i do not expect that um i will fail to be impartial in this nicole and i'll just mention that similarly to bob i had a couple people reach out to see if we had received their emails we in fact had not so i informed them of that and i believe they resent them based on that information but that does not affect my ability to be fair or impartial either i do not think so with all that then we can move to the staff presentation thank you mayor i'll try and be brief uh len siegel will be speaking after me as

[52:02] the applicant representing historic boulder so i'll try and whiz through this as quickly as i can while giving you um and the public uh what what you need to understand this application which has been in the mill for a while so as with every landmark designation the city council's role here is to determine whether the proposed designation conforms with section 9 11 1 and 9 11 2 of the boulder revised code which are really the um the bones of the historic preservation ordinance the intent for the historic preservation ordinance and so this evening the city council may approve may modify and approve the designation by ordinance or alternately the city council can deny

[53:03] the proposed designation of this property so as i mentioned this has been in the mill for a while and in fact it dates back nearly seven years now to 2015 when historic boulder submitted an application to landmark the atrium building also known as the midland first savings bank or savings and loan i should say at the time uh there was a lot of planning going on in the city uh in regard to the east civic area and there were there was discussion about uh the farmers market expanding and possibly using the building um as a market hall so the city at the time felt it was a good idea to ask historic boulder to hold off on the application until a feasibility study

[54:01] had been done and that was completed a few years after that so in december of of last year 2021 the landmarks board um did feel that it was important that this application moved forward and they reviewed it that the application that evening and they did find unanimously that the property should be landmarked um so here we are tonight uh after the first reading on january 18th and uh this public hearing so just to acquaint everyone i think most people are aware of this building and and its location at the the east end of what we refer to as the east civic area and you can see from the map here um it is across from the central park and um on the northwest corner of 13th street and

[55:00] canyon boulevard so just a few buildings a few photographs showing the building this fall and you know a building that the city has owned for a number of years and used as office space but it was designed specifically to be a savings and loan building and um was a very intentional design by the art architect um hobart wagner and just a few more photographs showing the building which is a roof dominated building in what we refer to as a regional variant of modernist design that being a very horizontal building with ribbon windows and the the regional rustic element to that is the the use of the local stone which is actually on this building really quite finely done and i'll talk a little bit more about that um some black and white photographs

[56:01] showing similar aspects of the building but just the strong horizontal lines really indicative of architecture that was being designed by a group of architects uh of which um hobart wagner the architect for this building was a part um it consisted of um james hunter roger easton gail abels and of course charles hartling there were others as well but this was a school of architecture or is now being recognized as a school of architecture that was very particular to the boulder locality and kind of a remarkable group of architects of which hobart wagner was perhaps the most prolific working in a very specific mode of modernism so here on the screen you have a uh

[57:00] architect's rendering from 1968 um that was done by jack beavers who worked with hobart wagner and hobart wagner himself came to boulder after world war ii and worked in james hunter's office this is a rendering of the building that was done before its construction and here we have some photographs showing the building after its construction [Music] in the early 1970s and of course what we look at when assessing a building's significance or a property's significance is whether the building has historic architectural and or environmental significance and in this case it has been determined that this building or this property possesses all of the above being constructed in 1969 uh as i mentioned a a very strong and um

[58:00] notable example of the regional modern movement in boulder and of course the savings and loan um system that was set up after world war ii was um was operating through this bank was one of the many thousands actually that were established this was um actually built a year after um there were refer reforms in congress to make uh housing more equitable and there have certainly been studies done and um uh very relevant uh criticism of the fact that the savings and loans movement um was not um equitable for people of different racial backgrounds but nonetheless this building is representing that to a certain extent and then in 2000 a study was done

[59:03] looking at modernist architecture in in boulder and there were about 70 buildings that were surveyed this was one that was identified as being eligible for both the state and national register and len siegel who is going to be speaking after me uh we'll talk more about the history and the architecture as well so again um rustic modernist architecture hobart wagner recognized master of architecture in boulder and in terms of artistic merit there there is a high standard of construction and craft and you can see the the attention to detail in the uh the masonry construction of this building and it is uncommon because most of the mid-century banks and buildings actually in boulder or many of them have been lost so and finally in terms of

[60:00] indigenous qualities it was or is constructed of local locally quarried stone and then a photograph of hobart wagner on the right there out in the field looking at drawings now for some of the newer city council members they may not be familiar but there are a number of buildings that have been landmarked by hobart wagner including the 1960 green shield building which is located at 928th street this building is another example of hobart wagner's roof dominated buildings but in a very asian manner on the right is a photograph of hobart wagner when he was working for james hunter and i think what's interesting about this is in the background they have an artist's rendering of our municipal building and actually

[61:01] that was designed by james hunter's office and hobart wagner who's on the right in this photograph designed the addition to that in 1962 so that is now our tate municipal building in terms of environmental significance the building is a well-known and a familiar visual landmark in the downtown area at a familiar visual landmark it's well integrated into its site and suitable for its location and then finally it is in that area that we identify as the east civic area next to the civic area um gosh i'm not being very articulate here but the lot where the uh farmer's market and the vendors in the summer um uh set up shop and then also

[62:02] next to the duchamp tea house which was landmarked earlier last year so there is a collection of historic buildings in the area so with that staff is um bringing this forward with the landmark board's recommendation um that this property be landmarked um and you can see the boundary here which follows the lot of the atrium itself including the parking area there were a couple of questions about that during the first reading um the proposed name of the building would be the landmark name would be the midland savings and loan slash atrium building and so with that i will leave you with a motion and um here to answer any questions if you have any any questions about any of the information i've presented this evening

[63:01] thank you thanks james uh questions for james uh lauren is that a new hand it's not but it could be uh well it sounds like bob put his hand up first and we'll come back to you sounds great i'm happy to yield to lauren yay um so some of the things um you know that we're supposed to be looking at here regarding um you know will this promote health safety and welfare um and um it's appropriateness for the site i have some con some conflicting feelings about i think that you know while this building the roof form and all of that you know clearly speak to its architectural heritage um it is in a very key location in the civic area that

[64:02] i think is critical to kind of maintaining the liveliness we want to see there and so my question is around sort of modification to this building if we enact it what kinds of modifications would be allowed particularly so there's been discussion about operable windows for a market space but i also have concerns regarding um you know creating a more friendly entrance to this building if it's going to be maintained as a civic building we really want to have it be welcoming which i don't think it is all that welcoming right now um so yeah what are your thoughts on on that and how it would be able to evolve over time well you know i'm glad that you've asked that question because over the course of the last seven and seven or eight years that we've been talking about this there has been a lot of consideration given to

[65:00] the use um for this building in the context of the civic area and and that it should be a lively it should be an engaging building and it should be one that can be ultimately used by the public so the feasibility study at the time was looking at this building as uh potentially being reused as a market hall for the farmers market and it was at the time um seen as being a viable um a viable building to do that there are flood issues uh one corner of the building is in the flood area so it would need to be modified to um you know to protect it from that that hazard um but likewise i think from from 2015 on there's been a lot of consideration given to how those openings in the building uh might be modified to make the building more open to

[66:02] interior exterior sort of use um so yes i think there's a there's a lot of room for that building to be modified and and um unlike earlier historic buildings where you've got punched openings what you've got here are glass walls which are easier to do that i think without really altering the essential historic character of a building or architectural uh character of a building so i think the answer is yes there there i think there's quite a lot that could happen to that building um to to make it more welcoming and um something that's that's a real asset into the future for our community is there any changes that we might make to the ordinance to make it clear that that's allowed going forward or um you know because one something that happens is sort of the interpretation of

[67:01] what's intended over time you know can become fuzzy um yes and and in a you know in ordinances um we describe some of the character defining features of the building and you know provided that those character defining features uh wouldn't be um you know damaged irreparably or in a way that would really change change the essential character of the building for instance i think this would be a hard building to add stories to the top of because it is such a one-story roof-dominated building but again i think there certainly is uh and would be some very uh useful ways of changing the openings and you know creating again more a building that's that's that's more of a public asset so um

[68:00] and then you mentioned i didn't wasn't aware of the floodplain issue i mean i guess i i get it it's right there but um do you know what the flood protection elevation is compared to the existing floor elevation of the main level you know i don't know that off the top of my head but as i recall it's the northeast corner of the building that is in the uh 500 year i think it's the 500 year flood area so it's a portion of the building i'm i'm pretty sure that's the case but i don't know exactly what the the floor elevation change would be i know that in the feasibility study it was looked at and facilities looked at what might be done to create flood proofing on the walls or wall areas and and the glass as well and there is flood proofing that can be done with very uh high-strength glass for instance so there are ways to do it but

[69:02] um you know would be it would take some resources and it would take some creativity too as i understand it okay that's all for the moment bob then nicole my questions are very similar to lauren's um james um is is there anything if i know the city's gonna move out of the building in a few years and so the building will be kind of up for grabs from the standpoint of future uses and we're not gonna debate those right now but are there things that we either need to do now in the scope of whatever ordinance that might get passed tonight or are you telling us that we should just kind of defer that to a future landmark alteration certificate because you we don't know what might happen and we should just trust future councils to do an lac that will accommodate those future uses how does that work just mechanically yeah well it's a really good question and i i think i maybe didn't answer the last

[70:02] question very well but i think there are ways to be more specific in the ordinance itself to um say what could and couldn't happen and be more specific about what what are those character defining features and what are less important so that would allow for for instance um new doors and new openings on that building to be reviewed without going you know through a great deal of process so that would be defined in the ordinance would you or will you help us to extend we need to do some drafting on the fly when we get to that point would you help us with whatever words we might need to address the concerns that lauren and i are raising uh yeah i'll do my absolute best thanks yes thank you james nicole thanks james um for the presentation and uh letting us know about this um i just

[71:00] had some questions that were of a similar um vein to it uh lauren was asking but related to the parking lot so this was new new news for me that parking lots can be linked part of the landmark area i hadn't realized that and um i was just wondering if you know for landmarking this whole property including the parking lot can we re-develop the parking lot um you know at those um the original architect drawings that was beautiful right it was all you know kind of these trees things like that right now it's pretty ugly um that area so i'm just wondering you know what what is involved you know if we landmark including the parking lot what's involved in you know maybe making it park or outdoor space or bike storage or something like that sure i think sometimes rather than cars yeah a really good question and to be clear the landmark boundary does include that parking area on the north which is really one row of parking um i would say 20 or 30 feet to the sidewalk

[72:02] so that area yes that is in the you know recommended landmark boundary and of course the city council could modify that but in terms of landscaping and that sort of thing yes i think that's something that would certainly be to the benefit of the building and the setting and looking at that rendering it was actually intended to be more that way than it actually turned out being so that would be a guide uh perhaps to you know creating something that's softer and and more accessible to the public now the parking lot to the east is not in included in that landmark boundary and uh of course you know development could occur without any kind of historic review in that area and likewise uh to the south to between the the tea house and the atrium

[73:00] nicole do you mind if i follow up on that first so uh thanks for that james the when you said that the parking lot to the east is not included i mean there is a section of the law east of the building that's in the proposed landmark designation i mean it's not the whole parking lot but it is a strip of i don't know 15 feet or something and 15 feet yeah it's um and i don't know exactly i'd have to go and scale it but i i think it's just kind of off the eve of that building actually um because the you know it's it's got very wide overhanging eaves and what you see in the site plan is actually just the the walls of the building so i don't think it goes too much beyond those eaves but in terms of building a new building i i think there would be uh building separation anyway so but that of course could be modified if you know the city council uh if you all feel that that's appropriate great and then just another follow-up

[74:00] that you mentioned that that landscaping to the north would be you know you feel like it would be compatible with the original intention of the building but would it require a landscape alteration certificate in order to make that happen or could that just be done you know by writer with a simple administrative process right well technically yes it would require a landmark alteration certificate any changes occurring within the the boundary um but uh again i i think it would be pretty straightforward um but it also that that is something that perhaps could be specified in the in the ordinance itself to streamline that thanks nicole did you have anything else yeah um i just wanted to follow up a little bit james i just really appreciate your noting um some of the different perspectives that um some of our buildings come with as regards to history and i was just wondering if you could speak to you know whether you know

[75:00] if this um if this savings alone you know participated in um kind of some of the potential potentially participated in some of the disproportionate wealth and income growth among white community members versus communities of color i mean do you know if they they actively engaged in discrimination or you know do we have any any way of knowing that other than just sort of assuming given the business and the time they may have yeah you know i don't um i really don't know and they were in existence prior to the construction of this bank they had other branches as well so i can't say for sure honestly one way or the other but this particular building was constructed a year after the reforms that you know the congress made to try and try and straighten out what was being really identified as as some very problematic lending practices that

[76:00] were that were occurring in including um the whole notion of redlining which um of course was it was a terrible thing i i just i appreciate your attention to this aspect of its history thank you aaron you're muted sorry about that uh lauren did you have something else i did have a couple quick other ones so um i was just curious if there are any existing landscape walls you know we saw from the rendering that there had been a couple and intended but i don't i don't believe they exist do they no they don't that's uh you you picked up on that you're attuned to those kind of details yeah i noticed that as well there were some landscaping walls and some

[77:00] small discrepancies between what was ultimately built and what's shown on that rendering but yeah i think that that you know could or could not be used as a guide for future changes um do you see any down or what are the downsides you would say um that you might see in terms of reducing the boundary from being at the property line to being say at the edge of the eve um actually not much because it's a pretty tight boundary as it is and usually boundaries are intended to create some somewhat of a buffer around a building or a site you know so it so you don't have something built right next to it or around it and um clearly there isn't the opportunity to build a new building along 13th street or a long

[78:00] canyon because it's just there's space obviously so i think from that standpoint um if if if that were to be modified somewhat that would be that would be okay but our practice is to you know define a property by what's a logical boundary and usually the most logical boundary is you know the legal description which is what's being proposed thank you okay seeing no other hands let's move to the applicant presentation all right hello city council um i'm leonard siegel and i'm the executive director of historic boulder and i've got a presentation that i'm going to try to go through quickly but i think it should be informative for you and help you assess the landmarking so i'll start with this

[79:01] slide winston churchill once pointed out how important buildings are in the lives of people saying we shape our buildings thereafter they shape us historic preservation has contributed to boulder by safeguarding buildings that demonstrate the spirit of our community from different eras next slide the midland savings atrium building is one such building you've seen this image before um i'm speaking tonight to advocate for its preservation by landmarking it the city council can maintain this legacy building and still have room to develop the adjacent site for more housing that you so highly prioritize next slide not seeing the next slide thank you the value of historic preservation in communities across the united states is that it reinforces the history of a

[80:00] community teaches relevant lessons to new generations and helps our economy by stimulating tourism the spirit of boulder is embedded in the remarkable buildings we see around town from the early days right up through current times next slide i like the long delay between the slides add some more drama um okay it's been modern architecture exemplified by the midland savings atrium building that has created the innovative backbone of the boulder of today modernism is not a style it has an ongoing optimistic mission to improve the lives of people by providing cutting-edge buildings that are ecological economical and inspiring next and i'm going to take you on a quick tour of the many types of modern architecture that have been providing progressive settings in boulder here are just a few of the remarkable public

[81:01] schools and university buildings in town some of which were designed by hobart wagner the architect of the midland building next so you know the next images very well the three most important government buildings in boulder all followed in the ideas of modernism with bold shapes low-cost materials logical interior spaces and environmental considerations you may wonder the courthouse is made of stone that doesn't seem very low cost but that stone was recycled from mining structures up the canyon next residential design has been among the most experimental types of modern architecture here from single family homes to apartment buildings like golden west next slide many of our cultural buildings are modern including the boulder theater the huntington band show and the museum of boulder next slide and of course it's no surprise that our

[82:00] science and technology buildings have always followed the experimental paths of modern design next boulder is known as a place where personal spiritual exploration has been promoted just look at these amazingly dramatic modern churches next slide even our businesses have followed the path of modern principles the bottom left photo is the terrific design of the original harvest house hotel it's a shame it's going to be torn down next slide so with that overview of the impact of modernism in the life of boulder i turn your attention back to the midland savings atrium building there are two key aspects that make this property worth landmarking that james has covered but i want to elaborate on the architecture character and its historic contributions next slide hobart wagner the architect of the midland savings atrium building started his architecture firm in the 1950s

[83:02] he was in the third generation of boulder architects who followed the modern design approach and he had the most successful architecture company of all next slide glenn huntington was the founding father of modern architecture in boulder among his excellent building designs are the county courthouse and the central park bandshaw next slide james hunter became huntington's partner and took over the company when huntington moved to denver among hunter's great modern buildings are the municipal building and the boulder library hobart wagner as you saw in that photo worked for james hunter that photo that james had shown earlier um and he had worked for james hunter for several years along with charles hartling titian pablo cristo and several other modernists next so i want to show some highlights of the architecture produced by hobart wagner's company here in boulder this is a photo of his architecture office building which seems to float like a boat above a

[84:00] pond next his company was involved in the design of these very cutting edge public schools in boulder next slide wagner was also entrusted by startup companies like ball aerospace to embody their innovative missions in dynamic architecture next slide wagner's architecture firm gave spiritual expression to several churches around town the next and at the university of colorado well it benefited from the large-scale planning creativity of the wagner architecture office at three villages on campus williams engineering and kittridge next slide now i want to turn your attention to the architecture of the midland atrium building it was designed with many of the key principles of the modern movement of architecture the surprise of the building is that the ceiling inside soars up into the pyramidal roof flooding the interior with abundant daylight the really large windows

[85:02] bring a sense of the outside right into the building and the broad overhanging roof shades the glass reducing energy use the materials are cost effective being locally sourced sandstone lumber and roof shingles and are very well crafted next slide you may smirk at this one but it's clear how some of the ancient wonders of the world inspired the monumental design of this small building the pyramidal shape gives the midland savings atrium building a larger presence than its small footprint next slide many 19th and early 20th century banks copied the classical expression of ancient buildings like the pantheon in rome to give them an image of solidity and financial security wagner also borrowed from classical architecture but abstracted it with an innovatively modern sensibility the shape of the midland bank roof is inspired by the pantheon's triangular pediment columns

[86:02] of the pantheon are arrayed across the front the midland bank design hints at that with a colonnade that marches around the four sides of the building and famously the pantheon has a skylight at the top of the roof and so does the midland bank next one subtle architectural design motif worth mentioning that wagner use is that is the connection to the masonic image on the dollar bill note the triangular skylight on the top of the midland building what could be more symbolic for a bank next slide now turning um can you go forward a couple this one perfect now turning to the historic significance i want to make two points about the building it exemplified the crucial importance of savings and loans on the rapid growth of boulder and it has had a vital second life as a government office next the midland bank along with other

[87:01] savings and loans made it possible for people across the united states to afford to buy a home as portrayed in the movie it's a wonderful life there was a huge increase in the population of boulder in the 1960s and 70s in large part due to low-cost home mortgages for working class people what a great legacy next slide remarkably the building has had an equally significant second life as a center of government activity for many years as boulder grew so did the size of the government there has been a continual need for more office space as you well know the midland savings atrium building has filled that need as an annex to the municipal and park central buildings just think of the government programs that were conceived here that have and will influence the history of boulder next slide landmarking the midland atrium building will ensure its usefulness for years to come here's a conceptual sketch

[88:02] that imagines retrofitting the south side of the building to provide access to the community activities on the plaza like the farmers market next slide and here's a conceptual view imagining how the building interior could be opened up to create a large multi-use space for as many community activities as you can imagine next i want to finish with a few slides to visualize with you a few options for this property the first of course is to save the existing building repurposing it it would have its third life doing this is the most environmental solution the greenest building is one that is already built because of the preservation of the embodied energy in it that's the energy it took to build it you throw it away you put it in a landfill and that is gone next the second option is to promote the development of a new large building that

[89:00] could have many apartments and located on the surface parking lots along 14th street the midland atrium building could be reused as an amenity space for the new housing development the tea house b mocha and the band shell this option would also preserve the nice low scale along 13th street facing central park next the third option would be to think only like a developer maximizing the density by throwing away the midland savings atrium building and its legacy qualities a building the size of one boulder plaza would effectively wall off the tea house and b mocha from visual access and loom over central park and my last slide on behalf of our community historic boulder is asking you to value the remarkable qualities embedded in the midland savings atrium building it has architectural historical and environmental attributes that can continue to contribute to the innovative

[90:00] essence of boulder these qualities are especially worth valuing at a time when the character of boulder is changing with so much development happening the timing is crucial now as you know in the recent november election a bond was passed that includes some funding for studying a redevelopment of the east bookend area where the midland savings atrium is located let's work together to formally acknowledge the importance of this building to the spirit of boulder and landmark tonight thanks for your attention thank you for that leonard appreciate the presentation and i will say if you're ever giving a presentation on the history of modern architecture in boulder please let us know you clearly have a deep amount of knowledge on the subject um any questions for the applicant all right not seeing any so thank you for that and um i believe we will go to the public hearing now do i have the sequence right

[91:02] yes you do sir okay great i have to step away for a moment so mayor pro tem friend will run the uh the public hearing thanks erin uh not having done this before alicia please correct me if i'm wrong but i think we just go through the list that you have starting with patrick o'rourke yes ma'am that is correct do we need to run through the um guidelines for public participation again or is that okay to have done it at the outset uh mayor pro time i believe everyone who is speaking was either here earlier in the meeting or has attended in the past and is probably familiar with the rules perfect thanks um okay so i think we can get started with uh mr o'rourke and i believe it'll be three minutes for speaker um thank you i thought it was two but that's fine uh well let's correct that before we start then is it is it three no it is two because only um seven people signed up it would be um two if it was more than fifteen

[92:01] so it's three yeah yes so it is three great all right patrick you've got three thanks thank you uh that's the third time i've seen that presentation and i find it amazing uh the history that one brings to the table um is unsurpassed so good evening city council my name is patrick o'rourke i'm the preservation chairperson for historic boulder in 2015 historic boulder submitted the original landmark application at that time we agreed to suspend the application for up to two years in order to let the city do a feasibility study that study was completed in 2017. jump forward to august 2021 to sport historic boulder then requested to the landmarks board that the application moved forward and in december of last year the landmarks board voted unanimously to approve the landmark designation the atrium a mid-century building represents a significant architectural

