March 15, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[5:56] [Music]

[8:59] i'm going to get started with a few

[9:00] announcements so if we can get those up on the screen please okay covet 19 testing and vaccinations testing for information and provider locations for free covid19 testing go to www.boco.org covet testing the boulder site is at 2445 stasio drive and that's open 7 days a week 8 am to 6 pm and for vaccine information and provider locations go to www.boco.org covid vaccine all right next announcements boards and commissions uh annual recruitment has closed but we are still recruiting for the following boards due to the low number or zero number of applications received for them so those are the beverage licensing authority the boulder junction access district parking boulder junction access district travel demand management the board of zoning adjustment cannabis

[10:00] licensing advisory board design advisory board downtown management commission the library commission and the university hill commercial area management commission applications are being accepted until further notice so find those board and commission descriptions and vacancies online at www.bouldercolorado.gov slash boards dash commissions if you have any questions or need assistance please contact the city clerk's office at city clerk's office at boulder colorado.gov next slide please price gouging colorado law prohibits charging excessive prices for certain essential products goods or services during a disaster period and makes clear that such price gaussian gouging is a deceptive trade practice under the colorado consumer protection act coloradans who witness price gouging or who think they might be a victim of price gouging should file a report with the attorney general's office at 800-222-4444

[11:02] or stop fraud colorado.gov all right so that is it for our announcements so i believe it is time for a roll call yes sir good evening everyone councilmember benjamin president mayor brockett president council member focus president mayor pro tem friend here council member joseph is absent council member spear president wallach here weiner here and yates here mayor we have our quorum thank you alicia and i'll just note that council member joseph is attending the

[12:00] national league of cities conference in washington dc and representing the city there so appreciate her efforts on our behalf at that conference so um let's move on we're going to start the meeting uh with a assault on a solemn note with a proclamation of the boulder day of remembrance of march 22nd so if we could get the slides up for that please okay the city of boulder is committed to remembering march 22nd annually due to the upcoming spring break we have no scheduled council meeting next week when the 22nd falls but we do however want to ensure that the tragedy that occurred in south boulder on march 22 2021 is not forgotten and that we take time this evening and next week to honor and acknowledge the victims their families first responders and the critical support of our entire community the image on this slide for example

[13:00] reflects just a bit of the thoughtfulness of our community when holding those lost in our hearts we're thankful for the work of the king supers family the flower splash project leaders and all the members of the community that are keeping us boulder strong in addition to reading our declaration of remembrance this evening we have several day of remembrance community events planned next slide please so this slide highlights the city's activities that are scheduled for march 22 2022. these events will be held rain or shine and are open to the public we encourage you to consider alternative modes of transportation when arriving for these events but we'll provide a qr code which can be used in city-owned downtown garages that evening if you plan to arrive by vehicle for the event at the band shell the code will be shared at via city social media

[14:00] in addition we want to invite community members to participate by visiting the museum of boulder boulder strong still strong exhibit by participating in growing up boulder youth remembrance activities by attending several other neighborhood and community plan events and by seeking more information available on the mental health partners and boulder strong resource center webpages these events reflect the respected wishes of contacted victim family members who endured the unimaginable events of march 22 2021 we look forward to the opportunity to support them next slide please now we need to i believe we have the declaration on a slide no sir it's just the declaration of remembrance my script says that it would be on the

[15:00] slides you're going to have to give me a moment to pull that up for myself i included it with your email apologize for the delay okay declaration of the boulder day of remembrance march 22nd 2022 march 22 2021 is a date that will be forever seared in the collective memory of our community on that monday afternoon a grievous

[16:00] atrocity was committed that will mark each of us for the rest of our lives but none more so than the families and friends of the ten people taken from us suddenly and violently people going about their daily lives doing their jobs feeding their families protecting one another our entire community joins those families and friends in saying the names of our neighbors taken from us before their time denny stone nevins denise ricky holds tremona bart cowie suzanne fountain terry lyker kevin mahoney lynn murray jody waters officer eric talley it has been said that there are three deaths the first is when the body ceases to function

[17:00] the second is when the body is returned to the earth and the third is that moment sometime in the future when the person's name is spoken for the very last time let us never allow this third death of our ten fallen neighbors let us take the time to speak their names celebrate their lives mourn their passing as long as we remember them they will never truly die and so as our modest and humble gesture the city council of the city of boulder declares that every year in perpetuity march 22nd should be designated the bolder day of remembrance on that day every year our community will pause and remember the 10 people who departed on that day every year we will celebrate their lives on that day every year we will say their names out loud so that in our hearts they will live on i also want to convey support and thanks

[18:01] for the boulder strong interagency team that has worked to support the community since the events of last year and finally i welcome any final comments from other members of city council or city manager on this item rachel i just want to maybe ask staff a quick question i am i've talked to several people in the last few days who've um indicated that they have been depressed for the last year um or were leaving town for the coming week because it's going to be too hard so i'm pretty sensitive to the amount of trauma that we are um that we're still experiencing and processing and so just want to ask you mentioned aaron the the support that we have available just wanted to see check in with staff is that something

[19:01] that is going to be ongoing and can people who have not yet sought out mental health services or help from the city access that going forward so i'll start and say yes that continues to be there and we will continue to have messages um go out publicly as that moves forward but a vet perhaps i'll call upon you to share what if anything is available that particular day as we gather on march 22nd thank you for your question and nuria thanks for allowing me to provide a little bit more information community members are invited to continue to seek health and mental health partners and through the boulder strong resource center they will be open that day in addition we're very thankful that both organizations will be participating at the events that are listed for the city there are so many members of the community who are also reaching out to

[20:00] provide support members of our faith community are involved and as well as many other groups that look forward to helping the community ease this time not only on that day but continuously we do anticipate that that day there will be normal operating hours for that organization for mental health partners and for the resource center we do invite people to seek support as they need it even as we approach that day and most of all we want to send regards to the family members who always have our support and can reach out at any time thanks yvette and um please pardon elmer there so i look i look forward to um participating in the day of remembrance next week and hope that we can all be just sort of extra gentle with each other um and what's sure to be a hard time so thanks aaron for the declaration thank you for that rachel

[21:01] okay um i'm not seeing any of their hands raised so why don't we go ahead and close this out and transition to the next section of our meeting okay so um thank you all for that we'll now um do open comment and so ryan if you could go over the public participation guidelines for us please everything emily will be pulling up those slides thank you emily and thank you to you members who are joining us this evening to share your perspective experience and your thoughts a few guidelines for public participation this evening the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive civic conversations this vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members staff and council

[22:00] as well as democracy people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives next slide please um following are examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder revised code and other guidelines that support the same vision and these will be upheld during this meeting all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business no participants will make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial habitat is another speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited and participants require to sign up and to speak using the name they are commonly known by individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online and at this time only audio testimony is permitted thank you

[23:07] thank you for that ryan okay so i'm just pulling up our open comment list of speakers all right so we are going to start with ramsey abrita and leslie glustrom then lynn seagull ramsay yeah hello can you hear me yes okay yeah hi my name is ramsey abuela i have a degree in neuroscience and i work in the clinical research industry and i live in boulder and i'm here to speak in support of the recent push to get anthogenic plants and fungi decriminalized in boulder i know that some of us have already touched base with some of you on city council about our endeavor and get ready to hear a lot more from us in the coming weeks and months the reason i'm speaking today is to inform city council and the rest of the public of a major rally for psychedelic decriminalization that is being held

[24:01] this friday at 6 pm at the riverside in downtown boulder you've probably seen the building dozens of times it's right there on the corner of broadway and arapaho and this friday is your chance to finally go in there and uh and join the community and the public um for a a rally and at this rally there's going to be public speaking people from the community are going to show up and speak about their experiences and why they believe in decriminalization and then also there's going to be a group of indigenous peoples who are going to be there and they're going to deliver a land acknowledgment and a land honoring so it's going to be a really great opportunity to see the community come out and speak and hear indigenous people come out and speak um and yeah so we would love to have city council show up to this rally and come out to see community there's going to be live music there's going to be live painting there's going to be public speaking and basically community is showing up so it's your opportunity to come out and see community to hear speeches from community to hear the indigenous community speak up and if anything just show up for the uh

[25:00] the public speaking segment just to hear the voices of the community and who knows you might even want to stay for the uh live music for some of the most talented local musicians in boulder i think um and um when uh when a similar group threw a similar event like this in ann arbor a few years ago we actually had three members of city council show up to the rally in ann arbor um let's see if boulder can do better than ann arbor let's hope to get more than three city council members to show up at this rally and i will send all of you invitations via email to get more information about this event uh thank you so much hope to see you there thank you ramsey next we have leslie glostrum i understand lin siegel is not here then teddy roverka good evening council members thank you so much for this opportunity leslie glustrom here and i am always so moved and so grateful to you all for your service i love living in boulder and i am so grateful that year after year we end up with really

[26:01] great council members so thank you so very much um as many of you know i do a lot of work on climate change so i wanted to bring the council a little bit of an update on where we are and i'm not seeing my timer so maybe somebody can help me with that when we get to two minutes and one minutes and things like that so um sadly we're not getting a lot of reporting in the local paper so we'll be showing up from time to time the first slide just reminds us that while we've made a lot of progress on electricity it's still more or less tied with transportation for colorado's top two sources of greenhouse gas emissions and when we look at the next slide which i think will come we can see that in boulder its electricity is very much the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions 2020 data here at 41 from electricity and looking at the next slide for people who are listening i'm

[27:01] trying to describe the slides as we go the next slide helps us get some sense of how much carbon dioxide is coming and we start with coal plants because that's what we saw in the inventory um coal plants emit usually one to five million tons of carbon dioxide a year if we just think about one million tons of carbon dioxide it's a little less than the carbon dioxide emissions from 197 000 passenger vehicles so the big coal plant down in pueblo that we have having the big discussion about is when we finally close that we're making progress but we should be doing it now because it's down it's not operating so let's why would we ever fix a coal plant in the 21st century so but when it's three to five million tons so when we stop doing it it'll be the equivalent of taking over 500 000 passenger vehicles off the road and respectfully to everything else that we do in boulder nothing can come close to that these are the sorts of things that i would like to see the boulder xl

[28:01] advisory group talking about every single time i apologize the time is up but if you could send us this we appreciate the chance to look at it very good and i might ask mr mayor um it's very hard to do when you don't have a timer i didn't think that i should have my own timer so uh maybe that would be a way to both be able to show slides and the timer at the same time but thank you the timer was visible to us i apologize it wasn't visible to you thanks so much mayor appreciate it okay um i understand that the next three speakers lin siegel teddy roverka and robert love are not present hope everybody's all right tonight next we have michelle rodriguez max goldmasel and steve whitaker

[29:01] it is giving me some trouble with michelle's [Music] permissions here and a moment all right michelle it's not allowing me to allow you to open your mic i'm promoting you to panelist you will go ahead and click to accept that panelist invite okay it looks like michelle is now coming in and

[30:01] michelle are you here with us now michelle you're able to meet yourself now it looks like michelle has left the meeting thank you for your patience well let's keep an eye if michelle comes back in i recommend we move to the next speaker okay hopefully we can get michelle back in soon next we have max gold myself steve whitaker and joe cromwell hi city council am i coming in clearly yes hi thank you so much i'd like to start with a land acknowledgement i honor and acknowledge that what is currently called boulder county sits on the unseated traditional territories and ancestral homelands of the hananei cheyenne sioux and ut nations tonight i'd like to talk about cu south and starting and ending with a quote alienated from nature human existence

[31:00] becomes a void the wellspring of life and spiritual growth gone utterly dry man grows ever more ill and wary in the midst of his curious civilization that is but a struggle over a tiny bit of time and space it's the property called cu south is not a foregone conclusion its fate is not written in stone let us not forget that when the previous city council passed the annexation by emergency ballot measure 302 is rendered moot passing the agreement in september boulder city council denied us our rights to local community self-government in november even if we voted on 302 yes or no the outcome of the annexation was already made we questioned the validity of labeling the annexation and emergency in response to this questionable decision the referendum to repeal the annexation of cu south property will not pass by traditional means not through the channels of politics that we may be used to but it will pass because of emotional empathic and edifying channels of communication and connection your constituents thousands and thousands of residents are mobilizing rallying

[32:01] fundraising and campaigning to repeal the annexation agreement by referendum this november 2022 we all want our great grandchildren to walk the trails with unobstructed views of the mountains next to preserve riparian habitats feeling a sense of well-being knowing we preserve nature by stopping the annexation construction and served our downstream neighbors at the same time by keeping this area non-structural as it should be a water detention area for potential floods they are wetlands after all the construction of the annexation agreement will cause trauma mental and environmental harm a tragic loss of colorado wetlands if not stopped to quote a new hampshire rights of nature movement member if the state permits corporations to operate in your town it does not protect you from the harms they cause you do not live in a democracy you live in a resource colony thank you thank you max next we have steve whitaker and i understand morgan parsons is now in the meeting in the joel grotno can you hear me yes great thank you first i want to thank