[93:00] and physical structure and his is historic to boulder i'm privileged to pass this building daily and believe that it's that this building with its unique lines sets in the correct scale on the corner across from central park and several other noted buildings in that part of town including the moboka building with its classic style the tea house which is one of a kind and is known around the world and the band shell which is one of the few remaining examples of this style in the country together this eclectic buildings these eclectic buildings support each other and the atrium if the adaptive reuse is done correctly can support these buildings in the future in addition i also envision that the atrium can be utilized to support other city services including the unsheltered as well as being a focal point for other community events such as the boulders farmers market i trust in the expertise of the two

[94:01] historic boulder leadership teams that analyzed this significant building the boulder landmarks board that voted five to nothing to approve its designation and the city staff that recommend its approval with the support of these three organizations it's compelling to go forward and landmark this building though so that future generations can experience what we see thank you thanks so much patrick um next up we'll have dan courson and ondeck are susan osborne and deborah yen all right am i unmuted we can hear you dan thanks thank you i'm dan corson um 40 49 year resident of boulder first i want to thank you all for your service and congratulations to new members in 1979 historic boulder leased and ultimately owned the boulder theater operating it at great loss running

[95:00] second run movies uh the man theater the prior owner placed a covenant that no first run movies could be run there for 75 years making a bit of a white elephant historic boulder's goal was to find a buyer who would not only landmark the exterior but preserve the interior murals and it was successful in that respect in 1979 the boulder theater was 43 years old we heard such comments as this isn't historic uh this is not an old building i'm older than this building um it was a bit of a surprise i suppose that some felt that didn't appreciate the architectural significance of art deco something that's hard to imagine today in 1985 the city using national park service grants administered by the state historic preservation office started a process of surveying boulder's historic properties neighborhood surveys and also thematic surveys such as the year 2000 survey of modern buildings in boulder built

[96:00] between 1947 and 1977 um and of course the uh the atrium building was featured in that survey as one that should be preserved this was conducted by architects and architectural historians experts in that field i know when i moved to boulder in 1973 and the atrium building was just a few years old that i probably didn't give any thought to the fact that this building should be safe for posterity similarly somebody moving to boulder in 1939 probably would not have recognized the boulder theater facade as one that should be safe for posterity time changes our perspectives about what is significant to a community and what makes the community special i urge you to to designate this building i believe the questions you've asked are all very fair questions but these are not issues that cannot be dealt with uh they're made alteration certificates are quite common uh if you go down the

[97:01] alleys of mapleton hill you're really going to see a building that hasn't been added on to the back of this building as the images that lin siegel showed you if that were opened up with large windows instead of the small ones doorways it would make a big difference in terms of that elevations ability to be very welcoming to people so thank you very much for your consideration and again i appreciate your service thanks so much dan next up we'll hear from susan osborne and after that deborah yen and catherine barth hi everyone i know you've received a lot of letters supporting the landmarking of the atrium and as president of historic boulder i can tell you and as you've heard from james we've waited almost seven years to bring this nomination to you we are thrilled that the landmarking of this handsome modernist building is on your agenda tonight and even more delighted that the designation comes to

[98:00] you with the unanimous recommendation of the landmark sport and the city staff um i wanted to mention two things that i think haven't been mentioned and one is the city has an historic preservation plan it was written and adopted in 2013 and then updated in 2019 and section 1.7 of it reads designate eligible city-owned buildings and lead by example and then there's a great quote that i think is meaningful tonight and that is the city's willingness to actively participate in its own historic preservation programs instills a sense of unity with owners of landmark properties and buildings within historic districts now you've already heard that city study done in the early 2000s one of 66 buildings is the atrium building and at that time it was recommended to be landmarked

[99:01] this is all to say that the city's own studies and plans would suggest that the landmarking of the atrium building is appropriate warranted i love the question about its future use and i think it's absolutely right to think about you know what will it be used for and what can how what changes are appropriate and i guess i just want to underline something that several other speakers have said and that's that the adaptive reuse is part and parcel of good historic preservation and it does seem as though the atrium with its once open floor plan and wonderful wide windows is really appropriate for many different uses and then in closing i also wanted to say that by landmarking the atrium you make the building eligible for state historic fund grants for rehabilitation and that does include planning grants it's exciting to imagine what the future

[100:01] holds for the atrium its scale and archite architecture seem to be perfect on that site and as we saw in len's presentation it joins a fine suite of buildings on our municipal campus thank you so much for your consideration thanks so much susan next up we have deborah yen and then katherine barth and lynn siegel and i do want to ask before we go i see mayor brockett's back would you like to take the reins back thanks so much rachel okay i'm deborah yin uh resident of boulder an architect and a former landmarks board member others uh i'm sorry skip that part um what distinguishes boulder from other places are the things that are unique to our town its past and present people and their contributions such as the mindset that resulted in our protected natural setting other examples include the pearl street

[101:01] and mapleton hill historic districts boulder's landmark buildings are significant components of the town's identity imagine boulder without them the midland savings alone designed by boulder's own hobart wagoner contributes to that uniqueness the next point is one that i that may not be obvious and that is the economics of preservation the 2017 report preservation for a change in colorado by colorado preservation inc highlighted several benefits of historic preservation backed by data some benefits are as follows jobs were created as a result of preservation visitors to come to boulder to see its historic buildings are engaged in what's called heritage tourism more than half of tourists who stayed overnight in colorado came for heritage tourism more than half of tourist spending spending was attributable to heritage tourism not only do local businesses

[102:02] need heritage tourism the city does as well tourist spending taxes fund boulders programs historic preservation helps boulder achieve its goals including environmental sustainability equity and programs to benefit the most vulnerable in our community landlord designation of this building will strengthen boulder's identity and further its goals so i'd like to just speak to a point that was raised about changing the landmark proposed landmark boundary to just be right at the edge of the building and the reason why i would suggest that you don't do that is that is to trust the preservation staff and the landmarks board to facilitate improvements that would enhance the building if if the boundary is made at the boundary at the wall of the building potentially someone could come in and say build a 20-foot wall

[103:00] to completely block off any view of that of the landmark building so i don't recommend that thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you deborah next we have catherine barth then siegel and carl and utah catherine you should be able to unmute all right am i muted yes you are okay um hello my name is catherine barth and i'm a preservation architect uh i've lived in boulder for 30 years and have been involved with being on the landmarks board and um being a volunteer with historic boulder for many of those years um i love this building because of its scale and the way it sits on the corner

[104:02] and it's just like a wonderful object that has enough changes on each facet that you want to look and you want to look very closely at it i love the stone and i love the pyramidal roof len's comment about the pantheon in rome and the oculus when this building before it was divided into offices it was a lot of light throughout the building and i think that the renderings that you were seeing show that potential use we've heard from dance groups that would like to use it other suggestions have been to make it a green room or add facilities for the neighboring band shell when they have performances and they have

[105:00] auxiliary needs so i think i think your consideration of a building that can be reused to benefit the entire community is really very valid and the other thing that i find so interesting about canyon boulevard is that i'm sure you all remember that first it was called water street because it flooded so often then it was called railroad street and then finally it became canyon boulevard and with the eclectic really eclectic history of boulder we have so many buildings in this area of town in what we call the east book end that just show kind of the crazy development and history of boulder that things just happened and you know you had a railroad running down the street and until not too many years ago uh and we had a railroad station right

[106:01] in the middle of 14th street until it got moved twice so it's it's a it's a building that has seen a lot of history and it's an area of town that has all of the history of boulder in it so i urge you to landmark this building and i support you in that and i think you'll be very pleased if you do thank you so much for your time thank you catherine now lynn siegel and carlo nudo hey the the first thing i was going to say that's good about this building landmarking it is that there's a toxic waste area around it uh associated with that um platform where the international dancers dance between that and the um duchamp um and i i don't want that land disturbed um it's just like the coal seam and the

[107:02] underground fires and that the association of that it really makes me afraid for boulder that we don't do something to remediate the um the coal mines because if this building we land market and then it gets burnt down and i don't want to die in a fire like robert did you know it's prohibitively expensive to to take nature and harness it and stop a coal mine fire that's so bad that that happened to start with and this toxic waste next to this building to landmark it and then have it burn down because of another toxic site of the coal mine would be kind of horrific i loved len siegel's talk it was so fabulous um i loved the eye at the top it's the eye to boulder to see that our housing is way too expensive here like it's a wonderful life it's saving the

[108:02] freaking savings alone we've got to save boulder from all of this unaffordable housing that's just eating up our landscape and just ripe for fire because we need to spread out more that's what happened on these cul-de-sacs the marshall fire just ate up the whole cul-de-sac that's what's gonna happen again i love len siegel's talk but no big building's right next to it dwarfing it no no way it needs to be appreciated for the adaptive use that it could have and as does the alpine balsam building do not take down the hospital reuse it the eye is on boulder for for the whole the history of all of these things my dad would my dad was a great punster you know save the savings alone save boulder

[109:01] from this over abundance of high high-end housing and make the savings and loan that that um hobart wagoner preserved you know in his design make it for what it really is supposed to be like jimmy stewart said for people who can afford stuff so that we don't have these encampments all over this is what it is for and it really saves that area from being disturbed in any way because of that toxic landfill around there underneath amazon thank you for your testimony our last speaker is carl anuda the folks before me have by and large covered everything i guess i'm acting as a sweep the building is extremely flexible as i've noted to you in my letter you could think of it as a commissary

[110:01] tent that the sides could be moved up on the city owns the building the city can do a lot with it uh through the landmarks uh uh death designation through the landmarks change process uh through an amendment you don't need to change this particular ordinance adopted as it is with the boundaries as they are do it tonight and then come back later on with requests for changes as to the name [Music] it doesn't be midland savings alone atrium building it can be strictly the atrium building or it could be the hobie wagner atrium building it's a wonderful building at the use is it's a tremendously flexible use and i urge you to land market thank you thank you carl bob did you have something i was gonna launch in the comments when i'm ready for that

[111:01] well did we have any response uh from the applicant or the owner in this case seeing none um i think we can move right into comments are we closing the public hearing there we are thank you alicia no worries thank you bobbin and mark i'll start with a chinese proverb which is um the best day to plant a tree um was 20 years ago and the second best date of planet tree is today and um that proverb um came back to mind when uh dan courson spoke dan of course is a former member of this council many many years ago and dan observed for us that um when the boulder theater was landmarked in 1979 it was a mere 43 years old and here we are exactly 43 years later and

[112:00] thank god uh whoever's on city council back in 1979 saw fit to to landmark that now 86 year old building and i realize that the atrium building is only 53 years old i think that 53 years from now a future council and a future community will thank us for landmarking this building so uh with those thoughts in mind i'm fully in supportive of this landmarking get some some motion mark i am a little short of proverbs this evening so i'm not going to do that um but i will say that architecturally this building is eminently uh landmarkable i support it in full but i want to take one cue from nicole and the last speaker and suggest that we do not name it the midland savings bank building that we simply we can call it the hobie uh hobie wagner um atrium building or

[113:00] simply the atrium building and i think that will capture the essence of this landmarking is because of wagner's um merit as an architect it's consistency with his other works in town and i think the emphasis should be on him and not on the particular corporation that happened to occupy it for a time and might well have been engaged in poor practices so i would be supportive of naming it something else not something irrelevant but either the atrium building or the wagner atrium building or something along those lines and not necessarily referencing the midland bank but other than that i am very supportive of this and will certainly um support it when it comes to a vote thanks and smart nicole the net thanks for that mark um you really

[114:00] queued me up well there um i was just gonna ask you know i know um with the marpa house uh we we did something where we acknowledged kind of the history of that house in the process of landmarking um and you know i'm curious just because of this building's history i love the idea of not including um the savings and loan in there so that we're not kind of glorifying that aspect of the history um but i'm wondering if there's something we could do a plaque uh some sort of those lovely educational things like we have throughout downtown um they could really talk about this and how you know the practices of things like redlining and giving disproportionately giving loans to white folks and how that kind of contributed to wealth disparities i'm just wondering if we could use this as an educational moment for the community as well i think a lot of communities um are kind of uh reacting in a different way to um acknowledging uh our country's racist history and i would just really love to see us you know particularly having read

[115:01] the black history month declaration i'm just really acknowledging that that is a part of our history and it doesn't have to be a part of our present or future unless we choose that it's nicole math and warren uh yeah thanks for that nicole thanks for sort of priming the uh concept of name change and and mark i appreciate uh you following up on that mine's really just a pr process question i support the name change i i think the atrium or or using the architect name with the atrium is simplified and more focused on what we're trying to preserve in terms of process do can we just do we need to decide what that name is tonight as we pass a motion uh to approve or can the name be left in minuses to perhaps uh better minds to find the right name or do we have to decide that tonight in our approval process james do you want to answer that yeah um i i think you can uh you can amend the

[116:01] the name tonight um but i would just check with the city attorney to make sure that i'm on firm ground there i think that's something that could be done i don't know if that would take a third reading or not well and i'll just note before teresa turns and the name is in the ordinance so we could always pass an amended version of the ordinance i believe um but i think matt was also asking if we could come back later and decide it later so i don't know teresa do you want to weigh in on those couple things so if you wanted to do that i would if you wanted to um wait and name it later i would suggest that you continue this hearing until a date certain so that would be a motion to continue the hearing until someone some next or future regular meeting where you could um where you could then do the name i'm afraid i am not terribly familiar with the landmark naming

[117:00] um portion of the code i believe though that there are still all recommendations to counsel and the council would have the discretion to change the name here here on a vote this evening okay so i'll just piggyback on that and say that i think we certainly could it's my understanding that we could there could be a motion to pass the ordinance with an amendment of a different name than what's currently listed in it we could just do that now i think uh if we wanted to to come back to it we'd need some additional process we have to pick a date sometime in the future and consult with people and and then come back and have a follow-up discussion to pick that final name and so not saying we shouldn't do that but i think that's probably what that would look like and you know subject to whatever council wants to do tonight so aaron can i would it be helpful just because that that embarks on a whole process is it worth maybe just getting a straw poll to some extent if there's interest in the name change because if there isn't or we don't have a majority then we just move on don't talk about it

[118:00] if there is then maybe that triggers a deeper conversation on process sure somewhere did you want to address that particular point or you're muted at least okay i would not want to hold this up on the basis of the name i i think we should just pick a name whatever it is we can amend the name later but i would like to see this building landmarked tonight um and so my suggestion would be you know the wagner atrium building if somebody's got a better suggestion i'm i'm happy to defer um and then later if we find that unsatisfactory whatever we do tonight just the atrium building is also satisfactory we can go through the process then um but i think this is a building that deserves landmarking at this meeting rather than uh getting into a long drawn-out tug-of-war over what the best name will be

[119:01] and if somebody's got a better name than mine i'm i'm delighted to defer um i just just wanted to remove the midland savings bank from the name uh for the reasons stated by our last speaker and nicole and uh and move on so that's my beautiful teresa thank you mary i wanted to clarify um one thing that i that or more expand more on one thing i said if amended tonight because we are at second reading we would have to go through one more reading and that would be then on the consent agenda at the next meeting we could place this item um but so with any amendment we would do one additional reading great thanks for clarifying that although it wouldn't require discussion necessarily but it would just be on the consent agenda for a third reading that's correct uh rachel then jeannie i just wanted to um add for context on the marpa house when we um

[120:01] because i was the one who who pushed for us to pick a different name um for a couple of landmarks over the last few years and and in some of those situations we had um some some real harm that had come out of um like the activity at that house like with martha there were sexual abuse victims you know abused uh arguably under that name and so i think that there was um some some thought that that people would be um harmed by seeing that and you know set in stone and i'm not i'm not clear whether it's uh exactly the same situation here so i just wonder if this is maybe a broader conversation than this one landmark like how do we um honor and reflect on on red lighting and broad racism and and you know talking through it at the last minute it's a little bit tricky but i'm happy to do whatever the role of

[121:00] council is that's rachel junie rachel i'm not sure i can add more to what you're saying and i agree with you um i don't think if the name is something that is truly important to us and important to the landmarking of that particular building or any future building we should have a process and i don't think it should be just us coming up with a name just out of the blue uh maybe some type of a process having maybe a class or having community members send in some names as opposed to just us figuring it out by just uh even though mark's suggestion is pretty good i just think maybe um having some broader outreach in the name might be uh useful actually lauren then i'll call on myself thank you um i think currently i feel like that building is commonly referred to as the atrium

[122:01] building and to me it feels appropriate that that would that it could either be simplified to that or that at the very least that portion of the name would go first um because that is i wouldn't know what the midland savings bank was um and that isn't the part to me of the building that we're trying to commemorate as much um so that's my thoughts on the naming and i guess i just want you know earlier james you had mentioned in response to bob's question that you might um be able to work with us on if there were any changes to the ordinance that would make it more clear that like the features of the building that we were interested in protecting i know for me when i read through this it mentioned the sandstone walls and i was thinking maybe the sandstone columns might be more

[123:00] appropriate because then you know as we talked about maybe opening up some of the partitions in some places where it made sense that would make it more clear that we're not talking about the strips of stone between but more the columns themselves do you have any other thoughts or what do you think about that yeah um you know in the background chris maschuk took a a crack at drafting some language that might amend and clarify some of those and i can share that um with the council i think that'd be really helpful do you mind if we just wrestle the naming question to the ground if that's right so i i'm hearing some different opinions but a fair amount of interest in not going with the original proposed name that includes the midland savings bank and i'd be one of the people that would prefer to not have that name in there so here's what i'm going to suggest and feel free to disagree with me i thought ginny had a good point about us not necessarily coming up with a brand new

[124:01] name on the spot but i think and potentially easy name to go with is just to start with is just the atrium building and and then we could do some outreach to the historic preservation community around town and see if people had suggestions for an alternate that we could then amend the name later but maybe just start with that simple name um and that we could finish out tonight and go from there i've seen some knotting heads okay mark and then matt i i am fully supportive of that i think we should get get this done as quickly as possible and then open it up for suggestions one and all from the community and engage in whatever process we think is appropriate to improve the name if that's what we want to do but i would not hold up the landmarking of this building any more than is absolutely necessary thanks matt james tara uh yeah i i aaron i i like that idea a lot so that that works for me um i do

[125:01] want to make sure we circle back to lauren's question about walls versus columns so that may change with language and like to hear james language but with putting the name to bed i like the atrium we'll tackle something maybe perhaps better down the road so thanks to that recommendation james yes i just wanted to comment on the guidelines for naming which the landmarks board have adopted guidelines which talk about the first owner the first business or something that's associated with the building that's commonly recognized so i think to that extent the atrium makes a lot of sense um and you know i i think the notion of going out to the community because it is a public building is um an appropriate one though it's it's not one that i'm i'm sure that we've done in the past but it seems like it it makes sense given that it is a city-owned building that's really helpful james thanks tara

[126:00] i just wanted to say that aaron i agree with you ms tara all right uh nicole it's just a side comment that um i found amusing to try to wake us up at 8 o'clock um i would love to see us at some point have a naming thing kind of like we do for snow plows which is kind of you know can go out to the community right we can get uh get folks to weigh in and maybe we can get a cool name like darth later you could name it atrium the gatescreen face okay so it sounds like people are generally okay with that approach so let's move on i i've i'm hearing a couple of other issues one is about uh language that sounds like chris may have some ideas on about the exterior and then possibly about the what the boundary might be if lauren you wanted to pick that back up again those are the possible remaining issues i'm hearing outstanding so far so do we want to go to james to hear the language from proposed language on that you know i'm having trouble pulling it up on my screen but i could um i could

[127:01] read to you what the um suggested section is so it would be at sections four which is describing the character defining features so the potential added language would be in the designation of this landmark the key defining characteristics are its pyramidal hipped roof rustic modern style with native stone and mix of horizontals and verticals in massing city council recognizes that an adaptive reuse of this building is likely and the necessary exterior alterations will honor these defining characterize the characteristics with alterations to support its adaptive reuse that's some fancy languages anybody um have any objections to that or want to make comments about changes or

[128:01] it's okay it seems to be responsive to some of the comments people were offering earlier so if there are no objections that seems like a great way to go um okay so any other any other potential changes anybody wanted to offer and seeing none oh there's lauren um i guess on the boundary my argument for the boundary is just that while we can get a landmark alteration certificate to make to make changes to the parking i personally don't want to see altering a parking lot be um have any hurdle associated with it to the extent that we're able to you know i would like to see that um we are making it as easy as possible to turn that into grass or something else

[129:01] i'll call on myself i'll agree with you there that uh your suggestion from before of making the landmark boundary the eaves of the building um made a lot of sense to me uh so we're still protecting the boundary of the eaves but like you say make it as easy as possible to repurpose the surface asphalt and parking lot and the city is the owner here so i don't think we would do anything uh terrible or horrible i think we're in safe and good hands with the city's owner any other comments on that we could maybe take a quick strap on how people felt about that bum i just agree with you and lauren i i think the eve makes a lot of sense and uh we know that the city is going to move out of this building and we know that the east bookends can be redeveloped so this is not a hypothetical situation we say oh we're going to landmark a house and maybe 20 or 30 years later somebody changes it we know that this is going to change and so i think drawing the boundaries as narrowly as possible as lauren has suggested makes a lot of sense

[130:00] well if there are no objections then maybe that's the direction to go in so uh people are welcome to add additional comments or someone could make a motion based on our discussion that we've been having that language that chris drafted plus a little more to make a motion on anything well i would invite the motion to have an amendments amendments to it based on the discussion that we've had so yes i would i think you'd want to make um amendments to the motion that's on the screen great point then well i'll give it a shot um i move that we adopt ordinance 8496 designating the property at 1300 canyon boulevard also known as the atrium building as an individual landmark under chapter 911 historic preservation brc 1981 and sending forth related details with two amendments one amending the boundaries

[131:01] to come only to the eaves of the building and second amending the um uh i guess we amended the name um is there any other and amending assuming the the description and intended future uses as read by as drafted by chris messchuck and his read by james hewitt and bob we'll just point it section six is where the name is if you want to include that uh uh amending then the name in section six is that that correct aaron is that appointment that's right i believe to the atrium building with the with the with the the boundaries at the eaves and the description as read by james hewitt what's that bob do we have a second second wait uh let's see mark you cut your hand up yeah just a just a technical question what are the setback requirements on

[132:00] each boundary of the building in other words i i would be a little uncomfortable if we had a boundary that was where a building could be built you know 10 feet away i mean you have to let the landmark breathe a little bit and i don't want to necessarily maintain a parking lot but i'd like to have enough boundary around this structure so that it can be seen for what it is as opposed to having a looming wall um eight feet five feet ten feet um off of the structure i i just don't think that makes architectural sense so i do see charles farrow is in the meeting and charles to really put you on the spot i don't know if you have the code for this zone handy but maybe you could speak generally the kinds of setbacks that are required you know i was just looking it up but i'm just a friendly reminder that setbacks are taken from the property line not from the actual building itself