[33:00] the uh and again my name is steve whitaker and i am a resident of boulder and i first wanted to thank the members of the council for your work on behalf of the people of boulder i'm impressed by the amount of work you do in this role i wanted to talk a bit about the cap tax and the boulder excel partnership agreement in reading the city's greenhouse gas inventory report it's difficult to associate the actions with the results which are impressive with respect to the climate action plan tax it has been proposed to increase this tax to about five million dollars a year the question is how much greenhouse gas reduction will this produce per year in describing its work to date the city has emphasized the actions taken in various programs but not in terms of the estimated greenhouse gas reduction produced by each program my request to the city is to list the projects or actions that will be funded

[34:00] by the cap tax and how much reduction in greenhouse gas are estimated by each my request to the council is to ask for this information so that the voters can evaluate the impacts in relationship to the costs with respect to the excel boulder partnership agreement it's my observation to date it's it's unclear how much if any greenhouse gases have been reduced as the sole direct result of this partnership agreement my request is that the city report quarterly how much estimated greenhouse gas reduction has been accomplished by each of the projects that have been undertaken within the partnership agreement to date and for each of the future selected projects how much greenhouse gas reduction is anticipated i want to emphasize this is no criticism of the good people on city staff working on climate issues and those who have volunteered to work on the partnership

[35:02] advisory panel just a request for information thank you thank you steve right next we have jill grano all right there we go um thank you so much real quick on a personal note i just want to thank rachel for bringing up the mental health issues that have uh occurred since the shooting i am unfortunately one of those who never ever suffered from depression until march 22nd of 2021 and it's been a a dark hole to climb out of so um but i am here tonight on behalf of the boulder chamber um representing over 1200 businesses and 60 000 members of the workforce um i want to talk about the library district and i want to know that we do not have an official position on this we know that for you guys it's just a discussion tonight it's not a vote but we have received a bunch of feedback from our businesses that we wanted to share with you as you move into our

[36:01] discussion or your discussion um first we support libraries for so many reasons as a community amenity amenity a public education information resource it's really a foundation for civic understanding and discourse there's also an important nexus with small businesses in fact we know that there's hundreds of small businesses that began at the boulder library but that being said we have heard three key concerns um one is that our members traditionally reflect the perspective of the blue ribbon budget panel um that that says not to silo government resources it's considered poor governance management and it often reduces flexibility to address evolving community needs the next is that business leaders aren't sure if it's good governance to create a separate independent government institution to manage library resources which moves the control out of our elected leadership and finally the most important one

[37:01] is that we really have heard an outcry from businesses about the mill levy increase it comes at the worst time as they're covering recovering from the impacts of covid as you guys know taxes are determined based on the most recent mill levy and the assessed value the reason that businesses are so much more impacted is that they're assessed at four times the rate of residential properties so even the same mill of the increase affects businesses four times for your time's up thank you thank you so much for your testimony and i understand that teddy raverka is in the meeting now so if we could give bring teddy forward please hi this is teddy roverka is it my time yes yeah i want to speak to a prior council meeting we saw a presentation of crime rates and they were going up there were a number of comments from the council that tended to throw shade on

[38:01] the data one comment saying the variability is large variability really was just that you would expect from any process that comes in discrete quantities is dominated by shock noise and the trends are real in the data the other comment was that um that one of the council members said they would put a different line through the data trend the data was fit the least squares fit and it's not reasonable to put a decreasing slope through the data as presented crime is increasing in boulder anyone who's looking to grab can see that in spite of the fluctuations the overall trend is up and the final comment i want to speak to is these are as as reported by the boulder beat i'm sorry i didn't go to the move meaning but the boulder beats

[39:01] it said that one of the council members said that um all these slides showing crime rates going up um and we could be frightening people we're inflaming if we only show these upward trends i think that it's important to give your constituents more credit here that we can see the data we see the crimes going up and uh we can act appropriately and there's no point in hiding it from us in concern that we might be afraid thank you thank you teddy ryan do we have any of our other sign up speakers in the meeting at this point we do not uh lin siegel robert love michelle rodriguez uh or morgan parsons are not present okay

[40:00] all right uh well then let's turn to city staff mary or theresa do you have any responses to the open comment i do not but always thank um community for calling in i after that sentiment i don't have any responses great um any uh council members want to weigh in on open coming all right seeing none we'll go ahead and close the open there you're on mute thank you for letting me know okay so now we'll move uh move on from open comment and go to the consent agenda which is items a through g does anyone have any questions or comments related to the consent agenda

[41:03] mark mark and then bob yeah i i actually published a uh hotline this afternoon i have um a good number of questions with respect to uh the uh project at 4 20 14 22 55th street um we're dealing with a difficult developer and i am concerned that the terms and conditions that are going to be before us are not representative of uh a transaction that will advance our affordable housing goals i can do that i can relate my issues one by one um but i want to release state generally before we get into the subject that i have many many uh questions and comments with respect to this project um so okay thanks did anybody else want to speak to that particular item

[42:00] before before i respond i see bob does that bob do you wanna chairman yeah thanks erin i'll speak to two things first of all i i share mark's concern about this item so i'd like to suggest that this is item b that we pull this off of consent and ask cac to schedule this for a um like lengthier discussion uh in a few weeks and then i'll be recusing myself on item g related to ball aerospace thanks bob so let me turn to city staff uh we're procedurally is that something that we're legally allowed to do to if it's the will of counsel which i'll just check in and but first i want to check if we're legally in good shape there are we allowed to schedule this for a future hearing theresa yes mayor um annexations are legislative in nature and so there's not a timeline associated with that you certainly can pull this item from the consent agenda and schedule it for a date in the future so then what i would i i guess i would ask

[43:01] we have a proposal on the table to pull it off of consent and schedule for the future i'm i'm perfectly comfortable with that request i'd like to pull the will of counsel are people interested in that is they want to speak against that or add an additional comment i'm not seeing anybody so give me a thumbs up if you feel like that's an approach you'd like to take okay i got i got a clear i got everybody actually okay so that looks like that is a clear will of counsel to hold that off and send that to cac for scheduling um at a future meeting uh so we'll plan on that we'll get to that when we get to motions uh but you know how we're gonna proceed on that so i think rachel you had um mark can i just say is that answer your that answers it perfectly thank you great uh rachel yeah i had a question on item 3d council retreat follow-up um you know i think at the retreat we um you know we really hustled through that last 20 minutes didn't have a lot of

[44:02] time to process as we were voting or after we sort of looked at waves and and as i was looking at what we um agreed to um it's like kind of eight housing related things um and then maybe two others and then at the very bottom there's under the category of like maybe we'll get to it um if there's time the last one is develop a comprehensive citywide plan for resiliency against disaster fire and flood um and i'm not asking for us to re-vote or anything i just want to ask staff a question about um what will we be doing because you know obviously we're already working on housing in a lot of ways yeah we added nine more we are already working on on some mitigation measures and we didn't add this and you know boulder's hosting like i think the next kyoto summit in in the fall here and and it just seems like both poor kind of optics and and

[45:00] potentially catastrophic outcomes if we're not really getting in front of resiliency planning on the heels of the fire so just wanted to check in with with nuria um or whoever you think is appropriate to answer this and what are we doing since that didn't make the cut well i'll start and certainly invite any staff who because this is so multi-disciplinary if anybody wants to add anything i've left off but i'll say that if i recall from those whirlwind two days um part of this was uh acknowledgement that staff is actually working on some of this already and that it perhaps didn't have to rise to the level of priority because there were things in the works and so some of the things that we have planned for this year include an update to the stormwater and flood master plan we will be taking that to council for further action as we move forward just recently last friday's heads up you saw we had an update on the warning system we will have con continued operational improvements

[46:00] related to wildfire fire mitigation uh we will have uh continued cu south updates and there will be a continued variety of that i'll also say that in addition um several of us have been talking about really um sort of more formally internally creating a group that's uh focused on resiliency because as we all know it doesn't live in one singular department there are multiple departments doing this so we will actually be internally uh creating a a work group that really brings a lot of that together and what we can commit and again i'll ask step if there's something that in particular you wanted to bring up as something that is being worked on but what we do anticipate is because this is an important issue for community for yourselves and frankly for us we will be committing to bringing forward updates as we move forward and happy to do that because the topic of resiliency is on all of our minds as we move forward okay um

[47:00] thanks for the update i think one of the things that i was particularly concerned about is you know most of the region is is updating like building codes and urban um wild land interfaces and in broader ways from the fire so um hopefully that continues to move forward without this because you know it is housing is a crisis and obviously climate crisis is a crisis as well so thanks for that update okay see no other hands i would invite a motion i'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of item b to pull off for scheduling a discussion later via cac second okay we've got a motion in a second i understand this is a roll call vote yes sir that is correct all right we will start with

[48:00] councilmember wallach hi weiner hi yates yes on all of them except for img for which i recuse myself thank you councilmember benjamin yes mayor brockett yes except i recuse myself from the vote on the environmental advisory board on item 3e type of family member participating thank you council member falkards yes mayor pro tem friend yes and council member spear yes mayor the consent agenda items a and c through g are hereby approved and eight to zero with the noted recusal

[49:04] thanks very much alicia all right i think we have a few call-up possibilities now yes sir we're moving into item four on tonight's agenda we have 4a is the vacations of a 19 1965 square foot portion uh and a 2742 square foot portion of two utility easements at 3300 pinroll place that is under adr 2021-00257 any interest in calling this up not seeing any move on the next one item 4b is a vacation of a 6572 square foot portion of a utility easement at 1112 gaaptor road under adr 2021-00313

[50:03] interesting calling this one up not seeing any so we can move on to the next one item 4c is the concept plan review and comment for a redevelopment of the property located at 2900 east college avenue into a multi-unit student housing project with 39 dwelling units which includes a mix of one through three and four bedroom units parking is proposed to be provided in a two level parking structure primarily below grade proposed building is four stories above grade with a rooftop deck reviewed under case lur 2021-0046 an interesting coin this one rachel well no but i would like to try out referring it to tap

[51:00] and i will note because i think it's the first like you know like teed up good opportunity to do that um so the board suggested um i think the planning board suggested that the applicant requested a parking reduction to meet climate objection objections and noted that the site is easily accessible by multi-modal transportation network um so just seems like it's a spot where we might want tabs input great so let me just ask from a legal perspective does that require a motion to do though to do that i guess mayor that would require a motion okay i'd like to move then to refer this to tab i'll second great i think nicole yeah i'm sorry i think i was jumping the gun on discussion

[52:02] can we can i just ask a question sure go ahead yeah and i i guess i'm just um curious kind of what what type of input and sort of what the consequences are of sort of you know sending those like are we talking like a delay for a while i i i don't um it seems like they asked for a parking reduction it's in a place where there's lots of transit and yeah i guess i guess i'm just i'm not understanding um where the role for tab input is i'm happy to speak to that from my perspective if that was a question for me um which is just that you know anytime we have a a new development that's near uh like uh transit corridors kind of there sometimes tab has or members of tab have chimed in like you know if you just or community cycles like if you just moved on this project like this you know street access over here or

[53:01] this uh you know sidewalk you know made the egress this side or the other so there are things that i'm not sure exactly what they might come back with proposals but just to make sure that they're not seeing something that um the rest of us who don't have that particular emphasis in focus might not see that so just kind of like design sort of feedback is that my understanding that correctly transportation design yeah great and um if i'll just call on myself here i'll also i'll note that the applicant did not request a parking reduction and planning board suggested that that might be appropriate so i i think that might be a good thing for tab to weigh in on i mean i think this project has less of an access to transportation issues than some of them but i think um you know we're still trying this out and there's this question about like hey would a parking reduction be appropriate here which i think they could weigh in so i'll support it on on that basis and as well i have the floor if

[54:02] i'll just also say that i thought that all playing words comments were really good on this project so i hope the applicant takes those very seriously okay we've got emotion on the table does anybody else want to speak to it not seeing anything so um alicia can i just ask if anyone objects to this one or show of hands what do you think it's my understanding so that it would be just a show of hands but teresa can correct me if i am wrong i do not have a correction okay let's just call for a show of hands here all in favor of rachel's motion seconded by matt to refer to tab okay i've got a everybody i believe say that that passes can i um just ask one more thing because you know it's exciting i think that was the first um possibly a concept plan i would also welcome tab to

[55:02] tell us like is that is that something that they welcome or are we overburdening them when we do this so if somehow we could get that feedback it would be great too okay all right any other comments it sounds like i didn't hear any interest in calling this up this doesn't look like it all right i think we've got enough on that item so with that so we can move into our first public hearing our only public hearing all right sir that is item number five a the introduction first reading and consideration of a motion to order published by title only ordinance 8500 the special adjustment to base for 2022 supplemental appropriations that include opera the marshall fire and wind disaster expenditures and 2022 community culture resilience and safety tax and setting forth those related details

[56:02] uh mark are you gonna mark well are you gonna take this for us yes indeed all right i will share my screen a short presentation for this item okay coming up all right good stuff all right uh thank you mayor good evening council again i'm mark wolf senior budget manager for the city uh i'm hoping we'll keep this uh fairly brief happy to answer any questions as usual we've got a whole fleet of staff available if you do have more specific questions we'll be running through what we're calling a special adjustment to base or a budget amendment to the base 2022 budget