[133:01] so if you did want to build in some buffer space um you may not want to take the landmark boundary to the eaves themselves you may want to proceed with the boundary as drafted but i'd be happy to look up the setbacks for the district that are taken from the property line itself can i follow up on that charles like if we if we were moving the landmark boundary that's not changing the property line is it it's just the landmark area that's correct so the setback would still be from the existing property line not from the new landmark boundary it would still be from the existing property line for um for new development the landmark boundary kind of functions as a as a setback so you know in this particular case the the setbacks um are a bit arbitrary in that case but you're correct aaron the um the landmark boundary does kind of function like a setback

[134:03] mark does that answer your question well yes but it leaves me concerned that if the property line i'm understanding charles correctly and if we do it to the eaves we we have no buffer between the property and whatever is built next to it and that's not a question of preventing redevelopment of a larger lot it's let's do it at least with a little bit of style and have a landmark that people can look at and see in its proper context it's not about preserving parking lot it's not about you know preventing development it's about doing justice by the building we're about to landmark lauren you have your hand up yeah i was just i mean it seems like it's very close or fairly close to canyon so my guess was that the setback is going to make it fairly impossible to build any building

[135:00] between canyon and the atrium um so it might also be clarif could be clarified to know what that the setback is in that zone it looks like it's well i'm i'm actually not as concerned about the the setback off of canyon as the alley as the alley you know the other the other two um boundaries um uh what am i looking at my directional senses is poor but you know not the one off of canyon because it doesn't i don't think there's any any problem there but it it's the one what am i thinking of yeah this one move down that not that one not that one that one and this one the one going up and that's really all i'm concerned with is that the building can can have a little

[136:00] bit of grace three city of something uh yes mayor i just had a a point of order for you all uh the current motion on the table as it stands is to adopt this ordinance with an if an amendment is made such as the motion contemplates it would be um to amend the ordinance and then we would come back for third reading great thanks for clarifying that thank you so um mark are you comfortable with the the north boundary being with the eaves given the yes and that's the one i'm concerned about go back that one and the one that one and i have no problem if it's to the

[137:00] eaves if we have a sense of what those setbacks are under the code and they give enough space for the building to [Music] you know to appropriately be shown um and i don't know what those setbacks are as you know are they rear setbacks are they side setbacks and if their side setbacks you know what what's the number if it's eight feet from the building i i have a concern i'm gonna try one more time charles to put you on the spot apologies uh do we have a sense of what the actual setback from the building would be yep i'm looking up right now so if you'll just give me a second i'll pull them up uh while you're looking that up nicole that you want to say something yeah um i was just wondering i mean because this is still city property right um to have something built

[138:02] um like so close to the building wouldn't it kind of have to be like a five foot wide building or something like that um i'm just i'm trying to think about like the city you know building something in that tiny little bit of space that that would be a building or somehow you know infringe on what we're about to landmark bro yeah perhaps i'm i'm speaking out of turn here but i don't think there's much there's much that could happen there i suppose a small addition could come off of here um potentially but that would be that's not the boundary line i was concerned with this one the east yeah business one is the more easy then i guess this would be south and i just want to make sure there's not a structure built five feet away and if you believe the building's pretty

[139:00] much on the south property line so it would be there's essentially no room on the south side to build anything like on that on that south side the the difference between the eve and the property line is negligible that would be my understanding as well and on this side i guess this would be that would be the remaining area of concern yeah yeah that was the one that i was referring to sorry about the point it's a little hard but yeah on that yes it kind of be the east um side of that it just seems like such a small area for us to build anything um what about the entire area over here well i don't think that's ours to to decide what to do with right separate property it is depending upon how we define the property line of

[140:01] the atrium and if we i just want to make sure we have at least 20 25 feet between the eaves of the building and whatever's going to go up next to it but isn't the property line staying the same like we're not giving up the the property right so the property line stays the same we're just setting the landmark at a different place so that it's a little easier to do something other than a parking lot there um like like to make a little i i would love to see a park for example like green space or something like that um whatever us or future council decides to do but then you know we would still have that space as a buffer between whatever that other property owner would decide to do in the future can you just address what what's the depth of this property line to the eaves yeah so i think we'll get information from charles here in a second um correct me if i'm wrong i believe the city owns this block

[141:01] in its entirety but the city may not be the ultimate developer am i not correct no but we would have uh we would have the ability as the owner to set the parameters for what happened there in the future okay charles is your off mute i am um so the property is located in the dt5 zone so downtown five is our most intensive downtown zoning district which is really designed to reflect in urban form so the setbacks are a bit confusing but the front setback from building to property line would be 15 feet so that would be the side um that faces canyon the rear yard setback would need to be 20 feet in this case so that would be the um side of the building that's opposite of canyon so right there correct um so that's a non-conforming condition because it's

[142:01] built to a zero watt line um and then side yard setbacks depending on the situation are either 0 or 12 feet depending on a redevelopment scenario but in this particular case the existing structure is considered non-conforming in this case because it was built uh prior to the setback standards that we have on the books today okay what what does that mean in feet the distance from the eve to the property line yeah okay so on the canyon side on the east side okay so on the east side you are looking at roughly here with me here of course my computer is

[143:00] very slow so on the east side roughly the distance from the eve to the property line is about 33 feet and we're proposing to narrow that to the eve are we not i believe so but i'll defer to james i believe that's that's what has been suggested is that it would um it would it would run or along the eve so it would just yeah just i apologize for interrupting i'm going to make a suggestion because i think we should wrap up here i think we're very close but we need to settle this out we also have a fair amount left this evening so i i'm not hearing any concern about the north um the north setback but they're a concern for mark about the east which apparently theoretically you could put a building closer than we might want so i

[144:00] my proposal will be to say go with the the the prop the the boundary on the eaves on the north side but to leave it as it is on the map for the east side and so then there's still a couple hoops you'd have to jump through to change the parking lot to the east but it would retain some protection to prevent a building from coming too close sometime in the future i'd be fine with that can other folks live with that great great so any any objections i made the motion no objection very good so then i i'll offer i think the way we do that is i would offer a friendly amendment bob to your motion to say to uh further revise the landmark boundary so that um as i stated that on the north side it's at the eaves and on the east side it's on the the original boundary on the map friendly amenities accepted matt were you the second is that all right with you

[145:01] yep yep all right so let's see if we can bring this too close would anyone uh bobby haven't spoken in the motion you want to say a few words i've already spoken i think this is a great project i'm so happy we're going to land mike any other final comments okay uh and james you might take the screen sharing off so looks like we've got a motion we've got a second we have friendly amendment it's been accepted uh let's call for a vote i believe this is roll call yes sir it is a roll call to approve the ordinance 8496 as amended we will start with council member spear yes wallach hi weiner yes

[146:01] yates yes benjamin yes mayor brockett yes councilmember folkerts yes mayor pro tem friend yes and councilmember joseph yes sir ordinance 8496 was approved as amended and will be held over for third reading and approval thanks for that and uh it's a good development appreciate historical bringing this forward and collaborating with the city on this project looking forward to a good future for that building all right anything else before we move on to the next item uh nicole just very quickly um this is just uh me wondering if at some point we could um have kind of a conversation about uh landmarking in general and whether some of the ways that we choose to

[147:01] landmark buildings are still in alignment with our goals um specifically i'm just thinking about you know one of the criteria we um that the landmarking decisions are based on is um enhancing property values i mean given that we have a lot of problems with high property values in our city i'm just you know wondering if at some point we can have a conversation about whether that's really a goal we want to be striving toward um as as we move forward so thank you and and i just i really just james i really appreciate again i'm just kind of bringing up some of the um the different perspectives on the uh historical buildings and things that we have in our community thanks vet nicole all right so let's move on to our next agenda item and maybe we'll take a short break after the next one all right so next we have item 5b under public hearings which is a another second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 84-97

[148:01] designating the property at 2130 22nd street the city of boulder colorado to be known as the shin jinski's house as an individual landmark under chapter 9-11 historic preservation brc 1981 and setting for the related details again thanks for that alicia before we go to the presentation anyone have any ex partake communications they'd like to reveal all right seeing none james you can take it away all right change your immediate sorry about that i think i muted myself um thanks mayor uh same criteria apply uh as with the last property

[149:00] um we are shifting from a commercial property in the core of the city to a residential property east of downtown and of course city council's options this evening are to do one of three approve modify an approved designation by the ordinance or designate or deny the designation i should say um in terms of process with this one it came through as originally as a demolition review and was referred to the landmarks board who placed a stay of demolition on the property for a period of up to 180 days during the course of the stay staff in a subcommittee of the landmarks board met with the property owners and their architect to discuss what might be some alternatives to demolishing the building

[150:02] and during the course of those discussions we came up with um some solutions that uh i think benefit the property owners because this is a a difficult property being very small and also the location of the building so it was through the process of discussion uh the demolition application was withdrawn and subsequently the uh property owners submitted an application to designate the property which would allow them to take advantage of some relief from the uh from the zoning code and as well uh potentially take advantage of state historic tax credits so on the map or on the screen i should say uh is a location map on the top showing the location of the house at 21 30 22nd street

[151:00] and it is located in the identified potential whittier historic district and um identified potential means that it has been identified as a potential district but to date this area has not been landmarked as a historic district photograph from street view showing the house as it uh as it looked last summer and of course it is a very modest house but actually a fairly rare survival of a working class or workforce housing um workforce house from what we believe is pretty early for this area of boulder um it looks as though the house was probably built in the early 1880s certainly was there by the late late 1880s not a lot of photographic documentation

[152:02] and that goes to the fact that this is a very modest house in what was a very modest part of boulder um serving uh primarily in the 19th century fairly temporary housing for people that were coming into town they came to the rail yard which was less than two blocks away and there were a lot of lodging houses and just small dwellings that could be rented the photograph on the left shows the house from a photograph in 1968 and on the right from the historic uh building inventory form when the when the property was surveyed in 1988 again some aspects of the house as you move a lot around the property and i think what's notable about this house and actually character defining is the location of

[153:01] the house off the property line that is right into the right-of-way um several inches to a foot as you go along the property so the the sidewalk has historically been here and i'll show you in just a minute that this probably has to do with the fact that the house predates the actual street being developed the photograph at the top left is from we think the 1890s that's taken from pine street looking down and the arrow shows where the house is located the bottom left shows the sanborn fire insurance maps from 1900 1922 and 1931 showing the house really intact um over the course of those years and then on a bird's eye view from uh this is from 1909 you can see the

[154:00] house here so that's pretty interesting the uh the railway was here which came down what was then railway street um or water street and then became canyon so it was a it was a fairly um somewhat industrial almost neighborhood with housing on on the periphery so in terms again of the architectural historic and environmental significance it is a vernacular house that uh the house was um sided with aluminum siding probably in the 1960s the original brick which may or may not be covered with stucco is below but you can see the relative thickness of those walls by the depth of the windows which tells us that it is a very early building um probably no architect involved we don't

[155:01] know who the builder was um in terms of the uncommon it is probably one of the very earliest houses in this area which at the time was known as east boulder and uh no indigenous qualities were observed so at the top left uh shows the samuel freeze map from 1880 81 and this area had this subdivision had been laid out um but yes you can see there were no buildings there because these plat maps actually did show when they constructed buildings and here are the railway grounds so it was very close to where the train came in the train eventually went as i said before turned and went down water street the bottom left i think is a is a pretty interesting photograph and this is a blow up from a panoramic view from

[156:01] just west of boulder and you can see whittier school here which uh is relative to the house and this green arrow shows uh shows the house and again the rail yard but really just sort of uh paths that were going up to this area so it was a very undeveloped area which gives us the clue that the street was really put in after the house was constructed so it does have environmental significance by virtue of the fact that it is a really unusual circumstance and the location of the house on the property um would under normal circumstances necessitate either the demolition of that building to achieve what is required for setbacks or the building being moved and part of the negotiation was that

[157:00] a long-term lease could be entered into and that's precisely the ordinance that um city council passed on i believe it was january 18th so in terms of environmental significance again you can see this map of our designated and potential identified historic districts and this gray area it looks like it says downtown but that actually is the potential identified whittier district and the arrow shows the relative location of the house so just a little bit more about that non-standard or non-standard conditions because there's more than one not the least of which is this really unusual location uh of the building off the property line this black line here being the western property line so the building um as i mentioned before in normal

[158:00] circumstances to be improved would need to either be demolished and a new building constructed in a by-right condition um uh or the building moved neither of those seemed to make sense to the owners nor did it to the landmarks board so the um solution that was reached was again that there be a long-term revocable lease that the property owners have entered into and i will show you the location the relocated sidewalk and i believe this was put in in december so you can see here it jogs out a little bit to provide a little bit of space in front of the house as i understand it this front door which is a an old door and the windows are as far as we can tell historic as well will not be used as a you know an entrance in and out of the

[159:00] house and in fact through the negotiation process during the stay of demolition a landmark alteration certificate application was submitted for review and this solution to constructing a two-story addition to the house was reached and i think this really shows just the level of flexibility that can be um found through you know historic designation and making properties especially challenging properties like this habitable so i think a good solution and i know the property owners are here leah sao and roon jensen and and i think as well rob from trad is here so um the proposed landmark name and boundary on the screen uh again the shin jet ski house

[160:02] relating to early owners or occupants of the house and um with that i'll leave you with the motion and answer any questions if you have machines questions for james i'm not seeing any do we have a presentation by the owner i don't believe the uh owner has a presentation although i believe that rob from trad architecture the architect is here and he may have a comment or [Music] certainly would be available to answer questions if you have any so an owner represented certainly welcome to make a comment but it's not required at all see

[161:00] not hearing any um it sounds like we can go to the public hearing and i believe we have a couple of people signed up for that catherine barth and lynn sequel we will get three minutes each rob i see you popping up did you want to offer a comment uh i mean not extensively other than that this was a challenging site to develop and we did have you know a great working relationship with the historic preservation group there in the city so yeah we've come a long way and gone through a lot of different reviews and solutions and we're happy to be here tonight uh you know taking another step to completing this project for the homeowner thanks for that any questions for rob all right seeing none i think we can go to that public hearing and start off with catherine barth

[162:01] hello um i am delighted to see that this has had such a nice resolution and it's what we really want have happened as we approach historic preservation projects and i want to commend james and the city staff and they're working with the owners and i really want to commend the owners in being open to creative solutions i think it was probably 15 years ago that i as an architect was designing a project on 21st street just um south of pearl street and in that case my building was nine inches into the alley and it was six inches into the front set back and at that time when we had maybe not such a flexible working with owners and architects

[163:01] we had to panelize the building and take it completely apart take this four walls move them and then rebuild the building so this is a far better and far more humane solution for the deer building and i'm just thrilled that it's going to continue with its life and you know if a building is there before there are any streets there should be some consideration given given to it so i thank everybody and i just think it's a wonderful building that was saved and commend everyone in this project thank you so much and i oh and i hope you will landmark it thanks catherine lynn siegel yeah um i remember this going through landmarks board unfortunately since environmental advisory board is that

[164:00] same night i have to miss environmental advisory board but you know it's like food or medicine um it's kind of interesting because i remember that sidewalk being jetted out from the house further than that as an accommodation but they've done it they just did it in december this was before then that i saw that you know the cement was right up to the front door um so yeah accommodations are certainly appropriate for it and what i was surprised to not hear james speak about tonight was the main thing that i want to keep this house and that it was originally for and i don't i'm not going to use the terminology workforce housing okay workforce housing don't use that term this was for low income folks to live in this place

[165:00] it's going to be the practically only place left in boulder that people can you know that we can look back on and see that's how people used to live you know like in decent small size houses like we learned after this fire that our footprint's too big and once again do we want to have a fire that's going to take out this landmark laborer housing you know no we don't we gotta stop coal we gotta municipalize you know we've gotta do some things that that walk our talk in boulder like seeing through the eye of that last building the savings and loan that's for for lower class people to live here too and that that's everything every meeting that i come to here it's about the homeless people the encampments the low-income housing you know and this

[166:00] federal government is pushing as hard as they can to make it more expensive there will be no no more ownership in this country at all if the hedge funders have their way and this house is one of the last remnants that people could actually have a decent life in a reasonable small place dang tootin i want this thing landmarked boy no it's it's stunning that we've even got a place like this left and i'll tell you go into the board of assessment appeals for i finally won finally won after 30 years of trying and it was for the highest and best use well the highest and best use of this space is for a decent living for people not the super high-end you know teslas living here thank you thank you

[167:01] uh any follow-up from the public hearing seeing none i think it's time for council discussion who'd like to kick us off are we closing the public hearing now aaron just want to make sure let me formally close public hearing solution that's okay thank you having done so let's let's hear from council uh matt you've got your hand up then lauren i i unless there were questions i was gonna i didn't see any right first takers so i was gonna jump to a motion if that was off when i see lauren's hands up so maybe we can hit that right on the head so if there's some language i could read because my memory is poor that'd be helpful i have it down here i guess i could pull it up there it is sweet all right um i'd like to make a motion to adopt ordinance 8497 designating the property at 2130 22nd

[168:02] street city of boulder colorado also known as the shin jessica's house as an individual landmark under chapter 911 under historic preservation brc 1981 and setting forth related details this seems pretty much like a straightforward slam dunk so awesome i'd like to second thank you team for working through all of these challenges we have a motion in a second any additional comments before we go to a vote all right not seeing any hands uh lucia should we do a roll roll call here yes sir it is a roll call thank you we'll start with councilmember wallach hi weiner yes yates yes benjamin yes

[169:01] mayor brockett yes council member folkerts yes mayor pro tem friend yes councilmember joseph yes and spear yes thank you all ordinance 8496 is hereby i'm sorry 8497 is hereby adopted unanimously great thanks for that appreciate james the hard work on that and appreciate the collaboration with the property owners in the city on this outcome all right so um i think we're done with that agenda items so why don't we take uh six minutes before the next public hearing uh sorry i know you'll like heather better but uh we got still got a fair amount to do here so let's reconvene it at 8 50 for the the next public hearing that's right folks

[170:19] [Music]

[176:17] welcome back everybody i hope you've refreshed your your glass maybe you got a snack ready for the next phase of the meeting let's see do we have are we missing somebody there we have matt i think that's everyone all right at least you want to take us into our next public hearing yes sir the last public hearing for tonight is item 5c the consideration of a motion to authorize the city manager to approve the joint terrorism task force cost reimbursement agreement memorandum of understanding between the federal bureau of investigation and the boulder police department

[177:04] and uh mayor is available yep we've got marist available to speak to it if that's what you'd like mayor that'd be great thank you mayors please take it away thank you uh norian uh thank you again uh maris harold police chief boulder thank you mayor thank you members of council i just have an opening statement on this agenda item um so thank you again for allowing me and my team to discuss this important mou in partnership with the department of justice specifically tonight we're going to be talking about the joint terrorism task force and this organization is dedicated to the prevention and disruption of terrorist activity locally regionally nationally and internationally my team today to discuss this includes bpd's legal advisor miss jennifer frazier and our two deputy chiefs steve redfearn and deputy chief carrie weinheimer the decision to support the mou is

[178:00] critical and many safety implications for our community are at hand today i've only been in colorado for a brief time but i am increasingly sensitive to the threat of potential homegrown violent extremist groups boulder remains and is no different from any other major american city in that boulder has major research institutions jewish and muslim places of worship special events attracting hundreds of thousands of tourists colorado university with its numerous events and research institutes women's health centers and a vibrant lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer uh community government facilities high-profile landmarks water plant facilities and corporate centers to summarize boulder is a target-rich

[179:01] environment for potential terrorist threats the jtt f partnership avails a mid-sized city such as boulder resources that we are dependent on such as behavioral threat assessment and analysis local threat assessments risk assessments hazard identification high priority target investigations and additional resources such as state-of-the-art technology and personnel resources that boulder does not currently possess this partnership in mou is no different than any other agreements we have entered into with partnering agencies in fact the mou is a force multiplier at a time when our country and our state are witnessing increased number of threats of violence from extremist groups those threats are complex

[180:00] requiring resources and technology that are far more advanced than the city of boulder currently possesses on a personal note after witnessing the aftermath and tragedy of the king supers event i can tell you firsthand without the support of the fbi and the department of justice the city of boulder would have been completely overwhelmed we were given resources for crime scene management advancements in technology fbi's personnel their investigatory support we would have not been able to provide high-level public safety services to our community and our businesses again and this cannot be understated we would have been overwhelmed quickly by this mass casualty event boulder police department receives ongoing threats to the community on a regular basis

[181:00] most like today are resolved through communication and collaboration with our partners in law enforcement we simply can no longer do it all ourselves this mou provides the boulder community a safety net with real-time assessments and assistance that augments our limited response response capabilities i realize today that there are concerns of accountability and transparency regarding our role in the jttf i can assure you our task force officer who has been vetted by me personally and vetted by the fbi will continue to report to me and follow all bpd policies and procedures or he will no longer participate in these operations and i look forward to a discussion and concerns but primarily to summarize my statement public safety matters

[182:00] resources are scarce right now time matters minutes not hours this mou grants the city of boulder um federal uh charges versus local charges and prosecutorial support that we just do not have at the state level and today is a good example because momentarily a press release will come out indicating that the fbi will follow through on charges of today's event and the male suspect so i cannot state more than i already have that this partnership is critical to the safety of our community and all of the people that live here and work thank you mayor thanks for that chief harold um do we have any questions on this item from council members so let's see mark's hand

[183:05] finally finally got the unmute um the document that we have looked at refers to the gen the denver joint terrorism task force um is denver a participant in in this i well yes there uh that's where their headquarters are located uh the department of justice and the fbi's headquarters are in denver um we would become a part of that joint terrorism task force and and are there any other communities that have uh executed mois with the uh fbi and the department of justice yeah i they're too numerous to name um i don't know if one of my other deputy chiefs could give an exact number but they're numerous um most of the cities that i'm aware of have an mou and in fact our partnering agency

[184:02] cu is also exploring an mou and it has a an officer being trained just like our we are right now as well so every agency that i know of has an mru of this nature and my last question is do i read the document correctly that any participating agency can withdraw at a later date on 60 days written notice if we find there's a an issue yeah thank you for that question and um not only is that a 60-day requirement met but i have actually had conversations with the fbi and they would give me grace if i felt something that was going on inappropriately i could pull them immediately and i would okay thank you appreciate it thank you thank you then man thank you aaron i just have a quick