[57:00] i'll just briefly cover especially for new ish say council members on the budget adjustment process and then i'll get into the details of the three different elements of the budget adjustment for this evening so budget adjustments are essentially budget amendments to the adopted budget we call them adjustments to base or atb's is how you'll refer to them as we have two scheduled budget adjustments uh each year the first or atb one is typically in may we'll do capital project rollovers and encumbrances at that point that's a big part of it you'll see that coming up this year where we're looking at a lot of capacity building and continued restoration of where we are as an organization um that'll be a theme in atb one that's usually the first and then the second is in november

[58:02] that could be any new funds we we've received and expended throughout the year reflecting that within our budget we do have other circumstances that come up we've had several in the last couple years that dictate us needing those additional amendments we call those special adjustments so some examples of that are arpa so we hold pot of money coming in and we know we're going to make some expenditures same goes for some type of an emergency if we need to make additional expenditures beyond our base budget all right so starting with the marshall fire and straight line wind event many of our departments provided support to not only our neighboring communities but some response within the city of boulder

[59:00] many of those were related both so let me say first both of these events were um designated as uh federal emergencies under fema and so most of these expenses up to 75 percent are reimbursable under fema there is a lag time uh typically in the 9 to 12 month realm can extend as many of my colleagues know beyond that some departments are able to absorb some minimal expenses a supplemental appropriation is needed for those departments that incurred expenses beyond their their base budget that we're projecting and won't have enough room to cover a few uh highlights or i guess this would be comprehensive from the memo starting with open space and mountain parks they incurred damage to trail heads structures due to the fire there's some additional dollars to provide continue continued damage staff support as they continue to assess and

[60:02] make sure that we're those expenses are reimbursable under fema a total amount is 1.7 million parks and recreation due to the wind in the city we had a bridge over boulder creek knocked out and then significant debris removal across the city that came to just under 380 thousand dollars housing and human services provided support to our manufactured housing communities and meals to our homeless community a little under fifty thousand dollars and then we had some overtime costs as well moving on to the community culture resilience and safety tax initial appropriation or what you'll hear me refer to as ccrs so i'm going to walk through a few of these slides this is the first time that we've really had a chance to talk about ccrs since voters very kindly approved

[61:01] the long-term extension of this tax the ballot language defined it as a community culture resilience and safety tax so that's why we're now referring to it as ccrs that extension was 15 years through 2036 and it was a renewal of the 0.3 uh sales and use tax it's important to point out that there is flexibility in the ballot language while there are specific projects listed and was part of the process in developing support for that ballot the the language in the in the ballot and i believe we have it uh the full ballot language and attachment c of your packets for this item there there's no must do projects it's a lot of projects such as this and then some additional categories and so that's a that gives us flexibility knowing that we can time these projects appropriately based on uh their level of readiness based on the resources the

[62:02] staff capacity behind them so we're currently going through that process and i'll explain a little bit more about that the ballot language also um authorized us to issue debt against that tax if we needed to and i'll talk a bit about that as well and just so you have an understanding of scale our projections this is a maybe a little bit old but it gives you a sense over the 15 years uh what we'll generate you also will remember that the ballot language provided up to 10 of the the total tax revenue for nonprofit support i'll touch on that as well all right so many of you that participated in the renewal conversation will remember that the city staff identified over 66 million dollars in capital projects that were identified as immediate

[63:00] so there's some need to scope and prioritize these projects whether it rises to that level of 66 million or not the implication is that if we're well above that 10 11 million dollar threshold that we're receiving on an annual basis that it's likely we'll need to borrow funds in order to complete projects within a shorter period of time projects that would be good candidates uh to to be included within that that um debt issuance uh would need to be completed within the three years of of issuing that debt so if we were looking ahead to sometime in early 2023 to do that but we're what we're proposing is to align that process with our 2023 to 2028 capital improvement plan development so through our budget process where we'll be able to take a look at all of these potential sources for capital projects including the federal infrastructure bill which didn't exist at the time of

[64:02] uh the ballot language being approved for ccrs renewal um arpa as a potential source for certain types of projects just to make sure that we're we're planning for the most appropriate source of funds for for capital projects sorry the font gets a little small on this slide so just to hammer on the process for ccrs funding what you have tonight and i'll get into a little bit more detail are those early 2022 projects those that are ready for initial appropriation uh they're shovel ready meaning they will expend funds in the short term it meets a pressing community need and aligns closely with that ballot language over the next several months we'll be doing exactly what i suggested in identifying projects that are eligible for ccrs good candidates for that source of funding within a shorter time frame

[65:02] and determining that based on those projects if the scope of those projects rises to a certain level that debt issuance may be required and that would be a conversation we'd have with council during the budget process through june and october i wanted to highlight that that's when we'll be having the conversation about the non-profit uh support portion of the ccrs tax uh we'll be discussing the potential structure of that that program that support program uh with council were scheduled for early june for that conversation after that we would have some engagement activities and prepare for for a launch of that support program and then beyond uh 2022 uh we'd be looking at a similar process to continue to identify those ccrs eligible projects maybe do another round of that later depending on how we

[66:02] we structure it initially so again it's it's about the projects that are not only in alignment the ballot language but those that have a reasonable time frame and are resourced appropriately all right so walking back to initial what's actually on your agenda this evening is initial appropriation from ccrs first is for the constituent relationship management or crm software the appropriation request is 450 000 from ccrs the total project cost is 750. this would uh be a complete replacement of our current system ideally this will the move would be to an industry-leading platform which would greatly improve how residents can interact with the city that would be one of the primary goals of that project the enterprise data platform is another

[67:01] technology solution 650 000 is the recommendation out of ccrs the total project cost is estimated at 1.65 million at this point this is the continued development of the city's cloud-based enterprise data platform um the easiest way i can explain it without a technology background is that this allows us to make better data informed decisions to centralize a place where we can begin to collect data and use that in different ways not just for the organization but in the in the types of projects and initiatives and programs that we develop in in service of the community and so this is really that first initial step in in centralizing um our our data in that cloud-based platform a couple other projects to mention um there's 550 000 recommended at a ccrs

[68:00] for safer main streets projects um there's two different projects one at uh 30th street uh i believe that's the corridor for multi-modal and then safety enhancements at 28th street in colorado these projects are also funded through the transportation fund cdot and dr cogg and because of the grant funding those those projects must be completed by june 2024. so there's a pressing need for ccrs and we think it's an appropriate candidate and then fire station three's included in this um special adjustment not out of ccrs although we'll get to that in a second in this adjustment funds are were previously set aside but not yet appropriated from the governmental capital fund 5.4 million and the capital development fund of 2.3 million that's because construction is likely to begin this summer we need to make sure there's enough appropriated funds to begin construction

[69:00] of that project so you'll see those two dollar amounts 5.4 and 2.3 in this adjustment there is a future there is a funding gap i should say of about 11 to 12 million dollars for the construction of fire station 3. that amount is likely to be requested through ccrs but that'll come through the annual budget process that i mentioned previously all right shifting gears one more time and then we'll be done so arpa we appreciate council giving us an extra couple weeks to react to the feedback that we received at the study session i believe on february 8th we have made a couple different adjustments specifically in areas related to child care and economic recovery the total recommended tronch2 is now at 4.8

[70:02] million dollars so the specific overview the amount uh for guaranteed income pilot of 250 000 that hasn't changed but what we have done is pencil in a may 24 study session with council prior to any expenditure of those dollars so that appropriation allows us the authority to spend we certainly don't have to do that and what we plan to do is wait for that council discussion until we expended any of those funds we can certainly um have a different approach but it does make it easier to have the authority to spend the funds instead of having to do another special adjustment later the second is moving up a hundred thousand from tranche iii to support the child care industry twenty thousand of that will be for startup grants for small business development center program participants

[71:01] have already gone through a program and then 80 000 will be for a new competitive grand cycle to support existing child care providers in boulder and then 230 thousand dollars was added to the economic recovery initiatives based on council feedback for a total of 550 000 those were really in three key areas and i'll point out we had some staff do a really good job with attachment d that provided an overview of the support provided to aid an inclusive economic response and recovery during the pandemic that gives you a sense of all the resources that we've provided throughout what we have this evening is a proposal to work with bipac owned businesses to help with navigation and commercial space opportunities a targeted small business grant program

[72:01] that would be for those businesses that have experienced disproportionate impact do the pandemic and an additional hundred thousand dollars to the convention and visitors bureau for continued uh tourism and safe visitation promotion so what that looks like for your arpa uh spending update again tranche 1 was just under 4 million tranche 2 now would be about 4.8 what do you have remaining is that 11.37 million for future funding in a potential charge 3 or however we end up navigating that federal spending package that was just passed i will say did not claw back any of the arpa funds that was at risk at one point so that is certainly good news so that concludes uh presentation this evening this is when you need it and i believe

[73:00] i'll hand it back over to the mayor thanks so much mark that was really helpful and informative uh questions to start out before we go to our public hearing i've got bob uh thanks mark that was very helpful um just two questions mark unrelated on the convention visitors bureau that hundred thousand is incremental to the original hundred thousand was proposed in other words it's moving from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand is that correct that is correct great thanks mark the second is um relating to thanks for teeing up the uh kind of i guess provisional approval of the study for the guaranteed income program so if we approve the whole package tonight um that 250 000 will be effectively kind of held in advance um we'll do the study session on the 24th of may and then if council but is happy with that then then then we'll kind of effectively i know we won't be taking another vote on may 24th at the study session but it'll be deemed approved retroactively and if there is sufficient concern if the whoever's running the study session does a straw poll and there's a lot of concern that um that um

[74:01] that funding can be kind of undone or pulled back is that correct that's correct it gives us the authority to spend but it doesn't force us to spend that amount great thanks and i don't want to imply that we will do that i just know there's a lot of questions by council members at uh your presentation a few weeks ago about that study and i just i think thank you very much for to you and to to kurt and others for for putting that on a fast track study session and hopefully we'll get through that and hopefully people will be happy with that and and there won't be any adjustments so thank you thanks mark yeah just just one question kind of unrelated do we have even though the remotest idea of what we're going to be receiving under the federal infrastructure bill it's a good question we do not many of those program details are still being developed some of those are associated with existing programs we do need some help with navigation we are looking to bring on a resource

[75:00] internally to help our departments with some of that understanding federal grant programs and timing and the information you need is certainly a full-time job so we think there's a huge opportunity there but in terms of how much funding we're eligible for locally or expecting we're still we still don't have a good estimate are those funds being dispersed currently or is everything being heated up i think most and other staff more than welcome to chime in i think most are still being teed up there may be a few programs that were already in existence where the funding has come through but i believe for the most part some flowing through the state and some coming directly from the federal government is still to be determined in terms of timing okay go forth and get money well thank you i agree thanks i think we all agree on that one

[76:00] uh not seeing any more hands oh there's nicole sorry um i just i'm i'm um just trying to remember where we were with the guaranteed income uh pilot discussion and i i think like i remember kind of coming out of that discussion with the idea of like can't we move more quickly with that and um anyway so i was just wondering if um mark i i apologize this may just be my brain misfiring um but i'm just wondering if you could uh describe a little bit more about um why it is that we're sort of waiting on that needing to study it uh more because i i guess i come out of that meeting with a different impression yeah thanks for that nicole i i think we left without a very clear determination of where council was at as a whole i i know that we thought it would be helpful to have a study session sooner rather than later

[77:01] to better define what a guaranteed income pilot would would mean and what are some potential program program designs that are out there with some information from peer cities that have successfully done this just to better inform the conversation our intention would be to move fairly quickly after that study session if council was comfortable moving forward with a pilot so i understand that it's kind of give and take slowing down to have a study session at the same time i think if we have a really good clear direction from council based off of that study session then perhaps we can move a little quicker after that study session thanks mark another question yeah i agree with nicole um i don't think there was anybody's desire to slow down the issue of grants to low-income families from our as a matter of fact quite the contrary i think council members were concerned about getting

[78:01] this money out the door as quickly as possible so families in need would would receive the funding they needed so i i agree with nicole i think our concern was not so much the program itself was is just spending money to study how to disperse money um so if we can move that if we have to have a study session on how to study how to disperse money uh let's try to do that faster or let's just skip the study and get to dispersal so i i actually agree with nicole i i i'll approve this package but but waiting until the 24th to talk about a study to do a study it seems to me like a pretty big delay okay any last questions before we go to public hearing seeing any let's move to that public hearing i think we have two people signed up ryan are you gonna get that started absolutely um emily can we pull the slides up again we'll go through those for folks who are joining us this time uh i don't know do we need to do that again

[79:01] i think that people who speak are who are speaking about spoken before all right sounds good we have both uh speakers here uh this evening i think we have two people signed up that's lynn siegel and katie farnam did you know that michael bosma the same michael bosma of 1455 55th sold frohuffs which was his affordable housing compensation for 311 the most expensive housing in boulder did any of you know that i doubt it it was from last time last council this is the kind of serious impact that we have on our affordable housing community and that as a result we have

[80:00] these grants that we have to deal with and we have more and more affordable housing that we need for the more and more folks that cannot afford housing in boulder because you agree with 1455 55th and michael bosma and hand him everything he wants this is completely unacceptable for you to on one hand demand of your city staff to get these grant proposals forth in a war time it's lucky if we're not vaporized by the next city council meeting we got a lot of troubles these days and we need to start getting serious about these developers that are begging for the biggest place they can get michael bosma can build a friggin house on his place there's only one reason that he wants 20

[81:00] units or something and that's because he can maximize his profit you should take a look i just rode my bike sorry i was in the tailwind for public comment coming home i just rode my bike past september school stunning there is more crap all over the front of that that looks like the third world he is not maintaining that there's still homeless stuff from all over i drove my bike around it just to be late for the public comment stunning stunning what you allow the developers to do in this town so that you can then demand of your city staff to get grants to reverse the problems that you have caused you the bottom line is you you represent me i go to these planning board meetings i go to the rap meeting i go to the osb t meetings i go to every single one i see how they all interconnect i i am at the 30 000 foot level all the time i'm your true seagull

[82:00] i got wings i'm watching every move you make god forbid you know because we have a war now and you know my water bell just went up 15 bucks in october and i don't even irrigate let's think about what the real essentials are we need in this community real essentials done thank you lynn next we have katie fernand hi council thank you for taking my comments i am speaking tonight just to voice my support for council's exploration of the guaranteed income pilot i think studies have shown that what folks who struggle with you know need most is cash in hand without restrictions many cities are exploring this so it makes sense for boulder to do it too i was reading details about the benefits in the boulder beat from january and it

[83:02] was noted that the benefits of basic income measures include declining generational poverty increased housing security and school enrollment and improved nutrition and overall better health so i hope boulder moves ahead on this pilot thanks thank you katie and that brings the public hearing to a close so i'll bring it back to council for discussion so any would anyone like to get us started or you can always just do motion if you wanted bob well i guess i'm kind of building on what what um nicole and i said and what katie hernan just said is there any way we can ask cac to maybe accelerate that studies if we have to have a study session and talk about this can we look at our calendar and maybe see if we can get this slotted in sooner rather than may 24th as a member of cac i'm happy to take that on miriam

[84:01] well i just i want to defer to staff and see how quickly they can put that on and so i'd asked kurt um i know that we've got a lot of things going on through i believe mid to late april but just wanted to ask her what his timing was because i i wanted to make sure that staff had a chance to weigh in on their availability curt uh good evening council kurt bernhard director of housing human services um so i don't actually know the answer to that um i do know that we haven't begun to put the information together for the study session um it takes effort to do that typically i think however we can come back to cac on monday with a better answer to that and um sort of refine um uh how quickly we could get that to council but um i do support your your idea bob and um we'll we'll see how we can uh accomplish that

[85:03] i'll just note that'll be the monday and 13 days from now because we're skipping a couple of mondays i just remembered that thank you and that gives you plenty of time hopefully to put that together will that work for folks that will get a better sense of uh how much time staff needs and then can schedule it as expeditiously as possible given the schedule and the resources available seeing not in heads there great lauren i guess i also have a question about um you know what kind of action we'd be taking at the study session like are you just trying to gauge sort of the scope or the direction from us or is it like is it on or off the table because there might be some portion of that like you know if we were willing to commit that it is something that we want to go forward with in some capacity if that would help in any way

[86:01] i guess i'm just trying to see if there is any amount of weighing in on that that we might be able to do ahead of time to help make it so that we can run this as efficiently as possible i can take a crack and kurt you're more than welcome to chime in i i would say that um it would be helpful to know kind of the general support for for the pilot expert exploration i think the intent of spending a little bit extra time on the subject itself uh was to better define the those kind of pre-programmed costs of setting up a pilot and then providing counsel with information from programs that already exist to give you a sense of what a structure could look like so i don't want to predict how much work it will be to do that i think we can take some other steps that will be helpful to try to to expedite

[87:00] a pilot creation but we can brainstorm over the next uh several days and bring back a more clear suggestion on at our next uh cac meeting um to to help make sure that we're moving as fast as we possibly can rachel then i'll call him myself sure um i support uh expeditious exploration i guess in scheduling um i was not actually supportive of exploration i just um i think at our discussion just flatly supported uh the basic or the guaranteed income look but i do want to kind of gently note i guess that i think staff's doing what we ask them to do and this must feel a little bit like whiplash that we just mere weeks ago said like we're gonna need more information before we can decide what to do with that because that's also what i heard and i actually had some community members reach out and say bummer like wish you guys had been more supportive so um i'm i'm

[88:02] i just want to be sensitive to giving staff direction and then looking at it again and saying no that wasn't right and we're going into spring break and we're all going to have a hard week next week and you know it i think we need to be more clear in you know the first time and and so i don't know i'm just sensitive i think i would like us to be quicker with this and and yeah i think we're they were trying to be responsive to what we asked for not very long ago thanks i'll call on myself there i agree with you rachel's gonna say something similar because i was one of those people i'm definitely supportive of programming the idea but i also would love to learn more about exactly how it gets implemented so i was one of the people that asked for more information and so i'm hearing generally support for the idea but i think we did including myself ask for more info so i like the idea of spending you know maybe 60 minutes at a study session you know in a few weeks or a couple months which i think was the direction we gave before to learn more

[89:01] about how this would work and have a chance to ask questions as the program gets stood up so that that would be my suggestion is that that we work it we hear from staff about the resources necessary to move it forward cc schedule something sooner rather than later uh but this is in no way saying like slow walk it and don't start thinking and working on it does that capture where maybe where folks are coming from i feel like it seems some nodding heads okay feel free to speak up if you disagree or want to go in a different direction any other comments um aaron would i be able to invite uh elizabeth crowe to respond to that she's more directly involved with the work around that sure

[90:04] i met me i thought she was on but maybe she's not promoted as a panelist um if if she's not we can um address that at the cac i i don't see her so i'm happy to get more information we can guide it maybe in slightly different directions she has some different feedback thank you okay uh maybe somebody wants to make a motion at this point and everybody jump at it at once all right i will i'll go ahead and make a motion go ahead go ahead all right very good so i moved to that we introduced an order uh by published by title only ordinance 8500 first reading special adjustment to base for

[91:00] 2022 supplemental approach it appropriations including arpa marshall fire and wind disaster expenditures and 2022 ccrs tax ordinance second packet thanks i'll just call myself real quickly i think uh say that uh i really appreciate staff's responsiveness to our comments from last time i thought you really were very nimble in hearing uh our feedback and we came back very quickly and i think we're very responsive so i really appreciate how you brought this in and now we're getting more money out to the community more quickly uh to help with the the continuing recovery necessary coming out of cooper uh matt did you want to say anything i think you said it well aaron um i mean this is uh i think this is government working well and uh fairly efficiently in very difficult and adaptive times so so um great job staff great okay and if i see no other hands we could go

[92:00] ahead i believe this is a roll call vote yes sir we'll start with council member weiner yes yates yes benjamin yes mayor brockett yes council member falkirtz yes mayor pro tem friend yes council member spear yes and council member wallach yes mayor ordinance 8500 is approved to be introduced and published by title and move to second reading eight to zero thanks so much alicia and i'll just make a quick procedural note that normally we have public hearings on second reading and it was a scheduling question that worked more

[93:00] worked better with the schedule to do the public hearing on first reading but a second reading will be under consent and then we can consider these funds appropriate and can move forward with spending them okay i think we can move on to our matter from the city manager and harry do you want to take us away here i do and so our next item right is one that we've been talking a lot about it's a conversation that's been part of a series of conversations related to the consideration of a library district dating back to 2018. in 2021 council directed staff to proceed with the work to consider the creation of a library district by resolution and that's what staff has done is to implement that policy direction on april 5th we'll really be talking about the decision meeting where you'll be able to determine whether to move forward or not with creating a district by resolution and i know that we'll be hap we'll be joined by our boulder county partners as well but tonight there was a decision to talk a little

[94:00] bit more from the february 8th meeting about three key issues uh council members flagged in the draft iga and so hoping that you'll be able to have discussion and hear more about um those critical questions as you move forward tonight an interdepartmental team has been working on this and i'm going to hand it over to david farnand first to begin with that presentation as we uh continue to have that discussion tonight with you thank you david thank you very much neria um good evening mayor members of council my name is david farnan i'm the library director of the city of boulder i am joined by some team members tonight uh janet michaels from the city attorney's office chris messick you all know david gear you all know and jennifer ferris the deputy director for the public library so um if we could bring the slide presentation up i would appreciate it and let's go ahead and jump the next slide

[95:02] all right uh so tonight um this is basically our agenda i'm going to cover a brief timeline of the history which nuria just referred to um but our purpose this evening primarily is to focus on the three key issues that council raised in the discussion of the draft iga and the recommendations from the library district advisory committee that we discussed on february 8th those three key issues are issue one whether to deed or lease the properties and we will discuss three options the second key issue is the process for the district board of trustee appointment we will discuss two options and then the third key issue is the process for the disillusion of a library district should it fail to receive funding um all of these are important issues and we want to hear from council on every single one of them we do hope to gain your direction firm direction on issue 3 because that language will need to be

[96:00] incorporated into the resolution that you will consider on april 5th so next slide please all right so brief timeline some of you have been here for this entire time some of you not but in 2018 uh council accepted the boulder library master plan that master plan as you all know included a lot of different options in consideration for funding options for the library then the implementation implementation process of that master plan has led us to roughly the 10 or 12 meetings we've had over the course of the last four years on this topic in 2019 a citizen resident advocacy group the library champions proposed a library district by petition they later withdrew that petition after discussions with city manager and some level of commitment to discuss the funding more in depth so the council had a better understanding of the issues at hand in 2020 city staff came back and presented

[97:00] background on municipal and district governance and funding options and considered a number of those in 2021 council directed staff to continue to explore the district by resolution process and to form a committee to discuss the iga terms this last fall we did form a library district advisory committee they met through the course of the fall several times monthly and developed the recommendations that you reviewed at your last meeting on february 8th for the iga um and then we can jump to the next slide please so this is kind of an outline which we've discussed multiple times before usually um david gear or janet michaels is presenting this slide but we thought for limiting the number of speakers i would do it so um how do you establish a library district by resolution in april we will bring forward draft resolution and also the draft iga there will be a joint public

[98:01] hearing with city council and the board of county commissioners to discuss that resolution in that resolution you will establish a service area boundary and a proposed no levy as well as a number of other items like we just discussed you are also expected on april 5th to appoint two members from your council to be a subcommittee to appoint the library board of trustees which would occur in may at that meeting where you would appoint library board of trustees at that point a library district exists on paper and you enter into negotiations on the iga you have 90 days city council the board of county commissioners and the library district board of trustees which has just been appointed would negotiate the terms of an iga and we'll discuss a little bit more what goes into an iga i believe in the next slide that would lead then to a 2022 election tabor election

[99:00] if that mill levy fails that the tabor election fails the library remains a city service if that mill levy is successful the library district then takes shape and begins to function and transition process from the city to a library district begins to occur so next slide please so the interge governmental agreement which you have reviewed several drafts of over the past few years the terms that go into this intergovernmental agreement essentially discuss these various things the conveyance of property for library services the transition of the library employees what if any interim funding is supplied to the library district if it's as it's making the transition what the terms for contracts for all the various levels of administrative services are for maintenance of buildings for those personnel insurance employee benefits etc all of those will be it discussed it it will detail then the

[100:01] procedure for how a future library board of trustees is selected and it will also define the process if the 2022 tabor measure fails so let's go ahead and jump to the next slide and we'll dig into the key issues so the first key issue the big one um do we lease or do we sail the library facilities and land next slide please so the question that we have for council tonight is regarding the library facilities is council interested in transferring ownership or leasing buildings to the library district for the following facilities the carnegie library for local history the george reynolds branch library the new north boulder branch library and the main library you'll note that the meadows library and the nobo corner library are not mentioned in this topic that is because

[101:01] those are leases council didn't at the last meeting discuss any issues around transfer of the leases from the city to the district so that's why those two libraries are emitted from this the staff recommendation for carnegie reynolds and new north boulder library is that the land and buildings transfer to the library district for the main library the staff recommendation is that the building transfers but the land ownership remains in the hands of the city next slide so some of the considerations that went into discussion of the city leasing one or more of the buildings to a library district the city and library district would have a landlord-tenant relationship the lease term is limited to 20 or possibly 30 years given the charter the library district controls investments into the facilities and the city and district determine the level of city review or approval to modifications

[102:02] to all the buildings the city retains ownership of buildings and land the library district could not pledge the properties for a bond or for certificates of participation funding and as the west bookend of the boulder civic area the main library has shared use with other city services so next slide please so option b is the transfer of ownership of the buildings and the land in this case the city would transfer one or more of the buildings to the district with the land the district is responsible for the maintenance of the buildings and the land and the future capital improvements to those buildings some of the considerations that went into this were that the library district would own the assets and control investment in those facilities the library district could pledge the assets for bonds or certificates of participation funding for the carnegie library of local history the george reynolds branch library in the new north boulder library

[103:02] the land and buildings are discrete and not coincident with other city services the west book inn the pacific area the main library does have shared uses with city services the library district would be able to dictate the geographic distribution and the diversity of services and facilities throughout the sale of property through the sale of property over its course of time and it is worth noting that colorado law prevents the library district from using any of the proceeds from the sale of any property for any other use other than providing library services so option c if we can go to the next slide option c is for one or more of the library facilities the city transfers only the buildings to the district and the city continues ownership of the land the district is responsible for the maintenance and future capital improvements to the buildings some considerations here the library