[185:01] question and i think it might have already been covered by the question asked by mark um by virtue of my understanding of the city of boulder i think they are a sanctuary city and if you're participating in this process but my question is what is this impact of this uh collaborative um project with the fbi does it have any impact on the fact i believe we are also a sanctuary city for immigration purposes thank you for that uh question uh juni and it would have no implications on our status as a sanctuary city the fbi does not concern itself with issues of immigration and nor would i allow any of my officers including the task force officer to get involved with any immigration status whatsoever thank you that was my only question thank you thank you matt and warren

[186:02] thanks erin and uh thanks chief i i one i just want to you know echo what aaron said earlier and thank you for the work and all the partners for today i mean just for the fact of how quickly that transformed and we were able to take care of it i i just really grateful for you to be able to take care of it in the manner you did and i think it also speaks to the partnerships that have already been existing not just for today's incident but certainly going back to the shooting of king supers you know and my question really centers around you know in the in the mou it says to formally um you know formalize the relationship so it sounds like this working partnership clearly has been going on outside of a formal mu and i'm trying to just wonder what's really what's the difference between what's already been going on and then the formalized am i mou and are there any substantive differences between the work in collaboration now versus say an mou passing on the back end that's a great question and i appreciate that and yes there's major implications here at stake for one thing the officer

[187:02] receives the highest clearance rating that you can possibly have as a municipal officer and so his access in real time to our own they will set him up with technology here within the boulder police department and he will have real-time access to every federal database that the fbi has so it's a huge difference in timeliness and of course all of the training that goes along with this and so in my mind as the chief as today because of our relationship i had these resources at my fingertips but this this mou would solidify his high clearance rating and that that is a major achievement in and of itself matt is to receive one of these high level clearance ratings i myself have a clearance rating and there's one other person in our police department that has a lower level clearance rating

[188:00] but if you really consider the time and effort that has gone into this young man clearing all of these hurdles it really is remarkable and we're lucky that he has this clearance but really this comes down to timeliness and a fast track to intelligence and not only that but if you think about all of the issues that are regional issues right now we have refugees coming in to boulder he has access to understand homegrown terrorist threats against people that are coming in to live in our community that are supplanted from other countries that are experienced terrorism threats so this is much greater than what we had before and um you know i i just feel uh that the work that we've done since i've been here now is just solidified in this agreement and we have real-time access i

[189:02] can walk down the hall if i receive a phone call like i do so many times on so many issues in boulder i can walk down the hall and say is this a credible threat and not hours and not days but minutes and that counts and it count it today it will continue to count and so um thank you for your question and that's uh just the honest answer matt thank you [Music] so lauren thank you aaron and thank you maris again both for your work today and and your work in our community um some of the questions i have relate to the events you talked about so in the um king supers event you um mentioned that you know there were um a number of things that the fbi provided um and i guess i was just wondering what of those services would have been withheld if we

[190:01] were not um under this mou agreement i don't think any services we would be withheld what would be with withheld is prioritization across the state and most certainly our relationship um that we built through this informal relationship uh garnish garnered us resources that i've never seen before and so i i come from a much larger city um and we've had tragedies um not like the king supers but you know many more uh injured people and fatalities i have never seen such an outpouring of support by our federal partners and that is only because we've worked so hard and we were working towards this mou agreement um and this is the big difference and this is what is hard to quantify but if we hadn't been working towards this mou to get this detective the highest clearance

[191:01] rating i do believe that we would not have seen the outpouring of support for our community and it continues right now and other communities unfortunately just don't have this robust partnership that we do in boulder and i can tell you in cincinnati we did not have a robust partnership with the feds and it really harmed us the the just the advancements in technology that the department of justice brings um it is just not comparable and for a mid-sized city uh to have this kind of partnership in them to want to partner with the city of boulder uh just speaks volumes to our relationship and the relationship of the district attorney as well i mean this all goes hand in hand on good things that we're doing in boulder and so um i don't i do not think we would have had a robust response and uh i know we wouldn't have i know we

[192:00] wouldn't have okay you also mentioned that um you know with the event today that the fbi will be following up with the prosecution um but i it would that be different if we didn't have the mlu in place i mean it seems like the nature of what's being investigated is what's requiring the fbi prosecution um let me just say let me say this the fbi is always going to be supportive of local and state agencies the difference here is is that we have a partnership with the fbi and again today the resources that were given to us because of this partnership is much greater than what we possess or the county or the state

[193:01] and so quickly we were able to garner where the sky was through technology we were able to garner additional resources including um drone technology and and issues that i can't talk about now but i can just tell you that the resources that were provided to us is in large part because of our continued partnership and the mou will just solidify this partnership this mou is no different from any other mou that we enter with any other agency across the state including cbi or the county or any of the other agreements that we have and it just makes life so much easier for a local police department of our size we are not a large municipality where there uh that we have we could have resources to devote to this full-time um we just don't have it i don't have a

[194:01] real-time crime center so to have this partnership just such a critical assessment uh tool for our community to have thank you um you all so mentioned um clearance ratings and that this would allow um you know a member of our police force to have the highest clearance rating available um would that be higher than the clearance rating that you have yes so is there conceivably an instance where you might not have clearance to know what it is that they are working on there are numerous times where the federal government has a higher clearance rating than i do but i still understand the general dynamics of the investigation for example king supers is a prime example where

[195:00] um i couldn't know the whole background of the terrorist threat but i can tell you that i understood the investigation as the police chief and they were they gave me information that i understood exactly what was going on and in this case the detective that has a higher clearance rating to me still reports to me and that is clear through his commander and the fbi as well so there there is no uh issue of him not communicating clearly about what's going on i would understand the generalities of anything the fbi was doing i just might not know that the granular or the details of a terrorist threat but i would absolutely know what they were investigating thank you so much thank you lauren i see uh carrie weinhard has popped up carrie did you want to add anything yes thank you uh deputy chief carrie warren i just want to add a couple things the chief hit on it but

[196:00] to lauren's question the key about having this mou is the access to almost almost real-time intelligence and i just want to remind some people who who may not have been around on council over the last couple years in 2019 we had a guy in boulder named wesley gilray this was a joint investigation between boulder p and the fbi now we can talk about this because he's been convicted this started as an investigation into child pornography he had over 12 000 images and 200 videos on his phone and we launched the joint investigation with the fbi that later revealed that he had written a hunting guide and he expressed his desire to kill jews muslims and refugees he attempted to buy a firearm i was a deputy chief of operations during that and actually was the interim chief towards the latter into that investigation and while that worked really well because we have established a great relationship with our local fbi office it would have gone much smoother had we

[197:01] had a task force officer under a jttf agreement because we would have had direct and real-time access to the intelligence instead of having to filter some of it through different different methods so it's really about having quick access and i just want to stress that i think this agreement is essential for us to carry out our fundamental role in responsibility which is protecting our community and we live in an environment with overseeing a large increase in violent domestic extremism as well as domestic terrorism on top of cyber threats and everything else coming at us so um things have changed dramatically over the last decade and our relationship with the fbi has improved we wish we'd had this this agreement in place years ago we kept saying we were going to wait until we had enough staffing because the fbi wanted to be a full-time position they've acquiesced to allow us to have a part-time position but still have all the clearances because they realize that departments

[198:00] are stressed and stretched for resources too just like they are so it's really about having us a better more symbiotic relationship and i can't stress enough how important this agreement is thank you thanks chief reinhammer we have nicole and then rachel i just had a question about um kind of the mou as it stands right now like do we have to accept it just as it is um is it like most organizations you know i've been a part of when there are contracts or mouse there's a little back and forth until you know getting it right and so um that's sort of one of one of my questions um i do have like some specific things that you know i have in mind around that that may be better saved for after open comment because thank you to everybody who's hanging in there for open comment tonight really appreciate you all um but my question is just around can we um can we um change can can we can we offer um

[199:02] modifications to the mou yeah and i'll let my legal advisor speak to this but uh doctor i i do believe that it depends on what we wanted to change and uh i think that there's a couple areas that we could tighten up um but uh jen do you have any thoughts on that thanks chief regarding your question uh this is a boilerplate mou so it's a standard mou that's offered to all participating agencies believe there's over 200 participating agencies with jtts if there were to be anything that would require an addendum which would then require some conversations with the fbi their legal team and their headquarters so it is a standard mou that's my understanding as we move forward with these terms thank you so just to clarify that it is open to some back and forth negotiation

[200:00] a little bit yeah again depending on what these are what it is yeah i wouldn't like the substantial parts of the miu would not would not be mitigated but i'm i'm sure that there are a couple areas that i would even like to tighten up thank you rachel yeah just a couple quick questions before open comment are public hearing um received some feedback from members of the public about um concerns as you got out a little bit um chief harold about transparency and accountability when you loan officers and lack of wearing body cameras so i'm wondering that i think that the article that many people are referencing is from 2019 so a couple questions there were some um police departments named in in a marshall project article i think it is um that had had left their relationship

[201:00] or the jtts they had abandoned theirs with the fbi over this transparency and accountability issue and someone asked you earlier you know do other um jurisdictions participate i'm wondering do you know if there are some that don't participate or did they rejoin or are there still some cities that have those concerns and concerns and are not participating right now you happen to know that that's a great question um i don't know specifically the the example that you have rachel i can tell you that probably several agencies move in and out of these agreements for various reasons and i'm i'm sure that across the country there's been issues i can just tell you that the issues that concern me will be addressed like body worn cameras i want everybody to know including the community that they will fall under boulder pd's policies and procedures

[202:01] i think it's also important to note that the fbi itself is moving toward body-worn cameras and transparency on these issues so that's a good thing um i don't know could you possibly just expound on that because the in 2019 they've explicitly prohibited officers in fbi from wearing cameras at any point i think yeah that's a great question and so i just want to be clear so we have a good understanding of this um the fbi is moving toward a body-worn camera i don't have a timeline but i have confirmed that and i think our legal advisor could give you the the the concrete answer there but undercover operations still state of colorado we do not have to wear body worn cameras during sensitive undercover operations and that would hold true with the fbi as well i can just tell you that as long as our detective is part of the

[203:01] joint terrorism task force they will fall within our policies and procedures jen do you have that specific language as it relates to body more cameras with the federal bureau of investigation i do chief thank you um the dod launched their body worn camera program on september 1st of 2021 and it includes federal agencies as the fbi uh aatfda and the marshals and they're phasing in the use of body-worn cameras i think it's important to emphasize though that the task force officer from boulder police department is has to adhere to the boulder police department policies and procedures so if it differs or conflicts with the fbi when they're operating as a task force officer they still adhere to what the state requirements is and that's what boulder follows great thanks for clarifying that um and then just one more question chief harold you mentioned that um the fbi brings resources

[204:02] but you mentioned drones i think and i'm that was intriguing to me like because i don't love to spend more than we need to in our own budget on on policing equipment what is it that we get to share through this mou in terms of resources uh just about every tool and technology advancement and software and vehicles and just about anything that the federal government can bear on a critical issue we would have access to in a partnership on those resources if you uh and i know rachel you followed the king supers mass casualty event closely uh if you want to see the weight of the federal government come in and really impact a community of our size in quick order i can tell you that just to do conduct that crime scene correctly would have taken me six weeks with our

[205:01] resources and the federal government because of the technology advancements on crime scene photography and all sorts of technology that they brought really brought that crime scene down to about four to five days and it was such a complex scene um that you know we're talking days uh versus our team taking weeks and so it just can't be uh overstated that their technology capacity and their personnel um you know they they brought in literally uh probably 50 to 80 people to help us with the crime scene uh those days and they stayed with me for three weeks after that incident um and it's it's remarkable that the just the amount of resources they can bring to a community like boulder

[206:00] i just see uh jen fraser popped her hand up jim do you want to address that as well yeah chief i also would like to add the resources specifically could be things like human resources a linguist for example specialized equipment and also laboratory resources that we don't have with cbi okay thanks that's helpful and then just one one last question uh back to two points ago um i think that it is comforting to know that that our own internal policies will be followed in terms of wearing the the um body cameras but i don't remember seeing that in the mou so i just wonder like is that an amendment that we're gonna see or like i'd rather see it in writing than than not yeah we can most certainly explore that i just you know i we can we can discuss that but i can just tell you that um

[207:00] the officer will follow our policies and procedures because that that is what i expect and i understand your concerns rachel well and again you know per this article and i hate to you know rely on on just one article but the fbi prohibited department policies from being followed and so that's if we have a way to say department policy must be followed then that's different than what the concerns were that the fbi basically in this situation would would stop that from happening so if that's an amendment that can be made that i think would be really helpful and and i know i've i'm out of questions and into advocacy so i'm gonna stop okay i i'm sorry i see my deputy chief his hands up do you mind please if i may just really quick based upon a conversation we had today with with fbi supervision just clearly if we need to add something um we'll work on that but i we spoke to them this afternoon and they reassured us and they said that we will never ask your task force officer

[208:01] whomever that is to deviate from any boulder police department policy basically they said if he is working for us he is still under all of your policies and procedures and we even clarified that up to and including god forbid a deadly force situation that he he defers to his training and uh policies here at bpd our detective will still get all of the training that every other boulder police officer gets including legal updates in-service training all of those things um but i'm confident with the the communication we had today that they're not going to impose anything on our detective that doesn't uh comply with our policies if that helps a little bit i appreciate that um and again you know i think like half of us roughly are attorneys so we we will say like you gotta have it in the contract that's what that's what's gonna be enforceable so i think that that's um helpful thanks great i'll appreciate all those questions and answers i'm not seeing any more so why don't we go to the public hearing

[209:01] and i think um brenda will do a quick refresher on our engagement guidelines before we do that yes sorry mayor give me just one moment i think i closed the slide so my apologies for that oh this is going to take me just a moment do you want to tee up the folks who will be first we have uh sort of 20 people signed up which means everybody gets two minutes to speak and the first three people uh coming up are darren o'connor liz marasco and mary foltinsky and we'll actually have 21 with our edition our our later edition mayor oh very good okay yes we have a

[210:01] me 21st all right i apologize that i was listening to the conversation instead of getting myself ready to make this happen um i will remind everyone i can do this without the slides that we did do um a community process to land on a vision for um inclusive and meaningful civic conversation um that vision is designed to protect um and promote democracy for everyone as well as physical and psychological safety for community members for staff for invited speakers and for council members and when i get them pulled up i will have just a few examples for you of what those rules and guidelines are

[211:02] begin with my deep apologies for this all right we're going we're going we're going there [Music] and moving to our second slide sharing my screen and can you see though sir nope didn't come up yet trying there we are can you see them yep my apologies for the delay um our rules

[212:02] that we will uphold during this evening's meeting tonight um are all remarks and testimonies shall be limited to matters related to this item on the agenda no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any other person in the meeting obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability for the meeting to continue shall be prohibited and participants are required to sign up to speak and use the name you're commonly known by please have your whole name displayed before we allow you to speak if you need help with changing your name do let me know i'm happy to help you and only audio testimony is permitted at this time and with that we are ready to begin right here so as mentioned before we've got uh darren o'connor who's marasco and mary

[213:00] valtinsky two minutes each darin you may need to press star six oh looks like you got it yes hello my name is darren o'connor i live in boulder county and i'm here to speak tonight on behalf of the naacp boulder county branch we know that in december 1969 black panther fred hampton was drugged shot and killed in his bed during a pre-dawn raid at his chicago apartment with aid from the fbi leading up to the attack and we know that the more the fbi changes the more it stays the same the aclu in the last couple of years filed a lawsuit seeking foia documents and stated in support of doing so an unsupported claim of the existence of black identity extremists likely motivated to target law enforcement officers and labeled the group a new domestic terror threat this was in short complete bs

[214:01] in the early 2000s the aclu reported that the fbi's joint terrorism task force in denver was targeting peaceful political activists for harassment and building files on constitutionally protected activities that had nothing to do with terrorism or other criminal activities a friend who is now a professor at naropa for example was on their list this mou will require a boulder police officer be paid by boulder but work for the fbi potentially targeting peaceful activists targeting our local naacp members that boulder police officer would be prohibited from telling our chief of police anything except on a need to know basis without this mou the fbi will still conduct anti-terrorism activities and we will be just as safe and likely safer if you vote against it what we need to know is that our local law enforcement is overseen by our local government the history even recent history informs us that there is good reason not to pay for the fbi to use our

[215:00] police against our own community members not in the 60s not in the 2000s and certainly not in 2022 this black history month the naacp boulder county branches branch urges you to vote against entering into the joint terrorism task force agreement thank you thank you thank you darren next we have liz marasco mary koltinsky and ryan harwood hi i'm liz marasco i live in boulder i'm also a member of boulder showing up for racial justice my understanding of this program is based on a very quick cursory research because this was added so last minute but i do have a couple of concerns i want to share mainly the jttf program basically means that federal police officers will be conducting secret police missions in business in our community without any accountability if and when they engage in misconduct which they have proven to do with the

[216:00] legal surveillance of peaceful protests in denver and other cities in the country even a very charitable interpretation they could maybe get they could possibly be prosecuted by local officials but probably not what's more likely is that um in the event of misconduct an assistant u.s attorney would do the prosecution and the as the ausa position is not elected by the people they're appointed the people of colorado decided in 2020 they wanted more accountability and more transparency from the police when they passed sb-2217 the people decided that qualified immunity would no longer be absolute in our state and that in certain cases police officers would be individually liable for their misconduct this is a huge win for all of us and a huge win for the criminal justice system in general jttf officers will not have to adhere to this law they will have full qualified immunity

[217:00] this is directly opposed to the will of the people the people also decided they wanted more accountability when attorney general general phil weiser conducted an investigation of the aurora police department we completely lose that right in this circumstance i don't doubt the legality of this program but i question the federalism the constitutional rights of it the constitution gives states the police powers for a reason and we deserve to keep those states rights um thank you thank you liz mary feltinski ryan harwood and then carl paris good evening hello city council i'm here tonight because i'm concerned that assigning boulder police to the joint terrorism task force will move us away from the efforts the city is making to reimagine policing in the police department's first report on community engagement

[218:00] they and the community have identified several focused areas that are relevant to tonight's discussion the police department and the community say they want police to be integrating with the community to be serving as a trusted partner and to be modeling transparency and accountability jttf participation does the opposite of these things my understanding is that it removes the actions of this police officer from the jurisdiction of colorado laws right at the time that our state has made cops more accountable for their actions on the job by ending qualified immunity many of you know i work with young people in boulder county i would like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to a report on youth input to the reimagining policing effort growing up boulder and my emotion healing were contracted by the city and met with over 100 children youth and young adults their report is available at growingupholder.org

[219:01] young people in boulder are already concerned about the interplay between policing race and systems of oppression specifically concern was expressed about police collaboration with other institutions of oppression they request more accountability finally the young people were concerned that their input would be ignored so i urge you to read the report and to listen to the many voices requesting increasing trust building and accountability tonight i encourage you to reject this mou with the joint terrorism task force thank you mary next ryan harwood carl perez and claire o'brien sorry about that ryan you should be able to unmute now

[220:03] uh can you hear me yes we can cool hello council uh with today being the first day of black history month i'd like to remind everyone that the very same federal bureau of investigation that you are considering partnering with tonight tried to kill the dr martin luther martin luther king jr while he was locked up in birmingham while they weren't successful while they were unsuccessful in killing dr king for the national security threat they said he posed they were successful in killing fred hampton the leader of the black panther party the fbi has assassination attempts of civil rights and black liberation leaders were not an anomaly they existed as part of a concerted effort to repress and criminalize participants of these movements that continues to stay let us not forget that this is the same fbi that surveilled damn near every mosque in the country and entraps countless muslims in the islamophobic crusade following 9 11. this is the same fbi that was warned about lyndon mclaude the white supremacist mass shooter who killed five

[221:00] people in denver recently and did nothing about it this is the same fbi that surveilled and harassed non-violent environmentalist activists in colorado who are organizing to protect our state and our planet from extractive industries and the catastrophic climate events that they cause like the recent fire folks are still rebuilding from this political repression was done in conjunction with the denver police department and the fbi's joint terrorism task force in a very similar relationship to what is being proposed today this is the same fbi that created a new category of terrorism called black identity extremism in the wake of the ferguson uprisings against racist police violence and the black lives matter movement this terrorist designation is still being used to this day to repress and punish participants of the george floyd uprisings last year this partnership will result in nothing but harm to our already small and politically repressed non-white communities law enforcement will say they simply want to combat terrorism and keep people safe but remember all of the unthinkable racist violence the fbi has committed

[222:00] from trying to kill dr king to re pressing blm was all done in the name of national security and counter-terrorism do not let even more white power into the city reject the memorandum thank you for your testimony next we have carl perez claire o'brien and i think jack smith if he's here i'm not sure he is all right can y'all hear me yes hi thank you thank you for the opportunity to speak i'm perez i'm a computer engineer working for cu boulder and a member of united campus workers of colorado though i'm not speaking on either of their behalf this potential agreement troubles me i'm really sorry to say that nothing bpd has said really comforts me at all i don't see any benefits to deputizing local police as federal law enforcement and the history of the joint terrorism task force isn't encouraging first there isn't any transparency in this arrangement there is not a specific mission or threat that the jttf is pursuing just the nebulous term terrorism a term applied to isis a guy throwing a rock through a window and even peaceful protesters the jttf throws out reasonable suspicion standards in

[223:00] favor of suspicion-free assessments that target primarily people of color in colorado springs in 2005 the jttpf stored the license plate numbers of peaceful protesters of a local forestry company the names of americans who were never accused or even suspected of even minor crimes are now in fbi databases solely because they exercised their constitutionally protected right to peacefully express their opinions at a public protest in denver during the blm protest in 2020 the jttf was activated against quote-unquote antifa which is another broad term that describes no group or specific threats thousands of names license plates faces are all likely in fbi databases despite not even being suspected of a crime the jtdf has a long history of surveilling peaceful protests in colorado and i don't trust them to stop second there's no accountability in this arrangement it is a pinky promise to follow local arrangements local regulations but federal courts have repeatedly held that officers under the program are acting as federal officers meaning local regulations can be discarded in favor of federal standards

[224:00] i recommend reading the burden centers national security and local police paper specifically the law uh the section on joint terrorism task force overflight for more details there is no law for mechanism to hold these officers accountable to local and state regulation many many cities have already withdrawn from these programs and i suggest boulder doesn't even try to get in them please vote against this memorandum thank you for your time thank you carl claire o'brien jack smith and mileen villard hello my name can you hear me yes hello my name is claire o'brien and i work and live in boulder i'm here today in strong opposition of the boulder police department having a formal agreement with the fbi's joint terrorism task force this task force has a long history of targeting peaceful and non-violent activists and causes and calling it terrorism the jttf will not make our communities safer but instead operate without proper oversight meaning the boulder police department officers who have already proven to have a track record of racial profiling and excesses excessive use of force will be able to

[225:00] work for the fbi without the public or department supervision or management there is currently no clear mechanism in place for ensuring the officers will be able to comply with both state and city laws bpd policy policies as well as federal laws and policies the jttf is also a thinly veiled excuse to perpetuate racial stereotypes and target activists in 2017 the fbi circulated a memo to its networks including local police officers involved in jttf that warned warned of quote black identity extremists who respond to perceptions of police brutality to welcome in an organization that so clearly targets the black lives matter movement is disre is disgraceful especially when there have been reports released where the jttf have called the white have called the kkk and white supremacist victims it is important to note that not joining jttf would not prevent the fbi from investigating legitimate terrorism threats in boulder as the fbi and bpd already have a positive working relationship and being a member of jttf would only provide an illusion of knowledge which the police chief already

[226:01] alluded to in a two-year period from 2009 to 2011 only .04 of the cases or assessments opened by the fbi led to an active investigation those numbers only further prove that bringing this task force into our community would be nothing but a waste of tax dollars and a danger to non-violent activism there are much more pressing issues facing the boulder community and i encourage the council to reject this partnership and protect the first amendment rights of their constituents thank you thank you claire we have uh jack smith miley and villard and emily cohen and brenda is jack in the meeting now jack smith has not arrived aaron all right well we'll come back at the end and see if he's appeared mileen villard emily cohen and austin bennett hi um my name is eileen i apologize but you're very hard to hear

[227:02] can you hear me better maybe slightly but like this it's a little better um could could i maybe go in a few minutes and grab my headset uh sure we can come back to you if at the end if you don't mind waiting a little while um that time i can do that i want to be hard thank you sure next we have emily cohen but brenda's emily in the meeting emily has not arrived okay austin bennett how about you and then we have hannah lore grilling dunsmore and jude landsman after that austin you should there we go hi sorry can you hear me yes um so my name is austin bennett uh i'm a i'm a plumber here in boulder um uh like others have have said tonight uh

[228:01] like others have said much more eloquently tonight um i oppose uh this joint task force uh with fbi absolutely um you know this is the same organization that tried to harass the reverend uh king uh into committing suicide they spent the 90s uh trying to charge uh crunchy granola eating hippies uh changing themselves to trees as uh terrorists um uh certainly since the war on terror uh uh has uh ever since war on terror has been going on um the fbi has been entrapping uh muslim uh men teenagers uh into um you know even saying that they would commit violence in order to lock them up um i think that this task force would essentially be inviting a wolf into the hen house uh and bringing what is an organization that should be dismantled uh and reimagined

[229:01] uh straight into the heart of boulder with no clear benefit to our city safety um all that we'd be doing is bringing you know this almighty all-powerful completely unaccountable organization much much closer onto our streets without doing a single thing to protect our citizens and residents and residents i absolutely oppose the task force thank you austin next we have handler german gunsmore jude landsman and michael parish thank you good evening thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is hanalor girling dunsmore and i'm a graduate researcher at cu boulder as well as the president of united campus workers colorado though i'm seeking on behalf of myself as an individual frankly the mou raises myriad concerns for me but the one i want to discuss with my time tonight is the ramifications for freedom of speech in the us we have the constitutionally protected right to peacefully assemble

[230:01] and peacefully protest while the mou doesn't formally take away that right it does punish individuals for exercising that constitutional right and what's more it does so with zero transparency or accountability functionally that turns our constitutionally protected right to freedom of speech into a privilege for those who don't belong to demographics historically and presently subjected to state repression so that is to say affluent white heterosexual cisgender abled and male everyone else is putting themselves at substantial risk to exercise what is supposed to be a right for everyone in the u.s in colorado this has been confirmed to be used to target peaceful environmental pro activists in colorado springs and anti-racist activists in denver the process of selecting who gets targeted is not transparently stated and there seems to be little to no consequences for abusing this power i will say it's hard to ignore the fact that this has historically been predominantly used against activists for progressive causes while the heavily armed far-right palmerita groups in colorado seem to get to organize with impunity if we already

[231:01] have most of these resources why has far-right terrorism still happen in boulder why are explicitly violent far-right groups still allowed to organize in the name of freedom of speech and are we supposed to believe that the mou and boulder police department involvement will prevent anything it seems all it will do is escalate the program that surveilled peaceful critics of the forestry practices and activists calling for very basic oversight when police use lethal force against unarmed individuals i understand the motivations of this mou and i believe most people who support it are acting in good faith but they don't say good intentions pave the road to heaven and frankly this mou seems to be to act selectively criminalize freedom of speech at the discretion of local law enforcement this mlu makes me ask what our political views are we actually do your testimony um next we have jude lindsman michael parish and michael denslow hello i'm jude lanzmann i'm on the executive

[232:02] committee of the naacp and chair of the freedom fund and economic opportunity committee i'm also a long-term over 40-year resident of boulder and i my understanding of the mou and the joint terrorism task force is that while i'm thankful that if we need them to know that the fbi can come and help us out i'm glad that they're close by in denver and i'm sure that there are instances where they would protect populations that i care about or my myself however it does not seem necessary to have an mou as has been repeatedly stated we have to take the chief's word um that the the police officer would follow state

[233:00] and local guidelines whenever all research shows that that is not the case that they that accountability trust accountability and transparency are words that have come up repeatedly tonight too we are working on that diligently with the boulder police uh department and it is hard enough and there has been a long struggle to get accountability transparency and trust with our with police departments and the black community and people of color and to ask now that we have to uh you know uh trust that the fbi can come in and has a history it is black history month i urge you to look at the history of the fbi particularly with black activism it is not a pretty picture sometimes it's been good but oftentimes it's been harsh and terrible so i would urge city council to take

[234:01] some seriousness about researching this matter thank you thank you jude i appreciate that next we have michael parish michael denslow and devin reynolds hello can you hear me yes hi my name is michael parrish i live here in boulder and i'm speaking to you tonight to urge you to reject this mou um just kind of against it on principle as many folks have stated the fbi has a law and violent history against activist groups non-violent groups and others especially we can look to the history in boulder with losses to boulder as another example but then specifically looking at this agreement um as the chief said we a lot of things of good things have happened and good things have been done without this mou and i don't feel the need that we need to spend our money on it to do more with it it seems to be working just fine as it is and the chiefs words of encouragement

[235:02] in terms of transparency and accountability are very encouraging but reading through the mou that was at least in the council packet i don't see any of that anywhere and that is an important part of this i don't see any aspect of how cam council will get to know what's going going on or um have any say with the participating officers or officer um it's certainly not consistent with the city's emphasis on uh alternatives to policing financially the city will be on the hook in most cases for this officer perhaps some cases of overtime the fbi would pay but that's a separate agreement and sending uh boulder police officers into this position when there's so much shouting about a shortage of police officers seems silly but mainly because the fbi and these joint terrorism task forces have such a damaging history to freedom of speech

[236:00] into activist groups within the united states and freedom of uh speech repression i strongly urge council to vote against this measure thank you very much thank you michael bernie do we have um michael denslow in the meeting we do not have michael denslow or devin reynolds so our next speaker would be sam becker great so sam and then jake brady and then gisele herzfeld hey all thanks for giving me some time tonight my name is sam becker and i'm a resident of boulder colorado in the wake of widespread uprisings over police brutality in the murder of unarmed black americans in 2020 boulder police department tightened its policies around use of deadly and non-lethal lethal forth force these changes were also codified at the state level with the passage of senate bill 217 which also required police departments to collect and report

[237:03] to the state a vast amount of policing data and used body cameras under the joint task force mou language being considered tonight and anecdotes from civil rights leaders in other cities with such task forces activities carried out under this task force would be effectively exempt from these state and local police reforms because officers are who are acting as part of a federal task force act under the color of federal law not state and local law as a result task force officers can't be held accountable to coloradans if they violate state and local rules and procedures furthermore under existing department of justice rules task force officers won't be required to use body cameras and they won't be subjected to oversight from boulder's independent police monitor as chief harris as chief maris harold mentioned this task force

[238:02] will enhance bpd's efforts to surveil immigrant communities and she's right poor communities of colors and cities with such task forces have frequently found themselves at the center of damaging and traumatic task force investigations which federally and um which which federal and federally deputized local officers can do without reasonable suspicion unlike local police departments for these reasons a bunch of cities have left such task forces and it would be great if uh but thank you for your testimony next jake brady giselle hertzfeld and usama khalid hi my name is jake brady and i live in boulder i'm here to speak on the potential jttf agreement with the fbi since their inception jttfs have been

[239:00] rife with controversy portland has twice twice withdrawn from their agreement most recently in 2018 san francisco withdrew from their agreement in 2017 and in 2019 an fbi white paper revealed that sfpd and the fbi repeatedly lied about violations oakland withdrew from their agreement in 2020 the aclu has obtained documents showing that jttf investigations have disproportionately focused on peaceful organizations in the past including right here in colorado in 2020 the intercept determined that a jttf had intimidated young blm activists in tennessee recently portland city council directed its human rights commission to conduct a thorough analysis of the city's jttf agreement their their findings highlighted the following problems one federal agents are not bound by state law two office of the inspector general reports have consistently found extensive human and civil rights violations in domestic fbi operations three the city's jttf agreement lacked necessary provisions for oversight accountability

[240:01] and transparency which led to increased tensions between citizens and ppd the nyu school of law has studied jttfs the crux of the matter in their view is that there is no mechanism geared toward ensuring compliance with state and local laws council i'm urging you to reject this mou or at a minimum i urge you to commission studies from both the police oversight panel and human relations commission before even considering an indefinite agreement additionally i ask that you consider the voices of activists and politicians many of them immigrants and or people of color from other cities who pulled out of their respective agreements many of those cities also tried the amendment route and were rebuffed by the fbi and so again i ask you to reject this mou thank you for your time thank you jake chazelle hertzfeld soma khalid and joshua stalins hi my name is gisele hersfeld and i'm a staff member at the rocky mountain peace and justice center in 350 colorado two

[241:01] organizations that organize peacefully in boulder county to bring attention to important environmental and justice issues impacting our community i'm speaking today to oppose the motion to approve the joint terrorism task force mou between the fbi and the boulder police department as a member of two organizations that were giselle we lost you three of targeting grassroots organizers and non-violent protesters as quote-unquote terrorists and violating our first amendment rights to peaceful demonstration in 2005 the aclu released documents that confirmed that the jttf had targeted peaceful protesters in colorado as potential terrorists including the rocky mountain peace and justice center for peacefully demonstrating to oppose the iraq war in conjunction with these non-violent demonstrations the rocky mountain peace and justice center hosted non-violent direct action trainings that were infiltrated by the jttf who attempted to incite violence in the other participants in order to testify against

[242:01] them later in court in 2010 the aclu released more documents that confirmed that the jttf targeted peaceful political activists for harassment and built files on protected political activities and associations that had nothing to do with terrorism or other criminal activity this documents request was filed on behalf of 26 organizations one of which was food not bombs for providing free vegetarian meals in a picnic setting for those who are hungry targeting groups that engage in peaceful demonstrations and labeling them as terrorists does not make our community safer it is a direct violation of our first amendment rights and an egregious waste of our tax dollars if we are to call ourselves a democratic society it is crucial that people be allowed to engage in non-violent protest without risking being targeted as a domestic terrorist i hope boulder city council will make the decision to defend their constituents first amendment rights and not enter an agreement with the jttf thank you thank you giselle next usoma khalid joshua stallings and

[243:02] lynn siegel good evening everyone my name is usama khalid and i work within boulder and commute to the city on a regular basis i'm coming to you all today to express my concern of the possible relationship developing with boulder pd and the fbi's joint terrorism task force as a person of color it is extremely concerning to have a group such as the jttf infiltrate our community this group is notorious for racially profiling disrupting peaceful action and using excessive force when carrying out their so-called missions boulder is a sanctuary city which means a city in which the local government and police protect undocumented immigrants and refugees from deportation by federal authorities the introduction of this tasker is detrimental to our city's foundation of being a safe haven the jttf and the fbi have an explicit relationship with ice and they are known to work in partnership with them and will not respect the city's wish of being a safe place for all regard regardless of immigration status

[244:00] chief harold said the fbi helped a lot with the king super shooting which is protocol it's something they would have done without the mou or the jttf not adopting the jttf in our community will not prevent the fbi from investigating potential terrorist activity in boulder the fbi will always be able to investigate these claims without wasting the extra tax dollars on a task force it is in the best interest of the city and the unr and under representative communities such as our houseless immigrants people of color and undocumented to not adopt this task force into the community and urge you all to not approve this boulder must reject this partnership to keep our most vulnerable safe thank you thank you sama next we have joshua stallings lynn sequel and then back to miley and hard good evening thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is joshua stallings i live in boulder county and work in the city of boulder and throughout the county as the north

[245:00] regional organizer with the colorado immigrant rights coalition also known as circ cirque stands in opposition to the city of boulder entering into the joint terrorism task force with fbi as a coalition that values equity safety and inclusion and works hard to make colorado a more welcoming and friendly state for immigrants and all people we have admired boulder's leadership in declaring itself the sanctuary city in 2017 and enacting a racial equity plan just last year we believe that the mlu being considered with the fbi tonight flies in the face of boulder's commitment to racial equity and protecting residents from persecution while we believe that every member of our community deserves to be safe this mou with fbi will not provide additional safety to our community in fact it will put certain members of our community at risk deteriorating people's rights to personal privacy and constitutional civil liberties as many others have mentioned tonight the fbi and jttf have a disturbing history of civil rights abuses surveilling without reasonable suspicion and profiling people based on religion national origin and political beliefs

[246:01] entangling law enforcement and the nefarious efforts of the fbi will impede public safety and place marginalized members of the community at risk furthermore the fbi and federal agents are held to lower standards of transparency and accountability than our local and state law enforcement agents while local law enforcement are required to abide by the fourth amendment and have probable cause before searching arresting someone the foreign surveillance act allows fbi agents to make searches and arrests without probable cause allowing boulder police to be deputized by the fbi under a jttf would lead to boulder police officers sidestepping constitutional rights granted under the fourth amendment boulder should join like-minded cities including portland and oakland to protect residents against unwarranted and intrusive surveillance i please ask boulder city council to not sign the jttf agreement thank you joshua lynn siegel and mileen gillard

[247:05] yeah to start with this is not legal for you to have this poor notification for this hearing it was on consent agenda 3c i guess i went to look at the agenda and there was no 3c i guess that's what lauren was talking about you need to stop this hearing and have it over again not okay the federal advisory committee act you know it's in a violation of that if that's applicable here that's applicable at the rocky flat stewardship council and they violated all the time not okay okay if this is all about 12 tribes and the investigation that was done there about the fire you know the fire is the terrorist not you know we are the terrorists for not addressing climate change which is what caused the fire along with the coal mines which is telling us we better stop dealing with

[248:01] coal you know which my slide showed the solar panels are there the solar panels are gonna work um this is the other f word fear don't go there don't do that um you know that guy that shot up at the king supers he was from arakawa you know what's there isis uh isil whatever the terrorists no you know who the terrorists are the united states is the terrorists we are the terrorists the fbi coming into our town you know i know one fbi guy that's good that's john lipsky he exposed rocky flats for what it is war is terrorism and this is a form of terrorism in our local community no way you've got to be kidding let's see here um and this is an emergency you know this is just like medicare this week i i

[249:01] couldn't get an appointment for a month of having this insurance because of they couldn't get the information well enough your emergency is not my emergency your time is up thank you for your testimony lastly we have mileen the lard thank you can you hear me better now yes you sound good thank you good evening my name is milan gillard i'm a boulder resident and a member of boulder showing up for racial justice or b surge at a time when boulder needs more than ever to be a stronger community where we care for each other the push by chief herald for the mlu and joint terrorism task force is an insult and clearly shows a lack of understanding of our community the mlu would only spread fear mistrust and division along political social and racial lines this is not acceptable [Music]

[250:00] if anything this seems to be a calculated way to go around the enhanced law enforcement integrity act passed in 2020 sb 2217 and an alarming misuse and waste of resources it is also a threat to our first amendment rights to peacefully protest as i'm sure some of you have i have participated in peaceful protest in this city and i intend to do so again should the need arise i have nothing in common with domestic terrorists and i don't want to be on such a list as other other peaceful protesters were in denver i've been watching the city increase the police budget while slashing all others i've i have seen the city's police targeting people of color and making them fear for their lives the mlu would allow police officers to no longer be accountable for the misconduct enough is enough why do we need more weapons more surveillance more of our tax dollars go to a task force that many cities have

[251:02] tried at least we need more police transparency not less we need to listen to dissent not criminalize it we need to care for all our community members not sweep some of them under the rug we need to be vigilant and not lose our humanity i urge you to say sacred no to the mlu and the joint terrorism task force thank you and just uh brenda can we confirm that we still don't have jack smith emily cohen michael denslow or down reynolds that is correct mr mayor those community members have not arrived all right in that case i think we will wrap up the public hearing and bring that to a close and bring it back to council for discussion and i see we've got nicole with her hand out thank you um and i just i just wanted to do kind of a quick response to uh some of the public commenters um you know

[252:00] first of all say thank you for sticking um uh with it this long um to make to you know to let us hear from you um and then the other thing that i just wanted to try to make clear for the community um is that i truly don't think it is chief harold's intention to do harm i think i heard a couple of folks reference reference that i really don't i don't think that is the intention i think the intention here is really to think about how how we can keep the community safe and um when when i look at this it's sort of a boilerplate mou that was not um i think there it it wasn't sort of vetted with the folks who have experienced some bad things from the fbi or in communities that have experienced that and you know i think especially um given that we did a declaration for black history month tonight it's really important for us to acknowledge that there is a um a justifiable lack of

[253:00] trust here um in the community with some in the community so um anyway so i just wanted to kind of note those two those two things that we can hold for this conversation that you know we're all trying to do our best to keep the community safe and there are clearly people who have not been made to feel safe by some of the systems that we have in place so just wanted to start with that i do have questions and other things to say but that was more of a response to the comments thanks for that that framing um nicole so other questions or comments cole we'll come back to you and then mark i do have questions um so one of the questions um that i heard was around uh who pays for this and so i was hoping to get some clarity on that um what exactly is being paid for by our city versus by the fbi and i i believe that that was one of the things in that

[254:00] that the mou was offering was a way for the fbi to pay for some all not quite sure on that uh doctor thank you for your your comments and your question um um my understanding and obviously my legal advisor has taken a look at this uh mou um and my understanding is the only cost would be for the officer's hours when dedicated uh to the uh to the task force um which is a part-time position uh requiring uh i believe 16 hours of his time per week and everything else would be paid for by the department of justice okay thank you i'm so so there is there is some cost to that and i assume there's some overtime agreement or something as well that would they pick up any overtime that was due to this or something like that that is my understanding um all other um unless jen frazier is going to disagree with me that um

[255:02] the 16 hours would be what we're responsible for out of the detective's weekly timesheet that's correct chief 16 hours is considered part time for the fbi okay thank you um and then you know i think my my other these are just comments maybe for us to hold on to as we're having this discussion um it's clear there is a lack of trust um here um with the community right and so um i think that's that's one of the things that's on my mind is what can we do um to address that right um i don't i don't think it's fair to sort of say that everybody feels safe you know in the community with this um and you know i hear you take harold on saying that there there really are benefits in terms of the speed and the efficiency with which we can get information um given you know having somebody who's sort of trained and able to

[256:00] access that information really quickly so but i just just noting that i think that lack of trust specifically around places where the fbi has gone after activists activists of color the lgbtq community and others right we need to i would love for us to think about what can we do um to address that within the context of of this arrangement here and then the other thing that i heard um a lot of folks kind of in emails as well as on the comments address was really a lack of accountability um in the mou and i think you know i i hear you saying that you know um it would be there and you know if you're agreeing it would be there if the fbi you know is good with this too can we formalize it somehow right in in this arrangement um it i think that's that that seems to be a key piece there um and you know i think specifically getting some feedback from communities that have been harmed by the fbi would

[257:01] be really valuable um folks especially in the civil rights communities and especially those who have some legal expertise um i i would really be interested to sort of hear what could we add because you mentioned we could potentially modify this um you know just hearing what it is that we could add or change that would make this you know feel more comfortable let people know that for sure these folks are we stated explicitly these folks are going to be held to our local and state law and i heard a few people reference senate bill 217 specifically in that regard um and yes um and then one other thing that you had mentioned she probably talked was that in relation to another agreement that we have in place with immigration and customs which i know is coming up in a couple weeks um council in 2017 had sort of put some some guard rails around that um through

[258:01] an ordinance if i'm understanding this correctly and said you know it's okay to work on um things like uh sex trafficking and um some other things you know we all generally agree are things we we don't want to have around um is there anything that we can you know we as a council can kind of put in place i heard a lot of um concern about protests for example can we say we really don't want you know this um the the officer who's serving in this role to um to you know participate in any monitoring or protesters or anything like that so i feel like i just asked too many questions to possibly ask them to respond to them all at once but i think the main points are can we somehow address this lack of trust that the community has and can we also um try to address the lack of accountability and formalize some of these things that that we're all talking about tonight in the

[259:00] mouth yeah probably i probably need some help on this one uh doctor but you know uh since i've been here my police reform agenda has been robust and i have worked tirelessly on accountability and transparency there is really nothing that i am not willing to share and try to gain the community's trust and i continue to strive for that and so does this police department um and so as it relates to all your questions doctor obviously i am always willing to try to get every community's members trust because i understand that some community members have not always had the best experiences with the police department and the federal system but so to answer most your questions yes um i'm willing to put

[260:01] guard rails on all of these uh mous um but i can't help but i was listening to to people talk and um so i just in all fairness um there was a event just recently um that was a wonderful event i attended and it had to do with civil rights photography out of memphis and i received phone calls on that because that event obviously garnered um local and national attention and the phone calls i received to help and to contact the fbi on that event was done quickly effectively equitably and so i appreciate everybody's comments but this road is two ways