[104:01] district owns the buildings the city and the library district do not have a landlord-tenant relationship the city retains ownership of all the land this could be advantageous in situations where no clear parcel lines exist or the land surrounding the asset has a non-library community purpose such as the main library all right now if we can go on to the next slide um key issue 2 and i'll turn it over to janet thank you david mayor members of council this is janet michaels with the city attorney's office and i'd like to share with you the second consideration the second key issue that we have for you next slide please so the key issue number two for council is what option for the library district board of trustee appointment does council support next slide please

[105:00] so the initial board of trustees is appointed by a committee that's composed of two members of each establishing entity the city of boulder two members of boulder city council and two members of the boulder county board of commissioners then those selections are ratified by a two-thirds majority of each legislative body following that initial appointment colorado library law provides two options for the appointment of library district board of trustees as the terms expire or as people leave after the initial board members are appointed by the staff establishing entities next slide please so the first option is that the establishing entities continue the committee the committee of two members council two members of the commission to appoint new trustees for board vacancies those appointments have to be ratified by a two-thirds majority of each

[106:00] legislative body the second option is that the establishing entities can delegate to the board of trustees authority to recommend new trustees those appointments still though those recommendations still have to be ratified by two-thirds of boulder city council and the boulder board of county commissioners one spin on the colorado library law is that if the legislative bodies fail fail to take action within 60 days after a recommendation is made then that recommendation is considered ratification of the appointment next slide please and david i think i kick it back to you yes you do um tsu3 the process for the dissolution of a library district should it fail to secure funding so next slide please

[107:01] and this is the one that we need um we are hoping to have resolution from council on tonight so we can include it in the resolution that you will review at your next meeting april 5th so issue three if the tabor election fails what options for timing of disillusion of the library district does the council support next last slide please all right the process for dissolution is included in the city council and board of county commissioners for the boulder county for boulder county resolutions to the former library district respectively through mutual agreement council and the bocc may determine the process in the iga for dissolution of the library district if the taber ballot item is not approved by the voters this timeline and approach is fully negotiable as this is not defined processed in the state law next slide there are two options

[108:00] option one define what years and how many attempts at funding can occur prior to dissolution this would look similar to the draft language in the current draft i iga which you reviewed on february 8th if council supports this option directions direction is desired on what years and how many next slide please option two is to define a deadline date by which a district must obtain voter approval for tax funding this would look something like and i quote the electors of the library district must approve xx mill levy to fund the district by the december 31st 2025 or the district shall dissolve without further action by establishing entities and this iga shall terminate staff recommends this option as the language provides simple yet flexible approach to allow the board of trustees to determine how many times and during what years the measure can be put to a vote

[109:01] for approval prior to the established deadline um if council supports this option direction is desired on what date should be included in the draft iga and next slide i think we're at the point where we are looking for council feedback uh we have a number of slides towards the end once you finish with your discussion about next steps but the questions we have for council tonight regarding the library facilities is council interested in transferring ownership or leasing buildings to the library district for the following facilities carnegie library for local history the george reynolds branch library the new north boulder branch library and the main library question number two what options for the library district board of trustees appointment does council support and question number three what option for the timing of this illusion of the library district discount support and i will throw it back to you mayor for opening up a discussion and guiding feedback thank you very much

[110:01] all right thanks so much david and janet that was very clear and straightforward and so here's what i'm going to suggest is that we take these three questions one by one and with each of them we start with questions from council on that item and then we move to uh council statements of opinions and then move towards a straw poll on each one about what council what a majority of council will support for each of these with the goal of ending the evening with some clear direction on all three of them for how to proceed um how does that sound to people mark i see up your hand yeah there was one other issue that i i'm not sure if i saw it addressed but i think it ought to be addressed which was um section 4.2.4 c which is this creation of a partnership in something called the main library area of influence which is something that is highly unusual in my experience and i think we ought to be discussing

[111:02] that as well if that's assumed in something else that's fine but if not i would like that to be on the table it's one of the things we're discussing about the iga yeah so what i'd recommend mark is that i think that pertains to the first question about transferred ownership because i think that's part of the proposal for how to handle transferring ownership over the district so i invite you to weigh in on that question in that in that first item if that works okay thanks that'll work okay uh not seeing any objections then let's start with the first question about how transferring ownership releasing buildings to the district would work and i'll start by asking if anyone has any questions in this area um thanks aaron and david thank you for the presentation and sometimes uh you know we've already got some of this at first though so the second dose is nice on a detailed proposal like this allows it to sink into more of us so so thank you for uh that the recapitulation of this

[112:00] my question centers around what really and it was really a question that nicole asked in a hotline and not sure everybody read staff's response so really kind of want to throw that question back out is what is sort of a general standard practice of many of the other library districts that have formed around the state regarding how they've handled um you know the transfer of ownership or leasing and just where where is that lie with regards to other districts and is there a pattern or best practice that we can glean from that um you know it's important to state at the outset that this is entirely um up to a council decision right so this is a policy decision which council has to make um we don't have a comprehensive data of what happened with every single library district i believe we've collected data on 26. um the um you know a majority of that 26 uh deeded land and buildings um another seven leased them uh a couple viewed

[113:01] the buildings but not the land um there are several library districts i know i mean estes i don't know if that estes was even in your thing i know they they lease the land back from the city so it's typically again at a nominal cost but they own the building and lease the land so it's kind of happened all across the board and it was interesting to get the feedback from those different library districts to see how it happened in their area at the at the time of formation and before we move any further maybe we can take the slides down if that's all right with folks we can see each other a little bit better just that reminding you on we're on item number one about leasing or owning the the buildings uh mark david in in the whatever analysis you have done with respect to comparative um localities we have a very highly developed library system with multiple facilities how many of the

[114:02] competing or comparative systems that you looked at involved conveyance of land and buildings of a similar market value as what we are looking at conveying today mark that's a great question and so comparable value would be difficult because that's not something we ran i'll use um fort collins and colorado springs if that works for you um you know for fort collins they did convey there was a lot of negotiation there were there were several different parcels of land that were undeveloped in buildings that were utilized partially by the city and some owned um and run mostly by the library so it was a more complicated kind of negotiation and they kind of did some traits right so some land was traded for back to the city other the city in exchange deeded the land surrounding the main library in the downtown park

[115:01] to the library district in the case of colorado springs which may mean the value obviously i can't speak to but they had 16 buildings at the time of district formation nine of which were owned seven of which were leased the city and the county areas transferred all of those whether owned or leased they transferred the leases and the ownership of the buildings to the district one library did join the el paso system colorado springs after the district was formed um and they did only the building and leased the land and that you know that's uh that was an old an older building thank you uh taren then lauren don't call myself so david why would we not lease i was reading through and this is i was reading through the packet and i want to know it was there an issue in the past

[116:01] between the lisi and the lease or in this in the city did we have a negative experience between for instance at chautauqua or tell me what is uh on your minds those who decided that this was the best way yeah i wasn't really in on it so i'm going to punt that one to david gear to chris messick on that sure sure so a couple of things um first you know we kind of tried to create a set of guiding assumptions um about kind of like you know for better or worse this is a little bit like a divorce um but how we were gonna approach it i guess our first assumption was if we're going to set up a library district we're going to try to do our best to set it up for success and i think that david earlier in his presentation described some of the advantages of ownership over um leasing as well as

[117:02] um the fact that they're going to be responsible for them um the second we kind of came to terms with the fact or we acknowledged that it was our view that these facilities were purchased by the community and over time you know as boulder has grown boulder has been the center of commerce in boulder county and a lot of people from outside of our boundaries have pitched in to help pay for a lot of things that we enjoy just because for such a long time we were kind of the dominant retail center in the region and then finally the thing that we kind of brought to well i guess there are two more things one of our assumptions was that if if we are going to separate um we are going to try to um [Music] do so in a manner where we don't

[118:00] interfere with each other that we would try to reduce the entanglements um you know that that would come with it and then finally with respect to the main library i think that we just drew the conclusion that the entanglements were so tight between the city and you know and a library district in terms of being a part of the municipal campus that we would have to come up with some kind of arrangement where we would both be able to figure out how to manage and maintain both the municipal campus around it in the library as well and i might add on to that just a little bit uh i think some of the other questions have come up around examples of other leases that the city uh has uh and some of the leases that we have are with other non-profit institutions

[119:00] so think of chautauqua or the dairy center or uh the building that bamoka is in and and we when we looked at those as david gear was describing they're a little bit different than this situation those are buildings that then a a not-for-profit institution that's providing a service to our community is housed in um whereas a library district is another governmental entity with uh a guaranteed revenue stream uh of property tax and so we see it a a little bit different in the sense of the the level of maybe vulnerability or variability of their income and uh as i think david gear described how do we look at setting up if a if a district is created how do you set it up to be as successful as it could be um and those were some of the factors uh that that led us to our recommendation of a transfer versus

[120:00] a lease thanks that's very helpful and i'll just pop in i don't know if this is so much of a divorce and more of setting up a child in their own home i'll just say we're trying to help them get off on their feet and be successful lauren rachel nicole and then mark you saw your hand up so um my first question is um as you spoke to different communities sort of about their arrangements with the libraries that were set up um did any of them bring up difficulties that they had faced due to their ownership or lease situation um sort of what have we heard from other communities about how their different arrangements are working for them thank you for that question lauren we didn't inquire but we did get some unsolicited um

[121:02] advice on that and it mostly has to do and i don't think this is um our situation it mostly had to do with older buildings the carnegie building um which was not ada compliant and they have a different the lease agreement um stipulates certain things so it would come i mean i i think their problem really was the way in which the lease was written so the responsibility for ada compliance was uh on the part of the town they refused to do it the library district had to ultimately make the decision to move out of that location because the town was for whatever reasons for for historical reasons they didn't want to tamper with the carnegie building they were unwilling to pay for the cost to make that building ada accessible so that that's the only story that was related to me i you know there are a number of libraries that are in buildings that they own but they leased the land from the township or the city and have had no issues

[122:04] that they relate to me thank you um and that kind of i think speaks to some of the difficulties of the entanglements i think david was sort of referring to earlier i was wondering if you could also maybe shed a little bit more light on what the benefits of ownership are and how the library might benefit by owning like an asset like a building and sort of like what that means in terms of its ability to leverage for future projects uh i'll take that one um well so i think primarily um they're both possessory interests so you can do it however you want one of the limitations in our charter is that our leases are only for 20 years and at least with non-prof with the non-profits that we have lease relationships with 20 years is not a long time horizon so there's always a little bit of

[123:00] reticence on their part in terms of like how much time is left on their lease when they're you know and their desire to do uh capital improvements to the building so you have that kind of limitation in our lease and and i think that probably um the the the advantage of ownership is pretty much what david was was talking about earlier is um if the library district ever wanted to you know bond for a capital some type of capital project that they would be able to pledge their assets as collateral and by pledging assets as collateral um you know the typical result is you can get the district would get a better rate on its bonds or its certificates of participation so those would be the main the main advantages of ownership over

[124:04] over a lease arrangement thank you or i got rachel and then nicole and mark i didn't mean to cut in front of you aaron i think you said you were going to go next but i assume you're i'm dropping my question so you go ahead all right um a couple questions for david i think um well first like maybe um panning out a little bit we've gotten a lot of emails recently about like why are we looking at a library district like what's what's the benefit like what's in it for city boulder so i was hoping maybe you could um just pan out and maybe give a little context of what are benefits of um a library district uh so if i could start there possibly

[125:00] was that for my internet froze for a second was that question for david farnham i was hoping for david but whoever can field it i think would be great just sort of which day what are you thinking rachel i'm sorry there you go but anything it would be great to hear from eddie and all yep so thank you for the question rachel and do you mean in the context of owner owning or releasing a building or do you mean justin the the general conversation that we're having um you know we are i just want to sort of pan out a little bit and um set some context for the discussion that we're having the continued discussion that we're having because they're we're just receiving a lot of input so um there's there's some belief that this is just like and you know astonishing asinine thing to to consider and to continue to dialogue about so hoping that you can just yeah i'm just not going to where it came from but we didn't get the the background and why are what are any benefits here

[126:01] yeah i mean i should have anticipated this question i did not um i you know i i um so both the balder community i mean i have notes in my office going back to 1987. right so there has been a conversation on this topic um going well beyond three decades um and it continues to come back up but it was on it was on my work plan when i arrived it was in the 2008 master plan so um you know our goal staff's goal has been to bring this conversation to fruition into public hearing and you know the library um commission i believe um we presented to the library commission in the course of the master plan every funding option i think you could possibly imagine right so we we proposed to them a lot of considerations during the course of that two-year master plan they the library commission settled on at that time that library district funding was the most

[127:01] common form of governance in the state of colorado it provided the most fair and equitable and sustainable form of funding for library districts and hence why it was the most common form of governance uh for public libraries in the state of colorado um four subsequent library commissions have unanimously agreed um you know it is possible i mean their libraries collect a lot of data and i'm happy to come back and present all kinds of data um we've presented a lot of data to the library commission over the years you can review it yourself most of it is freely available online through lrs.org you can you know put boulder aside you can do comparisons between district libraries and municipal libraries and other types of libraries throughout the state and draw your own conclusions i mean the conclusion that the library commission drew and that i think many of the library champions have drawn is that it's clear that um library districts um