[261:01] um the the the terrorism that i'm concerned about especially as it refers to boulder has to do with white supremacy and conservative groups that surround this city and so when i speak to issues such as this i can't help but think that some of the groups that talk tonight actually call me um and ask for fbi's intervention and intelligence and so yes to your questions doctor i will continue to do and work to garners everybody's respect and i'll put guardrails on these mous but i think it's fair to also talk about some of the people that were on here tonight have called me to ask for protection um because there are real threats to civil rights in boulder and that's what i'm mostly concerned about and that's what i need the fbi's help with

[262:00] and i know that policing fails on the local and state and federal level but i am trying my best to correct those injustices but i need the i need the support of the federal government on these issues because we are facing real threats so thank you doctor i appreciate your questions thanks very much for that nicole and she ferrell nicole does that answer your questions yes i talked a lot not what others came in thanks uh mark then matt then rachel ventura yeah as an initial matter i think we need to have a little more perspective about this this is the use of one police officer cooperating with the fbi under an agreement that we can essentially terminate at will if we don't like what we see if we don't like how it's going we're gone okay um

[263:00] it's not an unusual agreement for most municipalities people some of the commentators have uh referenced cities that were dissatisfied and withdrew but there are many more cities that have executed these again we have the right not to continue our participation at any point that we're dissatisfied chief harold has made it clear that this is something she needs to enhance our ability to keep this community safe it's not an agreement to terrorize activists or people of color it's not an agreement that permits the fbi to take over law enforcement in boulder a little more perspective is required my concern here is i don't want to elevate political doctrine over the realities of today's world is there anyone here who does not believe that there are racist extremist white power domestic groups

[264:01] who look at boulder and hate us for our values and who might one day seek to do us harm that's the world we live in that's the world the chief lives in and that's the world we have to address and lastly i'm a little concerned with what i regard as an almost unprecedented micromanagement of the police support department by this council a group of elected officials not one of whom has served in a law enforcement agency unless i'm mistaken um and so it leads me to the question of what next are we going to ask the council to render approval of chief harold's disposition of our offices on patrol are we going to supervise her training programs and if we are so singularly knowledgeable on the area of law enforcement i would ask why not um so i'm a little concerned with how we've treated the subject i'm a little concerned with the lack of perspective that many of the speakers have had with respect to what this

[265:01] agreement actually does and if chief harold says that this is something she needs i think we have to give that great weight and not try to micromanage every word in the mou which most of which most of those words are inconsequential um they talk about who gets paid for what um this is this is not the way we ought to be doing this um you know when i was back in the development business my attitude was either listen to the advice of people who work for you or fire them and listen to their advice um chief harold knows a little bit more about policing than we do and i think we ought to be getting out of the policing business and listen to what she is saying and try to accommodate her to the extent we can do so that's my spit my spiel for tonight

[266:06] thanks mark and uh i do appreciate the comments uh uh from the community you know i will say you know just sort of respond a little bit to to my colleague mark here i mean the micromanagement just because none of us are police officers runs a slippery slope of are any of us hydrologists or climatologists from which to gauge the efficacy of doing flood protection at cu south so so i think we could embark on that slippery slope of where our expertise lies and judge whether we should have an opinion based on being elected elected officials but i will say that with regards to to this in particular you know i've had some experience with federal agencies different ones and they usually come with boilerplate mousse and one of the ways to know whether you have a good partner is to actually look at modifying those mousse and i think it's important for us to have that dialogue and i think with what chief said is that she said there's some things that she's interested in changing there might be some things that we're interested in providing some you know guardrails or

[267:00] just some some guarantees about certain actions or inactions that may occur and i i think it's appropriate for us to have that dialogue because to take an mou and it'd say it's take it or leave it you we work with you or we don't that's not a partner and so i want to make sure that we do actually work with a partner that's willing to work with our needs to to meet and facilitate not just we as council but as a community going forward so i think we can find a bridge there but i want to make sure we don't get caught in the hyperbole on either side because it is important about public safety and it is important that we do meet some of the needs of our community and address those concerns that's rachel then tara than juni okay thanks erin yeah just a couple follow-up questions for chief harold um let's see number one it was mentioned in a from a couple people that people could use this mou to sort of sidestep the new colorado laws which increased transparency and accountability

[268:00] is that accurate do our local police officers who participate in this mou exempt from the heightened requirements of colorado law no but i will let my legal advisor give you the specifics on that so at least you have the law so you can um follow up rachel thanks for the question so that's something that that if um if needed i guess i don't know if we could change the mou to to make that different but yeah i think before i voted on it i would love that information um okay next question i have i'm sorry right now yeah i'm sorry jen can you address that so we can take that one off yes chief i can so some of the most recent legislation about police reform came from um house bill 1250 and one of the many things it did was addressed peace uh officer standards uh and training so our post certification how our peace officers are trained and

[269:00] certified and that certification is something that our officers hold and it's something that they can lose so house bill 1250 took a look um at reform and specifically um addressed that if there's a mandatory and permanent post revocation any time an officer was found criminally criminally or civilly liable for an unlawful use of force or for a failure to intervene and so the post board wouldn't have to mandatory revoke an officer's certification without reinstatement if one of those um conditions existed so there would be state implications for an officer's misconduct even if the officer was acting as a task force officer with the jttf uh the officer is still subject um to our policies and procedures so any violation would be reviewed by a professional standards unit and that officer would be subject to termination

[270:01] so there are consequences not only with this agency but also at the state level for any type of misconduct and specifically conditions that were addressed in the most recent legislation from july and and rachel uh finally on that the oversight task force obviously would review this as well and provide a third independent uh look at this um sorry about the camera here we're doing some my husband's leaving for a shift here um okay so i guess i'm confused then if if i were is that different from somebody who's just a an fbi officer like are they not then subjected to these colorado state standards but because this person is colorado forget the word certified post-certified then they have a different accountability

[271:00] that's correct because the state of colorado certifies all police officers and a lot of the reform that you're talking about rachel was covered in major pieces of legislation last year and so i'm confident between these systems of accountability between our agency the police oversight and the state um i think we're in really good shoes and then obviously the federal government the fbi has a very strict accountability matrix as well so i'm confident that you're that your concerns would be addressed rachel okay thanks um we you've mentioned one officer and and part-time 16 hours who's been training is is this mou only good for one officer or is it possible that that number would be ramped up are we really just looking at one person i can i can tell you that

[272:02] that is all i can sustain and i would not this is a small agency um larger cities may have four to five uh people in their jttf that are usually much larger cities port cities that have international terrorist threats new york seattle ports and texas but boulder is a very small market and so one officer would meet our demands and like i said before if it's helpful this officer would be primarily focused on boulder threats which occur regularly and they would not be traveling or going outside of boulder with the threats it would be a rare occasion that this would happen okay um and with i guess through this mou well one thing back on that last point could we just say in the agreement then that

[273:00] it's just for one person i think that might help to alleviate some of the concerns so just put that out there as a i think that's that's helpful um thanks um so through having this just one person focusing on boulder does that somehow in any way that could i think that people are concerned that this is going to be detrimental to our community and we're going to be more surveyed and more harshly policed does having this somehow make surveillance like the eye sort of focus on boulder in a way that might be detrimental in your opinion no i i think this person for a very small amount of time on a weekly basis will be able to focus in on what i perceive are legitimate threats from uh domestic violent extremist groups that i believe surround boulder and i agree with mark's assessment

[274:00] this is my this is my big fear um is that we do have a target rich environment for white supremacists and far leaning right groups and i am trying my best to get a handle on that and respond accordingly those are my concerns understood and uh certainly you know i don't think any of this wants to to do anything that would make our community less safe from events like what was stopped today um so uh just trying to get a handle on ways that we can maybe improve improve this and make sure that that we're not somehow uh giving more than we get i guess in this agreement and that's that's a little bit unclear from from the agreement itself and from the comments like what is boulder exactly getting versus what are we giving like i think i'm hearing you say that we're not giving

[275:01] away the right to be more surveilled surveyed surveilled um but instead getting information that is helpful for us to monitor these threats so if you could just speak a little bit to sort of the the give and get and this agreement and what's good about it for boulder well um [Music] yeah what's good for boulder is that when i receive a phone call that that i've received numerous times since i've been here from doctors that are in charge of women's health clinics and they perceive a threat that i can walk down the hall and i can ask the detective to please see if this threat is real and how long do i have to respond accordingly like i did today that's that's what the fbi is offering boulder and

[276:00] um those are the kind of assessments on a fast track that i need to keep this community safe we have real threats in boulder that i deal with on a weekly basis this will add such value to how i can respond how quickly i can respond that is it i am not interested in first amendment issues at protest i am not interested in violating anybody's civil rights this really comes down in my opinion uh to trusting me to keep this community safe and i am asking that this is another major robust tool that i will have to keep this community safe from domestic terrorism okay um thank you i i just have two more quick questions i think one is a question of cost and and there's i can't quite figure out where the liability lies so i think i read

[277:01] something um or heard someone mention you know if there's an incident it's optional whether whether the city of boulder or fbi would take on liability for something you know a bad outcome while task force uh work was underway do you know can that be changed in the mou like i would i would think if a boulder police officer were engaged in task force activity which should not be on the city boulder to pay for any or to carry any liability for something that happens during those hours i will let jen frazier speak to that um but i mean there's precedent uh involved here rachel that i'm confident uh that if if the officer is acting um within the scope of the law then he will have protections at the both the federal level and the city level obviously if the officer

[278:01] is intentional and he is intentionally doing something wrong then he's not going to have protection on either level but uh jen frazier would probably be much more eloquent in her legal response to that than i just was but jen frazier no that's right chief um so with or without this mou these are type of events and threat assessment incidents that the boulder police department would respond to and as such they would have the same potential liability one difference in this mou is there's a provision where the doj department of justice may determine that the task force officer should be afforded some legal representation or a legal defense um or an indemnification of a civil judgment so there's some more protect there's more protection here for the officer but the liability would remain the same for the city because these are the same type of incidents we would respond to with or without the mou and just to clarify my earlier comments

[279:01] some of that legislation that i mentioned about the post certification and mandatory revocation that started with senate bill 217 and then house bill 1250 did a couple modifications to those conditions thanks for that um so just to make sure i'm following that answer correctly let's say there's a uh an allegation of excessive force being utilized while someone's responding i guess while just one officer potentially is responding and it's upheld that would it would be the city of boulder taking on that liability because you're saying this officer would be responding in the capacity of city of bolder work anyhow so is that the answer well i'll defer to teresa tate on this uh so she could speak for the city as a city attorney hi teresa tate city attorney um yes rachel that's accurate i think you know what i what i understood jen and the chief to

[280:01] say is that these are incidents that would require a response from a boulder police officer anyway and so presumably the events would unfold in the same way we do have an obligation under state law to indemnify officers acting within the scope of their duty and so that's an obligation that we always carry for our officers here there is an opportunity for representation by the doj or indemnification from them so in a way it's it's a way for us to think about a second layer of potential protection okay thanks and actually i think i'll hold on on the last question so that's all i got thanks thanks rachel tara juni lauren hey there first of all boulder community and city council i just want to disclose that i have a migraine so i'm not going to be my usual

[281:01] concise self so please excuse me for that i'm going to do my best first thing i want to say is i appreciate the passion and the compassion of the people that spoke tonight and that means a lot also i want to say that those 20 people are important but also they're not the entire community right because the rest of the many people in the community didn't realize that this was happening today so i feel like it might not have exactly been um like a microcosm of how the entire city of boulder feels so i'm just throwing that out there where it wasn't exactly the community it was some people who like knew in advance that this was happening so i just wanted to say that but at the same time i do appreciate the comments and i think that they were compassionate and people really do care i do want to say that at

[282:00] the same time it would have been good to hear from other people who might not have necessarily held those points of views but we did only hear from one side so always like fairness to be out there the second thing i want to say is to me the biggest fear is right-wing extremist white supremacy you know we had some things happening in the synagogue world where now like for instance in my synagogue we have to have security guards and such same thing in churches and i'm sure in mosques where marist was talked to chief police chief harold was talking about minutes matter they really do matter in those incidences in schools and in religious institutions and faith communities they matter a lot they mattered in um minutes can make a big difference in lives and i also believe that if chief

[283:00] harold says that we need this that we really do need this she has been the taking making the chart you know she's been the one that's been reimagining the police force with us she has been our partner and i feel that if she says that this is what we need for the reasons of technology and speed in a world that is very different than it was even a few years ago with huge threats from right-wing extremists that we should listen to her and we should just support her as she tries to make those guard rails that nicole was talking about so i am just reaching out to the community the entire community to be cognizant of what the world is like right now and the threats that we have and put our trust in a police chief that cares about the community cares about social justice cares about our minorities and our marginalized

[284:01] community here and support her as she tries to make those guard rails that's the second thing i want to say just give me one second to think if i have one more thing or if i just want to hold it at that um i think for now i'll just hold it at that and i'll let the next person speak thanks sarah genie in the morning thank you hair aaron so here's what i hear from this conversation that's been going on for for a long while uh i get a sense that we can respond to the threats that are going on in our community without the help of the fbi or at least without signing up to this mou that they are already helping us somewhat automatically um and also i think i hear tonight that this particular issue that came before council has not

[285:00] yet been vetted by the task force and if we have a police oversight task force i think that's the first place this particular issue should have gone to instead of just coming before us and i think it goes back to something that tara just said that we should hear for more people in the community and today we only heard from 20 although i really appreciate those 20 people who came because they have educated me as well on some of the issues and i really appreciate them showing up today and we know a lot of people in the community can't show up right because of their work their family they don't have access to internet there are so many different reasons why we don't have many people here on here today but i really think honestly this thing should have gone to the uh to the task force before it came before council we're not the expert on policing and i can see myself as a council member green lighting this process in any way

[286:01] without community support and the 20 people who came before council tonight are very convincing so i would not be in support of this at first when it first came before us today when the conversation first started i was a little bit ambivalent and i think as of right now i know where i stand i will not be supporting this uh moving forward because again i just don't see where this has been vetted by the community first and i think that's where it should start with community and having that conversation and also utilizing that task force that you do have um and i think as well some of the comments that were made by a lot of community members i think they're fair about how we should really look at how far we've come right as a community when it comes to policing we know we've faced some many many challenges over the last couple of years with

[287:01] whether it's profiling uh and and engagement with the community is this how we want to go when we really think about it how far we've come is this the road we want to take because we hear from community tonight and a lot of people are not happy and they're just not trustworthy and i'm not sure i'm not the right person to make that decision so i would say tonight my answer would be a no thank you may i just colloquy on uh junie's point problems it won't be as long this time um what i just want to point out um just for us uh in this discussion um you know i'm hearing folks say we need to trust um the expertise of the police when it comes to law enforcement issues and and i think that the component that we may not be quite hitting on is that we have folks in our community who are experts in the oppression that has come from

[288:00] um kind of our our history of um policing and how we do law enforcement and just to go to junie's point um i think you know vetting this with a broader uh chunk of the community would allow us to take advantage of all the expertise that we have um in our community in its various forms and really get to something that feels comfortable hopefully for a community to move forward with uh lauren and then we got mark popping up thank you um so i wanted to start off by addressing a comment tara had about some community members knowing about this ahead of time since i was the person who on sunday night flagged this and moved it to um or off of the consent agenda unless someone was able to read my mind before i read the packet i really don't think anyone um had any knowledge of this prior to

[289:02] that email um so while i agree that this you know public comment probably does not reflect the entirety of our community it you know these are a group of people who made really quick adjustments to their lives to try to show up to be here for something that they care about um so i think that it's important that we recognize that commitment um i had a couple of questions um so we've heard some reports of racial profiling by um jttfs and other cities um i was wondering if we will be able to have access to reports with statistical information around who in our community is being looked at or investigated under this agreement

[290:04] um you mean as far as like what what the investigate like what are what where we're investigating lauren i'm sorry yeah so just kind of like i understand that we probably won't be able to get specific information around investigations but can we get can we get statistical information around you know racial ethnic identities of people in our community you know like like we do for when people are pulled over and things like that can we will we have any ability to sort of review as a community who is being targeted by these investigations in a broader general sense i would have to i would have to talk with the uh i would have to talk with

[291:01] the fbi on that point lauren um i could speak in generalities about places um if it's you know if it's a long-term investigation um i'm sure i could get some information um and and maybe one of the other deputies or jen frazier can jump in here um i don't know like i could not get you specific information about like the the reason why but i could most certainly give you general information about our investigations if that's helpful carrie do you have any other thing or uh john frazier chief some of this information uh could be sought through the federal records act or freedom of information act inquiry from any actions taken by the joint terrorism task force

[292:01] if she's looking if you were looking for specific data or statistics that would be one avenue the public would have access to subject to their disclosure requirements and and i guess carrie i know you're probably going to come on here but i guess if it's our officer doing something it's going to be captured anyway through traffic stop data use of force data reports data i just probably can't guarantee that i can get to the fbi like specific detailed stuff but if our officer is engaged in it i can probably get general information um so jerry is that what what you think as well chief i think that's accurate um obviously we can't share the fbi's data that would be up to them but we could share what portion of ours maybe crosses over but again i'm not sure it would depend on the status the investigation too and i think it's important to point out

[293:01] that a lot of this is investigative work including you know gathering information from all kinds of sources not it's not constantly contacting people um there's a lot of open source information gathering too that doesn't involve direct contact with people okay thank you um so i'm kind of following along with this theme of oversight i'm also wondering if the oversight commission would be able to provide oversight and investigate questions or concerns from the public regarding any issues that come up with um this officer or in the future if there were other officers involved in this program um or if there will be boundaries on their oversight of this program and if the

[294:02] officers involved with it could be shielded by from investigation by the federal government no our officers would most certainly be under our oversight and accountability um and and the federal government is not going to shield the detective um not by but not by their own policy but most certainly not knowing me thank you thank you lauren um so in general um i believe that effective counterterrorism measures and also protecting our civil rights are not conflicting but complementary goals and in that vein i would really like to see the hrc and as juni mentioned the police oversight commission review the mlu and make recommendations for modifications

[295:00] i think that that would go a long way to help build trust and ensure that um sort of the concerns for balancing those issues are taken into account um as was mentioned in the public comment there's a long and troubled history around civil rights in the fbi and we've heard a number of issues even recently and within our own community detailing local active um issues with jttfs and local activists as i just mentioned there are cities that have withdrawn due to issues regarding transparency and issue and oversight and given that the fbi is an organization that keeps much of its work secret it's deeply concerning to me that there are such significant concerns from organizations in our community from other cities um specifically because we know how little because we have limited knowledge of the content and scope of these investigations and so because of this i

[296:00] think we really should take these concerns into account and make sure that our community is involved in talking through sort of the best way that we can move forward okay thanks for that lauren um did you have anything else that's it thank you okay and so i got mark and chair popping up i haven't spoken yet and i do want to maybe find out how we want to go here but mark and jerry of quick quick things you want to add in before i do that yeah just a couple things i i want to take issue with suggestions of nicole and lauren that we farm this out to committees not every decision requires that it be vetted by a slew of committees sending this out to hrc and police oversight is effectively to make it die of death by a thousand cuts i think we have to stop looking at this as a tool of oppression it's a tool to

[297:01] provide safety and we need to remember we hired one of the most reform-oriented police chiefs in the entire country the entire country and she's asked for something necessary to protect the community i would like to give that the weight that it is due and and not not sending it out to committees um for their perusal this is this is not that complex of matter um and it's a direct request from the police chief and there's good and satisfactory grounding um to [Music] accede to that request and so no i would i would not um i would not be in favor of sending this out to a group of people um so that they can chew it to death and i don't have a better way of expressing it at the moment this is a council decision i'm not even

[298:00] sure it should have been a council decision it should have just been ordinary course of business but now that we've made it council decision we should just make it thank you thanks mark chairman real quick aaron because i know you haven't spoke yet is i think we should remember what chief harold said that we are a medium-sized city we're not portland we're not san francisco we don't have the resources that they do and she specifically asked for those resources that she really needs badly that we don't have so i just wanted to remind people besides how reform-minded she is that this is one of the reasons why she wants this mou so i'll call myself here and then i see bob was popped up as well excuse me i'm not not feeling my best my voice is a little scratchy um so now i appreciate the the passionate testimony from the public tonight and the concerns that were raised um and i

[299:01] also um appreciate uh the importance of uh you know a coordinated response with the federal government to the the many and varied and dangerous um extremist threats within our community or within our society to our community uh with the examples being from just this morning of the the individual near cu and the university hill elementary school and of course last year at king super shootings and the many other possible threats in our in our with the level of violence and extremism we have in our community so i i feel like um you know the matter of of close coordinations with those extremely dangerous real threats is really important um but i also understand the concerns um about you know how this uh something like this could produce undesirable results in terms of targeting you know

[300:00] marginalized communities and activists that would not be something that our um our community our council or or or i believe our police force would want to target and so my my question would be i've heard some ideas uh for uh changes um that we could add in you know some targeted changes to the mou that could assuage some of those concerns like for example uh adding in a clause that said that the boulder police department personnel would continue to be bound by boulder police department policies which maris i heard you loud and clear that you asserted that but i don't believe it's currently written into the agreement um so that's that's one thought i'll maris i'll come back to you in a minute here but another thing that i heard was about specifying there's one person involved in the in the task force specifically um i heard a question about uh getting information on activities and

[301:00] i think maybe there's some specific data that might not be available but i'll just offer the the question of uh might be possible to get like an annual report that you know talks about the activities that the joint task force was involved in so that the council and maybe there's a the public version that has the most information republicans and maybe we get a little bit extra details the council if there's a little bit of privileged information that only we should see or something like that and and then the um so i guess those are a few ideas so you know that's potentially a direction that we could go in um so i'll just stop there for a moment mary's did you want to have any response to that yes those are all reasonable and i would support those thanks for that and and so then well but bob hasn't spoken yet but i i i do want to hear from everybody at least once if they want to speak um but i'm going to come back to the council to then try to get out like a straw poll of different general areas we

[302:01] might go in uh to try to bring this discussion to you know a close whether it's prove deny you know send to communities or whatever it is to find the world council um here in a minute um so i'll go on to bob rachel's better hands up and and then um i would love to be able to put those options out to the council and see what direction we'd like to go in thanks aaron um well first i'll just i'll just say that with the with the exchange that aaron and the chief just had i i would support the agreement with those changes that that that aaron suggested and others such as justin and the chief has agreed to um i do agree with mark that sending this out to other residents because that's all they really are right other residents to take a look at um doesn't make a whole lot of sense they have no expert more expertise in policing than we do they're all residents that were appointed by us to help us out [Music] this is an agreement that probably didn't need to come to us we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of