[128:00] tend to grow financially with their communities um where there is growth and either financially or in population there's corresponding growth in the financial stability of that library district i think that was probably one of the important factors for their consideration you know there are 14 there are 14 libraries in the state of colorado that serve communities of over 100 000 um eight of those are library districts one of them is a county library with dedicated funding three of the other five are actively having the same conversation that we're having so denver longmont and boulder are having the same conversation about whether or not to form a district the only other two um i know for certain one of them has been in you know significant financial straights for a number of years um and the other one went for a district a taber election in the early 2000s and

[129:00] failed and they have not been back so you know if you count the ones that are considering it and the one that has failed it is the process by which most well 13 of 14 of the larger communities in colorado at least investigated this topic i hope that answers your question i appreciate it i just kind of wanted to um i guess just re-level set why we're here and and can you also confirm i think my my recollection is that if we weren't having you know going through this um process that the library champions had had collected enough signatures to get on the ballot like circumventing council is that true do you do you know um what it does and i i'll ask the attorneys to weigh in if they can my understanding of what the petition yes they did collect enough signatures from a petition they turned them in that does not circumvent council in the sense of which council still has the option to opt out of a

[130:00] district any any community or township or city that provides some level of library services can opt out of becoming a district what it does is it preempts council's ability to be an establishing entity so has an establishing entity council and the board of county commissioners have the option of establishing both the boundaries to the district and the mill levy and the process by which um the trustees and that kind of thing are appointed all all the different things that we've outlined for you in the iga those would be those those but the primary ones being the mill levy and the boundaries would be established by the petitioners and not by the establishing entities and that was the reason i believe in part that the petition was pulled in an effort to get the city council and the county commissioners involved in that conversation about what the boundary should be and what the middle level should be all right thanks for that history i'm more pointed now uh to the the question

[131:02] at hand um i i do think that um a big part of my job is to protect city assets and and um and and not sort of give away the family farm as i think people are worried about that we would be doing if we transfer ownership so i'm wondering um and and i haven't previewed this for you either i did try i'm sorry um but like what do you see as worst case scenarios so sort of the inverse of of lauren's question like you know here's the the pros to uh selling rather than leasing but as an attorney i feel um you know it's just where my mind goes like what's the worst thing that can happen if we transfer this and um and i can i can i can think of of you know a dozen ways that it would be not and advantageous so just wondering what what do you see as realistic cons to transferring land and or building because least seems like the the least

[132:00] risky option yeah i think you're correct i think least leasing it would be the least risky option you know i think that the worst thing that could happen is that the library district would fail it would end up in some type of bankruptcy that it would have pledged a ton of debt that it um couldn't pay back um and the buildings went into foreclosure that would be kind of like the doomsday scenario that said you thought of that one make it 13. yeah okay um but you know but but that said you know we've we've mentioned this before um one there's a financial plan and two it's uh you know the revenue source is based on property tax which is you know in colorado is probably one of the most stable revenue sources that um you could tap into so

[133:01] i i would say that you know the risks that i just described are um pretty out there all right that's what we consider right can i share my worst case scenario yeah my my worst since today's scenario would be you deed the buildings to the library district in 2022 and then in 2023 there's a massive flood which makes maine and george reynolds permanently uninhabitable and the district is kind of left with nothing so um that would be a bad scenario as well i think 14. thank you for that um and then one last um question you know i think that that we are you know it feels like a bit of a leap of faith for some um to be doing this district you know change is is often scary to us and so is there anything to stop us from saying going in let's lease it but in five years if it's you know up and running smoothly then then we can go ahead and look at a sale of either

[134:00] building or land for any of them yeah no and um from just conversations that we have had with kim setter that you know the outside library lawyer that's been kind of advising us through this process is that that's happened with districts as well where they start out in a lease arrangement at the beginning and then at some point they just convey to the district yes at a later time yeah okay all right those are all my questions thanks for bearing with me okay nicole and then um mark and then that thank you um i just wanted to uh thank you david fernand just um for your stewardship of the libraries just to use uh aaron's analogy of sort of you know a child kind of growing up right we wouldn't be in this place um you know with uh where we could consider kind of letting the libraries grow and thrive the way that they need to um without

[135:00] your leadership and so i just want to thank you for that especially uh during the pandemic um thanks to you and your staff thank you also too and your staff for answering my extensive comparison questions which are really helpful just in thinking about where some of the things we're considering would fit in with what other districts have done so thank you for that um a question that i have is just around um and i don't know if this is the right analogy to be doing i'm thinking about you know when i was a renter um one of the really frustrating things was not being able to sort of take care of the things that i needed to take care of because the landlord was there right if something if i wanted it changed if you know i needed to fix or address something um i couldn't do that and i'm just wondering does that sort of um leasing does that hamper the libraries in that you know in sort of an analogous way where would would we almost be um kind of facilitating the library's success if we were to uh if the

[136:00] libraries were to own the buildings i mean is there a um does it hamper sort of the library's innovation or anything like that uh down the road because i as a you know as the proud parent i guess for now you know i really want to see the libraries thrive david did you want to answer that i you know i i don't i think it all depends upon how you write the lease um you know the um in the in the assumptions that we placed on before this all began is that the library district would be fully responsible for all the maintenance and upkeep and capital expenses related to the building i i don't i don't imagine that the city would restrict that in any way i know um there have been several uh questions over the course of time from primarily from the library commission which is not a governing agency even an advisory board about the level the standards and

[137:02] levels of maintenance and of our current facilities and i should imagine i don't know but i should imagine a board of trustees may have a different standard of maintenance that they would expect than what we currently provide with the city and then they just have to figure out if they can pay for it i mean like i'm assuming that the lease would would establish a certain level of maintenance that was required of the district since the district has uh the assumption that we're making is that the district would pay for uh all maintenance issues if they had if they had disparate standards hopefully um they could work that out through the lease i don't know yeah and i think that's that's the primary difference is that it's truly clear if you own it that you're responsible for it um in a lease arrangement you can allocate responsibility however you want to negotiate it between the parties thank you and it's the case the trustees would um be reporting on kind of the the

[138:01] district's finances and financial situation a couple times a year is that right so it's not like it's just sort of handed over we would still have some um uh insight into where things stand financially i believe so and i would ask janet to correct me if i'm wrong but i believe that the iga requires annual annual reporting to the city and county of their financial status that's correct that's why that's how we have it drafted yeah okay thank you um and i i think you know aaron just to the point about the question that we're considering here um i i think what is compelling to me is that the question that lauren mentioned about and that david mentioned in the presentation around the benefit that the library has the library district would have having their own buildings and sort of being able to take out um loans finance against that as needed it just feels like it's giving them

[139:00] more flexibility and that you know i think my my main motivation and all of this is is how we can ensure uh the best chance of success for the library district as it kicks off so i think that's where i'm leaning right now is more toward following staff's recommendations or i'm sorry i don't remember if it was staff for ldac their recommendations about how to do that where the main library building but not the land would be uh given to the district thanks for that nicole i am going to try to get us through the rest of any questions that remain and then and then go to comments so we'll just see if we um have any more questions um i think mark and then matt just one quick uh response to rachel i i thought her comments were very good um you know in connection with financing um david you you mentioned that

[140:02] there was only a remote possibility of default and repossession i just want to mention that the city of boulder was in great financial shape in 2019 and then covet it stuff happens um and you know the power to pledge assets is one that has to be dealt with very seriously my question is for chris um you had made a comment with respect to um a governmental agency you know leasing space um and suggested that somehow that was in some way awkward does not the city of boulder um lease space at scale um and does that inhibit our ability to conduct our operations how would it be different for a uh a library district to do that and has other entities uh has chautauqua been

[141:01] constrained by its lease in any significant way you know i mark i think the point was that um it would actually be a better relationship because the library district is a you know non-profits have to fundraise um and the library district has a very would have a a very stable revenue source and i think you know the relationship would probably be easier and better with a library district than we probably currently exist with our nonprofits well that that would seem to suggest that leasing would not be a bad alternative if we're going to have a better relationship what i'm saying is yeah yeah that's why you gotta you got elected so you get you get to make that call okay yeah i think mark uh if i wasn't clear i apologize what i i think i was really trying to just articulate is the the um

[142:00] behind the the interest behind leasing for nonprofits and versus uh a governmental entity and just really the the variation in revenue source so there wasn't a judgment that i was trying to make in terms of uh uh leasing for governments is a bad thing it's more of just uh the the stability of a non-profit versus the stability of a government a government is likely way more stable all right i'll save my comments for comments okay thanks uh thanks aaron and uh so i have a question i mean rachel kind of prompted a little bit of a high-altitude question which i think is important because this is not only discussion for us as a body but also the community is listening as a whole and trying to gather some assemblance of oh what what are they learning and knowing and facts and context and all that so so my question kind of centers around some of the things that we've been hearing um and and sort of centers around kind of

[143:01] some loose assumption about that forming a library district might that you wouldn't really notice anything different on the back side and so i'm kind of curious david farnad uh if you could maybe address with some financial stability and really kind of letting the bird out of the nest and thrive what what would be some of those substantive programmatic or infrastructure improvements or changes that that our community would see as a benefit from forming a library district um thank you and i should have brought other notes too um you know a lot of them are outlined in the master plan so the 2018 master plan in the library district doesn't have an existence so it doesn't have a plan or a strategy at this point i'm assuming that a board of trustees would would have one our our goal at present and most of the goals around the advocates for the library district have been around

[144:00] the master plan right so um and those are legion um you know first and foremost i think um finishing the nobo project the nobo building north boulder library and building it out to the the elements that we designed it to do and spoke of with the community so you know fully taking advantage of solar energy fully taking advantage of a lot of the green energy solutions that we had to value engineer out at the last minute because of cost we would also finish the makerspace build the playground uh do the plaza improvements which we discussed with the community um there's a gun barrel library the gun barrel library has been discussed probably at least as long as a library district so i guess for at least 35 years we would open a gun barrel library with the library district that's a master plan goal in the in that same context with the district discussion the advocates have discussed a library in naiwa which that is that has been folded into the um

[145:00] the budgeting for a potential library district and then you know restoration of funding is another huge one right so we we still um are roughly hundred thousand shy from the pandemic cuts like marcus right there was there were cuts all across the city um and that would mean reopening the carnegie library of local history reopening the canyon theater re-staffing um collection development buying books um rehiring staff for boulder reads adult literacy program the list goes on and on one of the major one of the major factors and you know i haven't been asked about this much is that it's a significant chunk of change um for a district to assume as as you all discussed when you looked at your facilities master plan in 2021 you know going from a half a percent investment in replacement value to two percent is a chunk of change uh the district's budget that we've worked through

[146:01] um you know assumes that the district would take care of what it owns or that's how it's always that's how we always phrase when we're with the city right so we take care of what we own we put that in every single master plan and so that is a major factor and probably um from a point of view of cost that cost actually um dwarfs most of those other services and things that you're looking at in terms of like an outreach program to the latino community opening library and gun barrel opening a library in nywa none of those amount to the same amount of money that we're factoring into the library district budget in terms of taking care of maintaining the facilities in uh working order and trying to get them up to code so that in 15 years we can meet the climate pools i hope that answers your question but there is a long list there is a web page that you can go on to to find a list of all things from the boulder library master plan those are all goals that we've outlined and i don't think any of them are

[147:00] massive stretch goals they are they are focused primarily on taking care of what we own um in the master plan but there are some stretch goals opening the canyon theater back up to the public has been a stretch goal for a long time adequately staffing the carnegie library for local history opening a gun barrel branch those are all strategical thank you david i appreciate that thanks david okay we've got bob and let's see if we can move on into comments if there's no more questions there and i was going to move in the comments go for it okay great um well let me just kind of i think our goal tonight is to um consider and possibly improve the intergovernmental agreement that's on the table i i want to preface my comments by by declaring that i'll be unlikely to support the formation of libraries on april 5th um given especially given the new um large tax that's been proposed that would affect low-income families fixed income seniors and small businesses but with that said i do want to make the iga

[148:02] better so that the best foot can be put forward and perhaps this will pass in november and past perhaps once so i just wanted to i didn't want to imply that by proposing changes to the iga you're going to earn my vote on the library district because you probably won't but i do want to help um so i want to give that way a way to background i'll focus my comments on just item number one because i know we'll come back on item number two and three in a few minutes um and that's the lease of the building versus conveying a right of uh conveying the ownership of the building with some sort of uh complicated right or reversion or clawback right um having as a lawyer who's done both of those i will tell you that at least it's a lot easier than conveying ownership with the clawback right or right or reversion it gets um it gets really really messy and usually ends up in litigation uh the city as has already been noted does this all the time we've leased the building to the dairy for the last 30 plus years we've leased bomocha's building to them for more than 30 years going back to the 1980s we leased the

[149:01] boulder history museums building to them they recently left that and now we lease it to the women's wilderness organization and then of course probably the the best example of this is at least dates back to 1898 where we leased um space to chautauqua buildings in land chautauqua and we continued to that to this day and those leases get renewed about every 20 or 30 years matter of fact i served on the board of most of those organizations um on the nonprofit side of things uh opposite the city and the relationships were always cordial and positive as a matter of fact i negotiated the the latest renewal of the chicago leaves back in 2015 before i joined council and uh it was not a difficult piece to negotiate and uh the responsibilities of maintenance do fall on the chautauqua organization i i really didn't follow chris's distinction between a non-profit uh versus a government entity as a matter of fact if anything government entities is is a better tenant uh than a nonprofit that's got to scrape for for the money uh this this government entity would have has