[303:00] agreements teresa could probably go figure it out that um get it signed every year by the city that don't come to city council um this is one that probably didn't need to come to city council um it's fine that it did it's fine that we had a like the public hearing and discussion tonight but at the end of the day um our police chief is somebody who we hired to protect our community and where i come from um you either trust your staff or you get new staff i haven't heard anybody tonight say they don't trust the chief or her team so our chief tells us we need this agreement to keep our community safe i'm going to believe that and so with the changes that aaron and the chief just discussed i would vote in favor of approving this agreement even though we probably didn't need to approve it rachel nicole um i was just going to suggest that

[304:00] maybe if we wanted to get some community input we could incorporate it into the reimagining policing efforts i think one way we could do this if i'm understanding it correctly we can opt out of this agreement like pretty easily so i imagine we can amend it pretty easily if we wanted so i would propose that we consider maybe um getting the revised agreement and voting on that one you know with the i don't know that we want to vote tonight on an mlu that has not been revised but if we can get the revisions that it sounds like uh there's buy-in for that you mentioned aaron and then maybe ask the tara and i as the reimagining policing subcommittee to add in input here and if the you know community has helpful feedback then we can uh bring it back or chief harold can bring it back uh and we can look at amending agreement but i i think that in terms of like bang for our buck for um police reform spending

[305:03] a ton of community outreach on a position that's going to be 16 hours a week one person is not what i have in mind personally for digging into local police reform honestly like i i think we can do a lot as a city and i just don't know that this is the place where where we want to just invest all of our time and energy and frankly money to do engagement so i think we should be thinking more broadly this is um a a very focused thing that i think we can still get input on but probably move forward and amend us necessary with the changes thanks nicole menchini yeah i'm just kind of as a quick read erin um i i don't think this is something that i can support without input from communities that are not represented on this zoom screen um that that is sort of my my biggest concern that we've heard from people in our community um tonight through emails

[306:00] i mean through just reading reading a history book um they've they've been terrorized by law enforcement right and and chief harold i don't mean this anything personal against you um it's really this is kind of the place where people are coming from right and without having some of those um those folks who have been in that position or from communities that have been in that position represented in this decision i think it is a big deal right because we're talking about keeping people safe in our community and we've got some of the most vulnerable communities within boulder who are telling us this doesn't make them feel safe if anything it makes them feel less safe and i think we need to listen to that and i don't think it needs to be a years long process but the um juni you know you mentioned the the um human relations commission uh the overheard sorry i'm sorry you didn't mention that someone else did uh but the

[307:00] oversight task force these are places that already have some of the folks who could weigh in on this and so you know i don't i don't see it as sort of farming things out committing to die a slow death we don't have the expertise among us to the proportion that some of these other groups do and i think we just really need to recognize that we are coming from a certain perspective in making our decisions it's not representative of everybody in our community and when we have people telling us that they don't feel safe we need to listen to that so i would be a short version comfortable moving forward but i'd really love to get some impact input from some of the communities that are telling us they don't feel safe thanks nicole genie hello everyone um so here's my thought i was listening

[308:00] to rachel and my thought was first if i remember correctly the police master plan subcommittee's process and i'm not sure this discussion that we're having tonight is process i think delving into this particular mou feels more like substance than it would be process in a way rachel um but yeah i think i'm still in the same position with nicole i do believe the task force would be a a really good place to get that community input and and and you know here's my thought or my comment to what mark said something about you know taking it to committees to have a slow death or death by a thousand cut if it is so be it if really people who are part of the human rights commission or human relations commission and the oversight task force look into this and say this is not good for a community and it would harm people

[309:01] then so be it if that's really really what ended up happening and they said that and they said we should not move forward we should not move forward with it so that's where i am when it comes to this particular discussion i'm still in the same position that we definitely need more community engagement and and i understand you're saying 16 hours then if 16 hours is not such a oh what's the word a large amount of time then why have it at all so we somehow we find this to be something that is important that that is crucial to our community and it deserves the amount of community engagement like anything else that is important to us exchange bob and then i'm hoping to pull council on the next steps yeah i was going to make a motion you can go do a poll if you prefer to do that um aaron i was i was going to move that we approve the agreement subject to the the revisions that you and maris discussed well bob i was i was hoping if you don't mind to take a step of just to kind of

[310:00] get a straw poll on the direction that council's interested in going before we get to the motion but oh that's fine do whatever pull you on i'm just trying to move as long as eleven o'clock weeks to get a lot of work to do that's that's my that's my intention too i just that i i see um i see four options broadly speaking um that we could deny it tonight we could approve it without amendments we could approve it with amendments which we could talk about what those amendments are or we could send it out to further community input processes um and so just wanted to get people's um interest in those different do does anybody else have a different option that they would see besides the sport okay so so not not seeing any can i just get it like a straw poll does anybody want to turn this down tonight like flat not really seeing it so um how about approve with without any amendments is that anybody's preferred

[311:01] approach i'm not seeing so much so how about uh the so that leaves us really with the approve of the amendments are sent out to the committee for further input so what's generally people's thoughts on approving uh with amendments tonight that's probably where i am i'm seeing probably six people who want to go in that direction and then i'll just so it sounds like the the going out to the community for additional input you'll want to raise your hand who would prefer that approach okay well thanks for walking through that with us um so it sounds like we have a majority is interested in looking at an amended version of the mou tonight so um i had offered i put out three potential amendments and wanted to see if anybody wanted to offer any other possible things for for tonight

[312:00] and uh let's see marcus your hand raised and i got mad oh my my hand is coming down okay thanks aaron i i'm not and i don't want to try to delay this longer but i do want to honor what what the chief said that she said earlier that there were some changes that she also wanted to make and i wanted to give her a chance to see if if there are some amendments that we want to put on is anything that the chief also wants to maybe add to those amendments that you brought up erin a little earlier just to make sure that if it's all done it's got it's been given oxygen and there's a package there but i just want to give the chief a chance to to give those if she has some specificity there thanks matt um i talked to great length with jen frazier and the fbi today trying to shore up what i was concerned about and i feel confident that what we discussed tonight will shore up my concerns and i i just appreciate everybody's comments tonight thank you i got another thing but nicole go ahead

[313:02] i just wanted to ask if this is the sort of thing where the racial equity tool might apply um with regard to you know thinking about engagement on this so i just wanted to put that out there that that we do have this tool that i think is meant to be used on thinking about engagements and things i may be misunderstanding it yep i'll step in and say hey i appreciate the conversation right like i think nicole mentioned earlier holding two truths right like what community is saying and years of historic mistrust with frankly a chief who i trust and is trying her best to make sure that we are getting intelligence as quickly as we can to safeguard our community and just appreciate all the sentiments of support to her and her judgment because i too believe that we have a chief for a reason and we trust that moving forward without discounting the lived

[314:00] experience of others whether it's this community or historically with law enforcement agencies to the racial equity tool i'll say that certainly it is a tool it has not been used in all the policies because people are still being trained on it and so it is not a tool that has been applied in this particular instance but in the future it is precisely that tool that is intended to apply to the policies and the decisions that we make as we move forward um and i think that it is uh it will be a really good use and an instrument as we um get more sophisticated in the use of that but that is frankly one of the goals for this year's uh ratio in the work plan is to make sure we're broadening the use of that racial equity tool as we move forward if i could just suffer thank you for that if i can just offer an additional thought i want to pick up on rachel's comment about the reimagine policing effort so junior you get a good point

[315:01] that this there's the process subcommittee that this is not appropriate for but the the overall effort itself is about um is about putting together the police master plan and um and with a great deal of outreach to the community and i think this would be a great topic to have as part of that discussion you know so it could it could be part of that um one of the things that gets talked about is that master plan gets finalized do you feel like that's something that could become a topic on that process yes i do can i just clarify that aaron in terms of what i was suggesting agreed it is a process and i appreciate very much judy making that distinction but i was suggesting that tara and i could take it back and say we want to you know incorporate process around asking those questions and then part of what process subcommittee usually does i think is schedule when things come back to council so if we wanted to to take that out for

[316:00] uh incorporating some of those questions and surveys and things that were given to the community i think that this subcommittee could um could do that or it can go a different way but i think people are already getting together to talk about policing and feelings around that and thoughts and suggestions so it seems like it could happen pretty easily there and i'll just say and then i'll give you tara that to me that that's a way of incorporating additional community feedback into this question we are doing this you know overall consideration of the police master plan um and it's a way to get additional committee feedback and this is an mmu that that we are allowed to revoke or amend in the future should recommendations come back that we should do so sorry i wanted to just say lauren first of all thank you for that comment it made me consider and i want you to repeat the comment you made about me by the way i wanted to repeat to the advocate

[317:01] community that spoke tonight that i really do care about what you feel and i believe in you and although you know i might have a different way of looking at things i care about what you say i care about your feelings and i care about the injustices as well so rachel and i will work really hard as we're both together on this uh committee to really uphold the values of boulder thanks so not seeing any other hands um i think maybe we can come back to bob um you made a motion before we can i i move that we approve the agreement subject to the amendments and i don't need to i don't need to see the agreement again or the exact language but subject to the conceptual amendments that aaron and the chief discussed a few moments ago that's my motion

[318:00] second okay we have a motion a second do we've talked about this a lot do we have any uh further thoughts rachel sorry i'll be very quick i would like to see it i i again though um i i agree it's subject but we've had a lengthy discussion and i'm guessing especially people who voted you know would like to see it and make sure that those changes are in there so i will understand how that works i will ensure that happens rachel just a clarification rachel do you want to see it before we finally approve it or just want to see this information point after it gets signed i don't know what the protocol needs to be i just want to make sure that the that it's incorporated in the way that i think we're intending it to be incorporated well let me let me amend my motions if marketable second i move that we authorize the chief and the rest of the city staff to enter into an agreement um informing content similar to what was in the council packet save for the amendments that were discussed between

[319:01] aaron and the chief a few moments ago i would propose that um we not vote in my motion that we would not need to see the agreement again but we would ask that the chief or someone from mario staff send us the agreement after it's finalized just as an information item it is a terminal agreement so if we hate it we can come back and call that back up and say listen we hated what you wrote it wasn't what aaron said um and and we want to revisit this but i don't really want to revisit this again because i think that the suggestions that aaron and the chief made are good ones and i trust um good lawyers will write down faithfully what they said so i'd like to see it approved tonight if mark would second that motion i will second it again so so what i'm hearing is that we would see it again but we would not reapprove it so rachel does that get to your question i guess so i mean i i think we are assuming that the fbi from their side is going to approve it the way that we've said it and you know

[320:00] i don't know that we can guarantee that so i i just would like the opportunity to review it and uh if if we have to revoke it i guess that's fine that seems a little bit cumbersome so i haven't i think as as uh my colleague mark wallick said i don't think we usually see these so i don't think we've done this exact discussion or i don't know what the protocols need to be i would like to see it if it's helpful i will ensure that what is said will get into it or i will not put us into the mou agreement thanks and teresa can you just say it sounds like from the motion like it that the demo you would need to include those amendments right so that we would not be author we would not be approving it if it did not include those uh yes that's right mayor in order for you ultimately to sign as um as authorized by council all of those amendments would need to be incorporated into the agreement absent those you

[321:01] would not have councils backing or authority to sign on behalf of the city [Music] all right uh any last things uh tear your hands up is that an old hand hold on okay uh i think alicia i think is this a roll call vote that i see yes sir it is are we ready to vote so i'm not seeing any other hands raised all right we will start with council member weiner starting with me oh i approve this i'm sorry my just say yes that's all you need yes thank you yes yes yes yes benjamin

[322:06] all right unmuted sorry yes mayor brockett yes councilmember fawkert no mayor pro tem friend yes i'm sorry i didn't hear you yes okay thank you councilmember joseph now spear no and wallach yes sir the mou with the fbi and the voted police department is hereby approved with the vote of six to three all right well everyone i know that that discussion got to some of our core values as a community and and i really

[323:00] appreciate the the detailed discussion of those um so thanks to everyone the community members who showed up departmental members who talked to us through it in the council discussion and uh teresa are you going to tell us that we need to make a motion to continue the meeting i guess that's exactly right mayor and wanted to remind you that it requires a two-thirds majority vote to continue the meeting past 11 p.m thanks and before we do that just a time check we got the the downtown station update we've had garrett who's just sat here for hours waiting for us patiently and thank you for that carrot as well as the board and commission update uh i you know while it would be great to to be done i won't really want to honor garrett's time and give the chance to make the update if council is willing so if somebody somebody can disagree but uh maybe someone could make a motion to extend the meeting i move to continue the meeting i second uh all in favor

[324:03] looks like at least six of us are willing we do it right uh garrett you win the the patience award uh tell us about the downtown boulder station update all right and but maybe the quicker version i'll just say see okay i'm uh okay there we go hello my name is garrett slater i'm the principal transportation projects engineer for the transportation and mobility department and i will very succinctly provide you with an informational update about the downtown boulder station gate expansion project

[325:02] okay let's see there we go so the background and purpose of the project is to increase capacity of the station the uh the expansion of the regional routes along state highway 119 and highway 7 are contingent upon our ability to be able to provide additional capacity at the station and so we have a project that's consistent with providing the fulfillment of the northwest area mobility study also known with an acronym as nams to provide the capacity needed to support that regional lo as well as local service and the project will provide five additional gates as well as provide increased comfort and safety and way finding for users of the the transit service out at the downtown station and comply with the ada act so the existing condition conditions at the station are such that uh the number

[326:01] of routes served at the station are equal to um uh and the the union station in denver uh however it's happening and a footprint that's about half the size so uh the demand is more prominent here than uh than it is in just about anywhere within the the denver service area of rtd and so uh there's in adequate bus service uh uh uh our excuse me gates to accommodate the service that's desired and so what we'd like to do is uh expand the the gates on 14th street comparable to what we have on 14th street north of canyon however where 14th street north of canyon is a transit only street the the street that's being proposed south of canyon would have both vehicle as well as transit service and this is a graphic that depicts what we are uh proposing and this is an outcome of the

[327:02] 2017 canyon complete street study the uh then there was also a downtown station feasibility study and it was also identified in the 2019-2020 transportation master plan action plan as an effort to move forward and what you can see here is that there are five additional gates three on the east side of 14th street and two on the west side of 14th street and in order to accommodate this this would entail the elimination of 18 single vehicle parking spaces parallel parking spaces on 14th street no off street parking would be removed it also entails the enhancement of providing ticketing kiosks bench and shelters as well as wayfinding opportunities and as well providing a mid-block crossing that aligns with the white rock ditch also known as the boulder slough it's the same path that extends eastward from the

[328:00] tea house path so we are working currently in coordination with rtd to develop the design which will move forward in a seep and the budget for this project comes from funds both from rtd as well as federal grant funds that were provided via the last transportation improvement program grant fund opportunity through dr cogg and also comes with city matching funds of nearly four hundred thousand dollars so as noted this project will undergo a seep which is the the process that we subject our capital improvement projects to to make sure that they are consistent with the ideals and objectives and goals of the boulder valley comp plan as well as the transportation master plan and because the um the implementation of five gates on 14th street is fairly straightforward to uh to make sure that this process was genuine we didn't see it necessary to

[329:03] create a whole bunch of alternatives um that weren't really uh feasible so we are proposing that the concept will be compared against a no build option and so that's how we'll develop the seep that will then be carried forward to tab and ultimately for a council later this year we have already had an information session uh back in the fall and what we heard is that it's important to provide safety for older high school students in the area if we're providing gates there we expect that the the student traffic along 14th street will increase from what it is today and also heard that it's important to provide amenities along 14th street as well as extending the the white rock pack uh ditch multi-use path uh to provide connectivity uh toward the uh the section that was built recently uh 15th street and along the liquor mart along the section that they'll be constructing we've also heard that

[330:00] the there's a desire to provide safer pedestrian crossings were possible across arapahoe as well as canyon and also heard some concerns about parking and accessibility to the farmers market on on wednesday and evenings and saturday mornings if we're eliminating parking what that might mean in terms of access so we will be holding some additional stakeholder engagement meetings with all these entities as the the design develops so our next steps is to continue community engagement this this spring and then move forward with a seep recommendation and bring that into uh city council later this summer and then after the approval of the seat work on the final design and approvals and then get into construction by fall of 2023 and that is the uh the overview of the uh the project so i'm happy to answer any questions you might have

[331:00] thanks so much for that carrot that's a great explanation of the plans in the process uh questions or comments we got one from bob hey garrett thanks for staying at you probably learning more about policing than you could ever have learned but thanks for hanging there with us uh just a really quick question uh thanks for that great presentation thanks for being prompted um can you expand a little bit more on how um the planning around this will um coordinate with any playing that we're going to do around the east book and as you know we're going to we're developing these book and i i know that this won't interfere with that or or or prevent or foreclose advancements but do you see any type of um interaction between the city transportation department rtd and and the folks in the city staff that will be kind of envisioning with that um that block immediately to the west where the buses will park um we'll come together yes we actually have had a couple of meetings with the planning and development services department uh about this project and how we can integrate the enhancements that we are looking at

[332:01] uh and to any of the land use planning that they've um are considering for the east book in thanksgiving so you got nicole yeah just a quick question um first i'm super excited about this i love moving toward a more public transit oriented future um this is great um so i was just hearing this week about rtd service cuts funding issues that they're having does any of this impact that project at all that is an interesting um situation that we're in um in fact uh there was some discussion as a department as and with tab as to whether this project should even carry forward given the significant uh reductions and ridership as well as service that's being offered by rtd our thought is that um that that the demand for this service it might have waned a bit here in this cobit

[333:01] period but it's likely to return and whether that service is delivered by rtd or by some other agency or entity the demand is likely to be there and that we should carry the project forward to be consistent with our overall transportation master plan goals and when we have had conversations with rtd also because frankly there are a number of challenges operationally with having gates on both the east and the west side and we have explored with them uh potentially only implementing gates on one side of the street their long-range planners were adamant that we needed these five gates um immediate as soon as we can get them so um that uh i think speaks to their uh their vision of the near-term needs great thank you and thank you for this presentation tear than one garrett thank you so much for being here for so long and forgive me if you

[334:01] answered this question already i'm trying really hard to focus it's pretty late uh is this going to in any way affect the parking lot that is right near this building we're not going to lose that are we or no there will be no impacts to the parking lot that the city owns there might be some slight reconfiguration of the driveway entrance but no no loss of parking is anticipated oh good because i i use that lot so that's important to me just lauren yeah i just wanted to say thank you i think that these design enhancements particularly the addition of green space in that area is going to be a huge improvement um and given tree canopy for heat island effect and air quality um and sort of the demographics of bus ridership and all of that i think that

[335:00] this is absolutely something that we should move forward with and i look forward to seeing it constructed thank you thank you yeah now i'll just uh add in echo what lauren and others have said looks like a great plan and we do need to get out ahead of this increasing brt that we're looking forward to bringing into downtown over the next few years from along 119 and state highway 7 and so great to see this this planning move forward and you know one of these days we're going to get through the pandemic and transit ridership is going to come back up but it's a critical tool for our community and climate transportation everything else so and uh yeah seeing nobody else just huge thanks again for sticking with us and for all your work on this project and erica also i see you here thanks for being here and talking this through with us thank you for your interest in your comments absolutely okay well we got got a couple things left i just want to see if these uh can

[336:00] wait a week or not one of them is uh talking about the march 22nd meeting or not in what we do then is that something that we could talk over at the study session next week with that timing work it certainly could mayor and in fact it might work best because we're um still ascertaining um some of the family's wishes and they've asked for just a little time to think about what they really want to do moving forward so that's a critically important piece of this decision and process so if as long as nobody disagrees we'll move that to next week and um the one other one is the boards and commissions update um turn learn do you want to tackle that tonight or do we want to wait a week i think we have to do tonight because of the timing that makes sense to me as well but i wanted to

[337:00] i know that tara you're not feeling the best and i didn't want to push you into it that's all right maybe i'll be really funny i want the i want people to enjoy this next part so i'm going to give it all i can we're gonna end on a fun note yes we will boards and commissions interview yay okay should i start yeah okay okay here i go let me just move this so i can read my screen all right welcome all to our presentation for the hopefully hopefully new and improved method for boards and commissions interviews and appointments thank you to taylor pam and all the staff that work with lauren and i to be to come up with these new ideas but since this is something new i we imagine it might not go 100 smoothly as no new implementation does so if we think of it as a pilot program to be improved in future years that might be good in the in the spring or summer of this

[338:00] year lauren and i are going to present some more exciting changes to boards and commissions but for the sake of the deadlines are under we're only going to concentrate tonight on the interview and appointment processes for right now and i think pam lauren and i will take any questions at the end if there are any questions because it might be like midnight so there might not be any questions all right slide one board and commission interview proposal okay move on to slide two okay slide two so instead of me reading this slide i'm sure you're able to read it yourself without my help so i am going to summarize the summary so february 21st is the application deadline for those that are applying for the boards and commissions february 24th is when the interviewing schedule scheduling poll will be sent out to applicants but this year we're going to do some things differently if it's okay with council the week of february 28th we would have individual 15-minute zoom interviews

[339:00] which would include one applicant two council members and one staff member from the particular department per interview and so how it would work is staff would randomly pick two of us together two of us counsel people per board so for instance let's say lauren and i get chosen to do the interviews for the parks and rec board we would do all of the interviews for the parks and rec boards board and so lauren and i would ask two questions i'm using us as an example and that same question would be for all the parks and rec applicants and it will be predetermined by staff the applicant can ask a question as well so that's why we want a staff member there so from that particular department so they can answer that question and all the interviews would be recorded and then our march 8th we'll have council assessments and nominations and the city council members assigned to the particular boards would so for instance let's say lauren and i um we would be doing parks we would bring forth a nomination

[340:01] and any other city council member can also bring forth their nominations as the city council will be able to watch the taped interviews which will be hopefully finished according to pam the friday before the weekend of march 5th and then on march 15th we finalized the nomination so now let's look at the slides because taylor worked really hard on them so that's why we're doing it slide number three february 21st application deadline if you guys want to all take a second to read it city clerk's office to review applications to ensure basic qualifications are met and identify any disqualified applicants and excuse me if i'm reading it wrong slide four february 24th interview scheduling poll to be sent out council pairs would be assigned randomly but just so you know fyi there there will be we won't know till then how many people are going to apply for each board so the council people we

[341:01] will divide the ones with the a great amount of applicants versus the one with less applicants so we all have the equal amount of work and we estimate each council pair to be responsible for about three to four boards and commissions depending on the volume of the applications okay lauren take it away slide five long one okay so um the idea is that these two council members and a staff member would individually interview so one interviewee at a time and again about 15 minute interviews um so the idea is that we would add that the council members would ask two questions um provided in advance and that the candidate would also have an opportunity to ask questions probably of the staff

[342:00] member to try and sort of build that you know better understanding of what they're signing up for and everything there's also um so one of the things that came up is sort of where the questions might come from so we would we're sort of proposing that staff would um come up with a list of questions and then we we had two options for how that gets narrowed down one is you know me and tara could pick the two council people appointed to that board or commission could pick or we could also provide the applicants with more than just two questions and we could let them decide what question they wanted to answer from a short list i i'm leaning towards this last one in terms of my preference just because then people get to highlight the thing that

[343:01] they are most excited about or you know that they feel like um might be most important to counsel you you know you get you get more than just their answer you get the sense of what they think they should um tell you about themselves so but the downside to that is you don't get sort of this everyone answering the same questions all of these recordings would then be provided to all of council next slide um and so those recordings would be provided around the 5th and the 8th we would have our discussion where um people would nominate the candidates that they would like from the board so the people who did the interviews would um nominate people and then any additional council members could also

[344:01] nominate people but wouldn't necessarily have to at the end of the eight our meeting on the eighth we will have a list of all the nominated candidates for each board and that will will you go to the next slide allow us to watch the video make sure everyone has time to watch the videos for all of the nominated candidates and then have our public hearing and final vote on the march 15th meeting so that means that we have to have the week of february 28th pretty flexible for all of those um individual meetings that we're going to have the app with the applicants and also the weekend of march 5th that's going to be a big meeting for us to be able to watch uh all of us that want to watch any um any interviews besides the ones we're involved in will need that weekend to really spend a

[345:01] lot of time doing that but also on the good part is let's say me and lauren have been doing parks we don't have to watch those interviews because we were there so that's some less interviews that we need to watch and when lauren and i bring forth our uh let's say we say i like joe and lawrence and she likes sally we can either agree on the applicant that we bring forth on march 8th or we can just have two separate applicants and then of course if matt says i like sam he can bring that forth on march 8th as well however many of you want to watch those interviews of the most important uh commissions and boards to you where you where you're the most interested or most invested then you you can do that as well and then we're all involved okay did i say that right lauren yes that was great we were also interested in having the videos be available to the boards and commissions you know the section of interviews related to that board and commission so

[346:00] that they could potentially watch them and make um recommendations to if they wished to to counsel just you know they could write an email saying this board i'm a member of this board and i'd really love this person to get nominated whatever thoughts questions concerns first i'll say thanks for putting together this creative proposal for doing things differently with our words and commissions i really appreciate that lauren and tara we got a bunch of comments or questions bob jenny matt nicole rachel well first of all sort of by saying thank you to lauren and tara i think this is a great improvement over what we have done historically i think the questions will be more thoughtful i think that time spent with the candidates will be more meaningful uh and i think we'd all rather do three or four sets of interviews rather than 20 sets of interviews um the two i'd like to make two suggestions or two slight modifications one

[347:01] if staff can um qualify the candidates a little faster than three days um we have applications rolling in right now and they can be qualifying those as they roll in they don't wait till all the applications are in to qualify people historically we've had far fewer than 10 percent of the applicants not qualified it's usually just two or three or four people that don't realize they live outside the city limits so if staff can be qualifying applications that come in i realize that a lot of people wait to the last minute and so maybe half or two-thirds of the applications may not come until the 20th 21st i realize it'll be a mad scramble but if we could get assigned people assigned our respective boards and get going on the interviews sooner or later would be great because i think you've only allowed us five days to do all these interviews from monday through the 28th the next day is march 1 and we're supposed to be done by march 4th or 5th so that's probably not enough time we may have some council members run available we may

[348:00] have some applicants who are unavailable so i'd suggest as soon as staff can release applications to a couple of council members on the 22nd or 23rd so we all can get going that would be great it doesn't have to be all at once we would have to wait for all 20 20 boards to be qualified and all 20 boards to be assigned we can just do them serial 22nd 23rd 24th the second suggestion i would like to make is that um and i see lucious popped up so she probably is going to tell me why but i just said does it make sense um staff can help us with that second thing i'd like to suggest is well i like the idea of getting a preview of recommendations on the eighth um i don't think we should limit the people who are actually nominated to those that are mentioned out a lot of these for a couple reasons first of all it's a study session so we can i'm not sure we can even really nominate people um but but but i'd love to hear the recommendations of the interviewers about who they interviewed if they're done with the interviews but i can see some of that slipping beyond the eighth i could see other council members

[349:01] wanting to add names there's always lobbying that happens in the past we we nominate and vote on the very same night so you've just taken like seven minutes of reflection and turned into seven days of reflection so that's great but i wouldn't foreclose the possibility that if two interviewers recommend um a couple people for a boarded commission i wouldn't foreclose other council members from during that week or even the night of the voting from nominating somebody else so i wouldn't want to close out nominations at night but i'd love to hear recommendations those are my two suggestions alicia did you want to add something enter yeah excuse me sorry about that everyone yes i just wanted to clarify that process as far as the processing of the applications uh john and i are working on them on a daily basis as they come in to make sure we verify if those applicants are eligible or not eligible verifying app you know the addresses and things like that so that's not a process

[350:00] that we wait till the end of the you know the close the application recruitment period to do so we're constantly doing that on a daily bas basis checking applications downloading them making sure they're pdf and also making sure that they're redacted and all that information is correct before we put the packet together so once they do close we'll be ready to go just wanted to make sure you guys know we want to absolutely as as always thank you trying to keep it all together sir so i just want to give you that assurance that it's not going to be a last-minute thing trust me thanks junie matt nicole rachel thank you aaron i have a few questions who's going to do the recording and uploads for us sorry staff okay so i'm trying to understand so

[351:00] for instance you mentioned the parks board or the transportation boards let's say me and lauren i get the transportation board so i would have to coordinate with staff to get that recorded and then they would figure out where it goes so that everyone has access to it yeah yeah go ahead lauren sorry so they're gonna look at sort of the number of applicants we get for each board and try and break it up so that basically all all council members are doing about the same number of total interviews then and they're going to ask for our availability during that week and then they're going to schedule um work with your schedule and the interviewee's schedule to try and find um the times to do the recordings okay and i do have another question i think my question is around that

[352:02] i'm wondering if this particular process of this way of doing things facilitate things for staff or does it make it i think that's a question to to noria or to um johnson alicia alicia um to answer if that somehow makes it easier uh this go this process the way it's done this year will be doing this year as opposed to the way it was done last year i appreciate the question junior and i'll defer to alicia and pam have been working closely with the council members on the topic somebody want to jump in there well i was just going to say right now i'll go ahead and start but right now i i'm not sure if it's going to be easier or not i think what we're looking for is what's easier and best for you in order for you to make the best decision

[353:02] in the short amount of time that we have allocated for this process uh we won't know if it'll be easier or more difficult until after we try it because again it is a pilot but i think just having that uh combined um effort to get it done in at different times versus making sure we have the list ready and rushing through the interviews i think that part will make it easier for all of us all the way around we are in this process and i think lauren and tara alluded to this in the intro it's a bit of an experiment um we are trying to balance between making the interview process as accessible to our residents as possible to become part of our boards and commissions as a stated goal of counsel in our racial equity plan and on the other hand recognizing the limitations of schedules timelines all of that and so this this effort

[354:00] each interview will be supported by a staff member and so we anticipate a combination of our engagement team members as well as each board and commission at this point does have a trained zoom facilitator that those folks will be on hand in some combination based on schedules to be able to support the process as it moves forward okay thank you for that and i think my last question is um i'm having a hard time understanding the nomination process and i think maybe that might be a question to all the council members here and my experience and i want to talk a little bit about my experience on the um reimagining policing i remember either last year or two years ago when i was on it i don't remember the timeline correctly and when bob and i had to choose the two community members who had to be on this board there were some questions that these

[355:02] people were not picked fairly somehow me and bob just colluded to make uh to pick people we want or friends or people who we are lied to so my question maybe to all of you here who are council members how will you ensure that people get a fair chance in a fair process because i think that's something that i believe when i first got on council that rachel has mentioned a few times that sometimes um these nomination processes gets to be very very political i've done my best to just listen to people and try to get you know people that i based on the application and i'm sure all of you can do the same as well and look at the application process neutrally and try to get the best person for the job but how do you ensure that when it's only two people picking do you want me to answer can i yeah

[356:01] go ahead lauren so um the intention is not that those are the only two people picking it's just that those are the people who are guaranteed to have watched all of those interviews so any other council person and you know i would recommend that people do watch more than just what they get assigned to but um any other council person can make additional recommendations it's not just those two people who are tied to making recommendations we all can make recommendations for any of the boards or commissions the idea was in separating sort of the nomination process from the final vote was so that it would give everyone time to make sure and watch um the interviews for everyone who's nominated because maybe

[357:00] you know you're the crazy person who doesn't care about parks and boulder and you're just like i'm not gonna watch any of those um and but then you know there's three different people recommended and you might not have had enough interest to watch all of the interviews but maybe enough to to make sure that you're gonna um watch those three so that you can vote smartly let me stay on that oh okay go ahead rachel go i'll wait till you except i i want to know when colloquy became a verb is kawaki a verb i just let's focus and wrap up guys rachel well yeah since juni mentioned my name and i did have this down as one of my concerns i thought maybe i'd jump in and i also appreciate the the um creative thinking here but i do

[358:02] i guess i would just say something doesn't quite sit right with us pre-vetting for each other and i don't know if it's for the reasons you know juni has described that i also had with the police master plan and it was just that i see that as part of our job as each of us um vetting everything independently so it seems like on sort of both sides of that from the community member side like it's a little bit luck of the draw who does your interviews and then there's some pre-screening which is sort of what i feel like i i struggle with when we do that i think we're all supposed to independently evaluate and then from the other side like what if i don't want to nominate anyone like what if i don't really want that job of making a recommendation one of the two people like sometimes i don't have a you know uh i don't want to nominate somebody for every board and so i get that's that's we would be stepping into that but sometimes there are like for any given board i think people who are more or less passionate about that board and maybe

[359:00] make more sense to um make the nominations and and so i i don't know there's i don't know if it's if it's better or worse but something's not quite sitting right with it and i don't know if there's a way to change it so how about just okay well how about and this is a good question maybe we don't maybe the people that are doing the interviews don't have to necessarily nominate anybody that just means that somebody better watch those interviews now okay well or that we and again i don't want it's not it's not my turn yet but i think maybe we should all have to watch all of them like that that that is part of our job and and that that was something that we all did previously and um i get the advantage to to not doing it for sure but um i think to to i don't know it seems like we sort of owe it to people who are applying to to give everyone a fair shot from each nine of our perspectives that's fine with me it doesn't matter

[360:01] whatever the wisdom of counsel is for sure i will say that when i you know i i applied for a lot of boards matt so did you all right um so what i what i saw was let's say you were the first board to um go up let's say there was like five people sitting there times two nights in a row and then three nights later you're overwhelmed how many people did you listen to do you really remember the first people you listened to so in a way this is better because you could actually study each person as opposed to like hoping that you stood out at the very first uh interview uh the very first interviews you know and i think often of introverts because my family i'm a huge extrovert my family's introvert so how does an introvert who's really qualified stand out that's what i always say because thanks to my kids and to my husband who were so um but i appreciate that and i'm fine

[361:00] and i'm sure lauren right is and pam that everybody listens to them or listens to most of them i don't know other thoughts anyone rachel's thoughts maybe we can give other folks a chance to come through their concerns rachel did you want to bring up another point or we can hear from everybody else and then come back to it i do have one more point but i'm behind matt and nicole so i'll wait my turn all right let's do matt nicole and then rachel nolan thanks erin and uh big thanks to tara and lauren for putting this together um changing a process that's been long-standing like this in our community takes uh takes quite a bit of thought so i appreciate you guys sinking your teeth into this um and the fact that it you know it's a pilot we're gonna give this a shot i'm okay not having to perfectly parse out every single nuance things are subject to change probably on the back side as we learn what works and what doesn't um so i like where we're headed this can be a good thing to try

[362:01] um and i like the flexibility i will just sort of bring up an issue and i'm not sure what the historical precedent is for this but regarding current boards and commissions weighing in or giving recommendations has that something we've invited boards and commissions existing ones to do in the past is that sort of an unwritten faux pas or is that welcome so i would just love some more information about that um and maybe i'll stop with that question um and then i do have two little processed things that i'd like to plant a seed on uh for maybe a future conversation but just plant it while i got the mic so if there's an answer to the boards and commissions weighing in i'd love to know what the president is i'll just say somebody's been around for a while i i think the answer is no i haven't heard it come up before uh somebody can correct me i don't think that i've heard that idea come up in the last 11 years or so i've been watching these things this is where i usually rely on chris our resident historian but i believe his answer would be no as well

[363:02] all right well i mean given that there's not one either way yeah i'm okay with that um either way so uh just real quick i want to plant two processed seeds and we're gonna get the process in june but since we're talking boards and commissions it's a specific process regarding it and it really centers around one um maybe just thinking about us creating actually some guided work plans for boards and commissions um we got some boards that are over achieving and are on point others seem like they're kind of drifting a little um and some maybe a little too focused on on things that aren't necessarily their focus so i think maybe thinking about how we can help ourselves as council refine some of their work to get into some alignment and keep them sort of on that general task and then also it's been brought up by a few folks but thinking about a council liaison um to these boards might be a helpful way to kind of maintain some of that synergy uh between ourselves and those boards going forward and creating that constant check-in so just want to plant the seed process obviously no decision made but i don't want to wait necessarily june since we're going to be appointing these brand

[364:00] new boards some of these might be things we want to have in place pretty early on in a new board's tenure um so and just plant the seed out for everyone and if there's process to discuss later on i welcome that thank you what's that nicole rachel vaughn thank you um thank you tara pam lauren for coming up with this um pilot idea um i i'm i'm really intrigued by it and i'm eager to try it um and that's sort of where just to echo matt um a bit i i would really just love to try this and you know we kind of see how it goes i see you know having just a couple of us assigned to each board and commission almost like a hiring committee right if this were for any other position you wouldn't necessarily have everybody in the organization or you know even in the department interviewing people right um so um i i think it's it's something to try um and i just want to recognize that we're like one minute away from midnight and lauren and tara and pam put a ton of thought into this when they weren't super tired um so

[365:00] i i just i like the idea of just trying this and you know if we see that it's not effective or if something's happening as we're engaging in it um you know we can maybe make some tweaks without at that point great uh rachel and i i'll offer something my other question was just um how did you land on 15 minutes that's that's seems a lot longer than previous interviews and i think we'll so well we could do ten minutes but at the beginning so just my two concerns for those who do want to watch all the interviews that's going to be a lot of a lot more time than previously it's going to be a lot more time for applicants and it's going to be i would think required more time for staff like if we've tripled the the volume of time that they're doing these interviews and i think one of our goals was to sort of streamline and partly make this easier so just wondering how'd you guys how did you all get to 15 minutes

[366:00] well i'll let pam take this but i will say that it takes a few minutes for people to ask can you hear me so you have to count that in and then we could bring it to 10 minutes pam yeah sure i think no you started it off perfectly you know when we were discussing the trade-offs and we did we sort of said like wait if we get 100 applicants 100 times 15 right that's a lot of minutes total of recordings um the it's this is really a conversation around trade-offs you know the trade-off between the applicant getting one-on-one time with council members and being able to ask a question in response about their service on a border commission versus the trade-off of time of council members uh needing to review based on our current process which is that council members make all of these appointments which i know uh kind of in the back of house is an ongoing conversation about what is the appointment process right for boards and commissions moving forward so that

[367:00] trade-off of um if i'm an individual and and council's feedback at a previous council meeting recently around this process was the group interview uh format is not effective for you all engaging because you ask the same question to eight people by the time you get to the eighth person you've sort of heard the same response eight times and so the idea was to have a more individual setting um just as tara alluded to when you have an individual zoom meeting someone's one minute late you know there's the sound check you ask a question it's to schedule something within a shorter time frame of 15 minutes the group kind of identified like less than that you start to run the risk of um you know five minutes here five minutes there and your whole timeline is off and so the idea of having uh that buffer was important i think to folks um you know i think we we had put we had a more detailed document we were working on and i think the the idea you know

[368:02] could we cluster twos and threes depending on the board i think the hard part of developing a process before we know the candidate pool that we have in front of us for this recruitment period it's a challenge right now we have 19 applicants total across all boards and commissions the deadline is 20 days away again it's a trade-off between the length of the deadline of the application timeline and the deadline that we need to appoint folks by so i think that's that's the issue in front of us and as we talked through those trade-offs this proposal is um what we we resulted in and we're happy to adapt it and we have just shy of three weeks between now and the application deadline to sort of make some adjustments um pam i think if we did 10 minute interviews which would be shorter for the people to watch we'd still have 15 minute blocks because we'd still have the person saying you hear me and then by the time they're done we probably do need five

[369:00] minutes from there till the next person so what about we make 15 minute blocks but only 10 minute interviews what do you think that's what i was thinking dude sarah that it sounds like it you might be able to trim it for the parts that people are watching so i don't know how many minutes are going to be for each question but um that sounds more doable for sure for everyone yeah and i'll agree with that because i was gonna say very similar like that you you people get started you're like okay can you hear me okay uh how are you doing okay pretty good boy sure is snowy out there all right okay we're gonna hit record now boom all right so tell us about yourself right and then at the end you go okay recording off well thanks so much for doing that yeah you're really getting right so you can have the minute or two on either end not be part of what's recorded that the the whole council watches um it could get you down closer to the 10 minutes of recordings i think we could achieve that with some conversation with our engagement support for the interviews on sort of when to

[370:00] hit the button i agree we did have a conversation with the communications department we will not be doing any any sort of editing or cropping of the recordings only because the time intensity of video editing is a whole other ball game and it's not not editing i like the sound of sort of what you just described absolutely yeah great well i'll just just i'll say um it sounds like people are generally interested in this and i really appreciate uh lauren and tara and working with pam and others to put it together i'm hearing still like maybe a little interest in thinking about how we do the nomination process but i i wonder maybe if we can give the green light to proceed tonight with this general approach and then maybe we dial back in in a couple weeks to check in um about exactly how nominations work because that's the one area where i'm hearing some concerns but it is 1205 and i don't feel like we're going to pin it to the ground perfectly tonight yeah you feel about that approach

[371:01] i think that sounds good can i make one plug for like how that sort of fits into our longer range plan real quick the long range plan please do and bob also has his hand up so and matt brought this up having the liaisons to the boards and commissions we're sort of thinking that eventually this fits into that plan where the liaisons to the boards and commissions would be the people doing the interviews for those boards and commission like in future years we just don't have the time right now to kind of go through the political of like appointing who to what and um so so the thinking was like in the future the liaisons to the boards are going to know those boards better they'd have better questions for asking you know and and also since they're going to be the point person that the interviewees would get to meet them and and so that then it sort of starts to make more sense why they would be doing sort of the nominations

[372:01] or the first round of nominations thing very clever bob and jeannie i just if if we're done with this topic i do have one time sensitive issue related boards and commissions that i want to bring up junior has something else on the interview process i'll yield to her genie bob thank you very much um my thought is however we choose to move forward with this maybe we might consider adding a question about when people are available because since this will be based on two on two meetings and i'm mostly available on the weekends and might be available some nights and not all nights and there's no way i can it'll be it'll be very difficult to be available between the nine to five hours so i think having somehow to figure that out before we get the groups of people will

[373:02] be very helpful thank you that's the only thing i wanted to add thanks juni and just before we move on to bob's other thing were people generally okay with what i said about we'll talk a little bit more about nominations later but move forward with this basic approach okay i'm seeing thumbs up okay bob what's your other topic staff just needs direction from us on a particular board which is the boulder urban renewal authority the boulder urban renewal authority is technically a board on paper it has not met since 2014 as a matter of fact we have made an appointment to this board for tara might have been the last person we pointed this board and that was like 2016 or 2017. we haven't appointed anyone to this board for four or five years we technically have five vacancies on the board we haven't filled we haven't received applications or made any appointments for several years um and but we still have it listed as a board and there's applications up there and there may be somebody do busily filling out their application right now at this very moment and and we had that

[374:01] problem a year or two ago and a couple people filled out applications and we said oh well we're not gonna really appoint anybody so to to prevent that disappointment again this year i'd like the council to agree that we're not going to appoint anyone to the urban renewal authority this year or for the foreseeable future we don't have to abolish it the reason why we haven't appointed anybody for a long time it hasn't met is there some changes of state law back in 2015 that may effectively made vera obsolete and um purposeless purposeless um and so we haven't appointed anybody for a long long time but it still exists on paper alicia needs us to tell her to take that down so she doesn't receive applications for that board and then we disappoint people again sounds like an eminently reasonable proposal does anyone object to bob's proposal let's see no objections okay great thanks for saying all right i mean i hate to cut us off

[375:01] early but um do we have anything else to talk about on this or any other topic i do want to say one more thing to the community who the three people that are still on are there three in the community that we as a council want to get to know our boards and commissions and we're committed to this liaison idea as well for that reason because we want to work with you and we want to know you and that's one of the reasons why we want to do this liaison idea that both matt and lauren spoke about i know there's other reasons as well but i just want you to know we're very motivated about this thanks for that all right alicia do we have anything else you have to do tonight i'm sorry this morning just adjourn just a quick before we do that i just wanted to say the city is i know last

[376:01] thing but we have decided because of weather conditions and our ability to keep up and the oncoming weather to close uh city facilities tomorrow uh uh press release will go out so just wanted you to know and then just a shout out to uh ryan abernath alba what is your last name i'm sorry alba harry uh who is still at city hall sort of keeping us rolling as we move forward as well as to uh the folks that have been running the screens brenda and taylor in the background yes thanks so much to everyone who stuck it out late for us and particularly the safe travels to get home um from city hall all right we'll appreciate the the thorough discussions tonight everyone and at 12 11 we are adjourned good night get some sleep good night

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