[150:01] has been observed a a pretty ready revenue stream and just to be perfectly clear i think when we're talking about least we're talking about a dollar a year lease we're not talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars i think we're talking about a dollar a year so this is really a legal question more than an economic question do do we want the city to retain the library buildings that the taxpayers have bought over the last many many decades with the right of the city to terminate that lease if for some reason bad things happen and i think you know rachel identified correctly that conveying ownership is a lot more risky than a lease um and there is a possibility that if we conveyed ownership the the library district could um go on borrow money and pledge that asset by way of mortgage and even a government entity can file bankruptcies matter of fact there's a special chapter of the bankruptcy cold called chapter nine i used to do a fair amount of bankruptcy work in chapter nine particularly um my in a prior life and um someone made a comment well the this entity won't file chapter nine because

[151:00] it has a good plan based on property taxes well i will tell you that every single government entity that filed chapter nine had a good plan based on property taxes and uh things got out of hand so i don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility it's something any of us would wish for but i do want to recognize that if we were to lease the property for a dollar a year that does take that risk off the table and it's effective the same thing from an operating standpoint the building's still there but from a legal standpoint we have the right to uh to pull it back in the event that maintenance was not being provided at the stipulated level in the lease or um the library got herself into financial difficulty um and then i want to roll in i think mark also raised this kind of zone of influence or area of influence question i think we're going to include that type that in under item one i would be pretty opposed to giving the library district veto power over what the city or uh what downtown organizations might want to do in the area when i saw when i saw the area of influence uh clause i kind of reminded me of the of

[152:01] the late 19th century where the european powers carved up parts of china in zones of inference there's a portuguese interest and there was a french interest and there's a uk interest it feels kind of pretty offensive to me i i think you know the library district whether it owns the building or um or releases it from the city uh they're a tenant and and they'll operate their library and i don't think they get to tell businesses or the city downtown what they can do uh in the neighborhood so i would be in favor of a lease a one dollar a year lease and i would be in favor of eliminating the area of influence clause in the iga you know and i'll stop there because i know we've got two others to talk about here thanks for that bob i i went ahead and raised my hand i'm gonna call myself that's right um well i'll just start off by saying that that i am um i'm very likely to support the formation of library district on april 5th um so that's something that i'm very interested in uh but also um appreciate like bob said try try to make that g the

[153:00] best you can i'll just offer some thoughts on this lease versus um question i very much want the district to be successful um if the voters approve it um and i feel like it could be very successful with either a leased or an owned approach so um i'll just i'm going to go with the will of counsel on this one but just a thought on on either direction i think uh first let me uh or add in that a great appreciation for the work that the ldac committee did they they sat and worked on these issues very very hard so their recommendations uh carry a lot of weight and they've led us to the draft iga that we're working with here uh and so which is quite a long document and uh very much appreciate them guiding us towards that and so we're talking about a few key issues but just want to be clear that i very much appreciate their work and uh all of their recommendations uh matter very much here so and so that they advised a donation of most of the land in the buildings um and i think that could be

[154:02] successful to get the the district off and starting and running uh if we take that approach the one thing i would say is that uh rather than um a right of first refusal for the buildings i would want to see the right of i think was reversion whatever the term was that was used where if if a currently owned city building were given to the library district and in some point in the future they decided they no longer needed it for a library purpose that the city could get that back without spending additional funds i think that would be kind of the sort of reasonable thing for the city organization to have that option so we go that that path i would argue for that if we go the least path i would say the the maybe the biggest benefit of the lease path i mean there there's some some simplicities in terms of the um you know it's fairly doable to craft craft a lease you know i do understand that there are folks in the community that have an attachment to sort of the way to to our

[155:01] wonderful library system in the way that has been run uh historically and that there's some reluctance or concern about um donating those assets to another entity personally i think it's a it's another governmental entity that would have the library's best interest very much in its heart so i think it can work out but um as rachel noted uh if it's leased it could at some point in the future if the city and the library district were okay with it that could change and they could change to donation if a future council future library district felt like that would be a similar choice if we do take the lease path what i would say is i think it should be very clean in terms of um the city handing over both the responsibility and the ability of the district to maintain uh those library assets to a high standard that they set so that the the city can generally stay out of it let them run their buildings and their assets the way they feel best for for library

[156:00] purposes so that would be my my interest on the lease side so those those are my my two cents and i'll let other people talk um rachel mark lord nicole thanks erin um so i i favor lease because like i said it just seems less risky i also haven't heard a ton of advocacy around um like from from people who are pretty invested in this that i've checked in with they don't seem to feel real strongly on it that i've heard so um i would go with the lower risk lease choice if we are going to go the um transfer route i would really want to know like you know a worst case scenario that was mentioned is bankruptcy or mishandling funds so let's say that were to happen and they need to close boulder branches you know three of them are something in the district and um you know downsize i think boulder's been very intentional about having libraries within 15 minute neighborhoods

[157:00] and walkable and with north boulder we i think really wanted it to be there as a community benefit for people who live near it so let's say that were to get sold what can go there like you know certainly i'm with aaron on the um right of reversion or reverter rather than um first offer because i think we would want to retain those spaces as a community space and and i don't know what the options are like can it get sold to anybody i don't know what zoning applies so it went that really uh nailed down if we were to go the transfer route before i i'd support that i think lisa's just it sounds to be um less risky i think that you know after after we get a community understanding of how the library is working we can look at it again and i think it also as someone who who wants this to succeed i'm likely to support it and i hope voters do too i think it's probably more appealing to voters to have um not that that the

[158:01] sense of like losing um the land that and the buildings uh and and an unknown future possibly arising around them so i'm for elise thanks churchill mark lauren nicole matt mark i'm sorry i didn't realize it was up next there you go um i i just want to i also favor leasing for a number of reasons and i i i think there's almost a a sense of discomfort with leases as an attorney i must have done hundreds of commercial leases um they do not imply undue restriction on the tenant you're basically permitted to do whatever the lease permits you to do and that can be very very broad i would expect it to be broad because i don't want the city if we're going to do a library district it's inappropriate for the city to be

[159:00] micromanaging what the district does all that a commercial lease does in the end is say um you know we expect you to maintain the property up to a certain standard and if that's not being done uh then we have a conversation because we have a little bit of recourse you don't have to have a great many requirements in the lease to do this or do that it can be a you know an annual report to uh to the landlord as to what's going on i mean it's it's not necessarily a burdensome transaction but it does provide a little bit of extra uh protection for the city and by the way i'm very concerned with with um pledging uh or monetizing the assets of our libraries you may not be able to do it on the release doesn't mean you can't come to the landlord to say can we do this this is an excellent opportunity for us and we'd like to do this and we can have that conversation

[160:03] all that the lease does is protect the assets um require them to be maintained to a general standard of good repair and cleanliness um and then sets the uh the library district off to do its business as best it can so i you know to the extent that there's some sort of concern that that um that commercial leasing here would be unduly burdensome on the district i i really would have to take issue with that i've done too many of these to to buy into that theory and i hope other people will [Music] will support the leasing concept because it does provide at least a modicum a shred of protection to the city of boulder without interfering with the library district's ability to conduct its affairs as it sees fit in these buildings thanks

[161:01] thanks mark uh lauren nicole matt thank you i think aaron as you pointed out i think that um no matter which option we pick i think that likely we will have a really positive outcome um i personally plan okay i am excited to see the library district um and i will likely support it going forward um in terms of leasing versus owning i think that um outside i think the main branch is maybe a special case because of its location because of the land it sits on just the way it relates to the city for a whole variety of reasons um for me the main branch feels like leasing would be the right option

[162:00] and then for the other locations i would support ownership i think my biggest concern is is maintenance and is sort of proper upkeep in the long time you know in the long term the george reynolds branch is the one closest to me which we remember had a pipe break and caused a significant amount of damage and i just um while leases can be made clear there is nothing as crystal clear as ownership in terms of who is responsible and who both for not only the maintenance of the buildings but for any like i also think about landscape maintenance and these wind events if we had you know something happen it's just good to have total clarity around who is ultimately responsible for all the pieces so that and then again also the

[163:01] library's ability to you know have greater financial support through being able to access funds at better rates for both of those reasons i would support that again as aaron brought up i think the right of reversion is a really important piece to that as well thanks lauren nicole and matt thank you um i just wanted to lift up a point that chris mentioned earlier that i think went a little bit unnoticed just about the fact that the libraries have been supported by the general fund which has been supported by sales tax um which does not just come from boulder residents but really is more broad than our city so a lot of the the sales tax money that we get as a city comes from people who aren't in boulder um and so you know for me i just kind of think about that you know when i think about who sort of owns the buildings or you

[164:01] know who's paid into it it really is a broader regional thing um i think you know the fact that um thank you again staff for doing this research but um that the majority of the districts that um staff got a hold of uh were adida the buildings um that tells me that there's something valuable there i also think this point about allowing the libraries to um be able to just have a little bit more financial flexibility um is kind of pushing me still in the direction of dating the buildings i do agree with lauren on the point that the main library brand or the main library building does seem to be a slightly different um beast so i would you know support giving ownership of the buildings the other buildings to the library district and then um uh i think either just the building or just leasing the building for uh the main library building just given us its location um

[165:01] and i want to say it seems like most people are focusing more on the lease and so i just want to echo lauren's point there that i really want to make sure the library district is getting responsibility for the um building maintenance and that's not coming to the city but that that is something that the library district uh has the um i'm going to say ownership in quotes but just sort of in the things that they are meant to do um that that would be very clear in the lease mr nicole thanks aaron uh yeah so i'm gonna have to agree with some of my colleagues and and maybe in specific lauren and she laid out a case that's very very identical to mine um for one i will most certainly be supporting a library district as we continue to move forward uh the benefits are just just quite quite astounding and it's long overdue that we provide that financial security and independence among many of the other benefits that david and others have pointed out um in

[166:01] terms of this i would say that i'm in favor of leasing of the main library for for some of the complexities that have been been laid out um but with the other branches for the sake of that financial security and being able to leverage those uh for better rates on bonds or loans i do think the other four um i would be supportive of those uh being owned not just the building but the land itself um and of course coupling that to to a right of reversion i think would would be appropriate there as well um and and so i think that that's a i think as lauren pointed out those are those are really positive benefits uh you know and really lastly on that i think what drives me and nicole point this out too is is it's about what's in the best interest for the district to be able to maximize achieving their goals um you know there's this master plan that we're currently sitting on and i expect the new district to form its new master plan and there's nothing more frustrating than having a master plan and then being have one hand tied behind your back and

[167:00] being able to achieve it or not being able to be as visionary or or as transformative in a master planning process as you might want to because you don't have the financial means to do that and so i want to unencumber a library district so that they can uh really be adaptive to what we need in a library for our community now and for for decades to come and i think this allows us at least in terms of the recognitions that i certainly agree with lauren on a bit uh we'll help help them get there thanks um maybe i can call on terry who hasn't spoken yet and then bobby can go so much has been said i don't need to say more i'm just gonna after listening to everybody i am more i'm leaning towards rachel what rachel said so i'm gonna agree with rachel thanks bob i just want to make two small technical points um one um there was some discussion about maybe leasing the the main branch which would be great and possibly conveying ownership on some of the um neighborhood branches i think at least

[168:00] one maybe two of the neighborhood branches are actually leased to themselves whether we have a commercial landlord and so we we wouldn't be able to convey ownership on those the best we could do is be to sublet uh the uh those properties to the um to the library district so i just want to make that observation and david for uh gear can certainly walk us through what's owned and what's or what's leased by us and all the best we could do is be the sublease the second i want to make an observation uh somebody talked about a 20-year lease or maybe david gear did there is a provision in the boulder by statute this was actually adopted by the voters a few years ago that allows a super majority of council to grant a 30-year lease and that's to allow tenants to make substantial investments in their properties if they like to because 20 years sometimes is a little bit too short so i just want to flag that for us if we do go down the the path of leasing these some or all these buildings i do want to recognize the fact that when we get to that vote by a super majority vote we can uh we can make the 30-year lease there's a couple of other conditions requirement but uh but that's a thing that can be done

[169:03] okay now we'll try to bring us to close here in a minute terry did you have something else you want to add your hand is up oh it's up okay um you know what i'll just no i'm good all right well um i that was uh not a unanimous opinion i i counted uh said i think four people interested in leasing i heard um three folks of a combination of leasing and owning and then i said well i think it can all work out but i was intrigued by the lauren offered what which shepherd was a bit of a middle way here which is leasing the main library branch which is of course the flagship branch that started the library and i think that the community has the greatest amount of attachment to in terms of sentimental attachment and concern over its future uh while donating the other uh library branches that's a proposal that i can get behind um so and you know we don't have juni

[170:02] here tonight so we have all nine of us so i'm not sure exactly what she's thinking but i wonder if that's that is something of a mix between the leasing and the donating is that a proposal that a majority of council could get behind bob we could have david gear walk us through which of the branch uh branches are actually not even owned by the city because i think at least one or two of them are actually leased by the city so we wouldn't be able to donate them anyway right there's uh the north boulder branch library not the one that's gonna be constructed but the the storefront one in north boulder and then the one that's in the meadow shopping center the meadows branch so those two are um we lease those spaces um and i think that the idea behind those is that we would simply either sublet to the district or we would uh try to um assign the leases

[171:01] if that were a possibility to the district all right so we're talking about george reynolds the carnegie branch in the north boulder branch and i'll i'll just while i've got the flora just make the comment the north boulder branch doesn't exist yet so to me that seems like the easiest one to donate with the formation of the district because it would get created about the time the district was formed um if the district is successful in terms of being passed so that one seems easier to me but so i just offer i if somebody people want to say okay that seems pretty good or if people want to say you know what it really has to be a different way maybe quick comments rachel well it's it's i think that was a staff proposal right so i don't i don't it's not something i hadn't thought of if i'm conceptualizing what we're talking about i believe the staff proposal was to donate the building but not the land

[172:02] uh for the main library do i have that correct david well you know um more or less i think that we're kind of agnostic i think that what the state what the staff would be has been has been interested in downtown is a flexible relationship that allows us both to coexist um in in a in a very small area so whether that would be done with a condominium form of ownership whether it's done with the lease um i think that we're agnostic as to which tool you would use we use we use both of them in other property contexts i think that so either could work i think the ldac recommended donating the building and releasing the land so i mean whatever the the majority will is obviously that's it is what it is i think it's um it's a riskier thing i think that

[173:00] especially with the small branches like um reynolds like that's probably an easier one to let go of and potentially uh oh you needed yourself anyways i i my concern is just that that you know library branches could be closed in in in the city of boulder um and it seems like a a possibility that i'm not sure why why open that door so that said it doesn't seem like the the biggest aspect to um spin over given that we have two more so i wonder if maybe we could come back to this if it's going to be sort of a four four split at this point and see how the other uh things turn out and if we learn anything in those discussions okay and i guess the other thing um and anyone can virtually kick me under the table if they would like but we don't have to decide this tonight um you know we put together the iga

[174:02] with the notion of like we're trying to kind of get some consensus about where the council sees the city going as we would move into a negotiation with the library district once if it's formed and a board is appointed um so so there is still time to continue to talk about this i'll i'll gavel that and say sold to come to we've gotten a lot of opinions and thoughts and we could come back to this to to refine it and would be good to hear junior's not on it too um mark did you mark him yeah i i just want to be supportive of what rachel said i still think leasing is the better way to go and i'm particularly concerned with with the the right to uh mortgage or monetize a brand new north boulder library in which we have invested a great deal of city funds i'm happy to have that under the control

[175:00] of the library district but not happy to give them the right to then take that new building and and pledge it towards a bond towards a certificate of participation or any other financing device that has been constructed with city funds um and again i have no problem with it being run by the library district for as long as they are in operation but i do have a problem with them potentially monetizing it and putting it in jeopardy uh of of not uh remaining under control of either the city or the library district as i said before you know things have a way of changing our finances were great in 2019 and then covet hit and another occurrence like that if you have bonded uh that facility uh you may find that uh being able to um carry the debt service on those bonds

[176:01] becomes extremely difficult what then but point taken for sure all right let's go to matt and then maybe we can finish up here so just uh since we kind of got uh kind of a shot across the bow earlier from staff about not being really clear about what advice uh we're giving staff it's not the whole spectrum at this point because we're kind of four four it's either a full lease for everything or the hybrid model that lauren recommended i just want to make sure that it's those two tracks that we're sending off to staff or is it just now is everything still on the table and we'll come back to it and we kind of just spun our wheels for a little bit i kind of want to make sure we're we're heading in that in a focused narrowing our scope a little bit for our next conversation yeah thanks for that well what i what i've heard is it seems like everyone or close to everyone feels like leasing the main library makes sense so that seems like um we're pretty much on on the same track there and then the question is

[177:00] whether the branches would be leased um or donated and there i'm seeing a split and what i'm what i'd like to propose is that we uh for the offer that we come back to this as we move into the iga discussions and also we could maybe think about ways to be creative if for example there are ways to uh donate but with a covenant on it that requires it to stay a boulder library branch for some number of years so that we have um you know some certainty about services being provided in existing locations uh you know for long enough to assure the community but but still sometime in the future you have flexibility about um for doing other things so i'm not saying that's what we do i'm just saying maybe we can sharpen our pencils um as we come back to this and think about creative ways to address some of the concerns that have been raised erin can i with you for one second sure um one concept that i would certainly be comfortable with is um new facilities created by the library district could certainly be owned by the

[178:01] library district they were not built you know presumably they were they are being built with library district funds not general funds out of the city and the district could certainly have an entitlement to do what what they will with those new facilities very very good and i think that's what's contemplating the current iga so that i think that that makes sense so rachel you've got your hand up um no is sue are folks okay with us coming back to this um doing some additional thinking hearing from juni and then finalizing the last details in the iga discussions i'm not seeing any thumbs down although i'm seeing some people look dubious um all right okay well let's thank you for the direction i think we do have some direction here that we've taken main out of the equation in terms of an ownership it's it is

[179:01] i think there was at least a majority in terms of leasing of maine in the land and then the branches are still somewhat a little in the wind uh but that we're we're hoping from question one and question two to get your direction for how negotiations of an iga would go when we get to question three we need that for the resolution buddy are you ready to go into question two yes and let's see so i got a request for a short break which i'm happy to entertain but mark did you want to say something before we do that no are we going to discuss that um the main library area of influence tonight that provision which you know mark i think that would that would only be uh it would only be of interest if there was an ownership stake so that that can easily that's resolved uh okay do you understand by moving it to a lease i stand fully corrected thank you okay um and yeah so why don't we just take a five minute break because i'm

[180:01] hopeful we can get these next two questions in a much shorter amount of time so uh we'll say 8.57 do

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[186:30] sorry for the short break i can just see everybody grumbling like i remember when heather gave us a 15-minute break but it was a good suggestion take a few minutes

[187:08] just waiting for a couple more people i'm here but eating julie noted same ditto rachel all right very good well we got everybody back um so bob you have your hand up already i was gonna introduce this for the next couple i'm just gonna do the same thing i was gonna ask for a slide to be put up go ahead yeah well what i was just gonna say is that so we got two other questions and we asked a lot of detailed questions about that last one i appreciate that that was a fairly it's a weighty topic about how to approach the assets of the library system i'll say i think these two are a little more straightforward so my hope is you know ask whatever questions you need to ask but my hope is that we can be um maybe a little more a little

[188:02] quicker with these both in terms of questions and discussion so but i'll establish that as a an ambition so yeah if we could get that slide up about the the next question about the how we're appointing district members please so this one is somewhat more straightforward this is about trusty appointment uh you have two options according to the law one is that the city council continues with the board of county commissioners with two appointed trustees to interview essentially the vet interview and uh rata select and appoint trustees or the other option is you designate the library board of trustees uh having the responsibility to vet and interview and then recommend new trustees either you know one or more than one um to the city council for ratification that is your those are your two options great

[189:00] do we want to get that slide up as well or is that good enough i'm i don't have control of the slides but i think she's probably putting up i think it's slide 14 if that helps all right um does anybody have any questions on this item rob you got your hand up oh if no one has questions let's go in the comment let's see matt do you have a question i do i it's kind of just a just clarifying because there's been um i guess one would say maybe maybe some misconceptions about what this entails and i just want to be clear that in either scenario council and the county commissioners retain authority as to whom gets appointed as subsequent or successor trustees that it's there is no abdication of any uh responsibility as to uh who does that or who has that authority that that authority in both scenarios is duly vested in council in the county

[190:00] commission i just want to sort of verify that that's great no it's correct um the recommendations are ratified by two-third vote of each body now i guess that a possible scenario that i've kind of played out in my mind this is janet michaels with the city attorney's office is what if the trustees the the sitting trustees recommend somebody that the commission um board of county commissioners and city council don't favor that would seem to take a real lack of of trust and it seems like we're going to have a good working relationship but if they the trustees put somebody way out there and the commissioners and the council did

[191:01] not ratify that within 60 days then it would be deemed a ratification that's you know kind of the very worst case scenario and it just doesn't seem likely that something like that would happen but that is a potential can can if i can jump in on that cue clarify because the way i had originally read it was that if the council and the commissioners took no action within 60 days the appointments would be ratified but i thought what that meant is that we still retain the ability to reject to actively reject the suggestion in which case it would go back to the trustees to suggest someone else do i misunderstand that i that's not the way the law is written the law says that if there isn't action well and i guess that's a good question it says if the if they don't act within 60 days the law doesn't really address what would happen if the council and the commissioners rejected it and it went back to a

[192:00] conversation i don't know david farnand or david gear do you have any thoughts on that well i mean i guess my thoughts on it are i think that aaron i think that aaron described it as i understand it it's either the either take you can take an action affirming it by two-thirds vote and if you can't get two-thirds vote the person wouldn't be ratified or approved or you know if you took no action uh then they would be gained approved after the 60-day time period but i think that in terms of conversations that we've had with kim setter he's he has expressed his belief that the legislative bodies have a lot of control over this process should they want to exercise it but it's it's in kind of in the negative it's by saying no or failing to get the two-thirds vote

[193:03] one so just to clarify if um the council and the commissioners said no then it would go back to the um library commission group to suggest another person or how how would that get resolved yeah they would just have to keep trying until they got something that either went to 60 days with no action or um got that two-thirds vote if the council chose to vote for it thank you david vernon did you want to weigh in on that as well uh yeah yeah so you have the right at any time to ratify a candidate right so you you you could take their wreck i mean and i know this has happened so candidates have been recommended they were rejected the uh the establishing entity appointed someone else and that's that's

[194:01] within your right at any time you don't you don't permanently you know i don't believe you permanently um transfer the responsibility to a library board of trustees to um nominate candidates if only they can do it you could say we don't like these we reject it and here's the person who's going to be the board of trustee very good nicole yeah um i just wanted to say aaron my understanding of this was similar to yours what it read to me like is basically just saying like if you guys are lazy and don't do your job then you know we just have a new trustee um but i think too that the um that the iga can kind of direct how the bylaws are written for this too right so we can be crystal clear on this point that you know we perceive an action as saying no we don't want this person to be a trustee send us somebody else that's a great point

[195:01] okay uh bob do you have another question or should we move in good go right in the comments great tara has a question it looks like yeah do you mind just helping me out the thing that nicole just said is that option one or option two i i think maybe the point is that we can write into the iga bylaws that dictate the details of how this will work regardless of what path we take good enough tara okay bob yeah i'm you know i'll as between option one option two i would pick option one um obviously right now the voters voting for us and we're held accountable for the operation of the library and the funding of the library that's the that's the ultimate accountability unfortunately if we form a library district we're going to lose that because as i understand state law there's not

[196:00] allowed a voting for the library trustees and so the question is how can council which is ultimately accountable to the voters retain the greatest degree of accountability of our trustees and it seems to me that option one is incrementally better option one is we pick the trustees as we're about to do if this district is formed then we continue to pick those and vote on them by two-thirds vote uh much as we do already with all of our boards and commissions we just did that last week and so presumably we would go through an interview process we'd have people come in they would tell us why they'd be great trustees we would vote we'd appoint those people as opposed to having the board self appoint i realized there's a ratification by council but you know we we've received almost 300 emails from canary members who have expressed concerns of various varying degrees on this and this is one of the areas that seem to come up pretty frequently this this kind of lack of control and lack of accountability so as between the two options it does seem to

[197:00] me the option one does have at least a greater appearance of of accountability and that we get to pick the people and then ratify them rather than having them picked for us and ratify them thanks nicole mintera um i think uh i i am leaning more toward option two at this point um where uh the trustees kind of form their own group but then we have the ultimate say over whether or not those those folks are coming through um and the reason that i'm saying this is because i'm just thinking back to how much time tara and lauren spent on all these board appointments aligning schedules was often the hardest part i think taylor for taylor spent a week or two just on that part and what we're talking about here is not just aligning kind of council schedules but also county commissioner schedules that that just feels like a harder thing for me um and i feel like if council has the final say on um saying yes or no

[198:01] uh to the the people who are being recommended that feels sufficient to me i don't know that i feel like we need to kind of go the extra step um the other thing that i i just wanted to to note is i think that in here there's an engagement process as well where we're going to be kind of getting some more feedback from the community on the iga and that sort of thing and that that feels like kind of a um am i misremembering that stuff maybe you can correct me i felt like there was a spot in here where we were going to get some more feedback from the community formal feedback maybe that's a misremembering that let me weigh in on that the statute doesn't address it uh so it's whatever feedback that you want to get um okay so it's however you want to just design the process yep okay okay thank you um yeah so anyway i think i'm i'm leaning

[199:01] towards section two just because it feels or option two just because it feels like uh sufficient for me if council and future councils have the ability to say yes or no to folks i don't know that we need to add that extra process of doing the interviews and aligning with county schedules and that sort of thing also called chair mark rachel i'm leaning towards option two and that is because i'm thinking back to the boards and commissions and i feel like on council you have to be an expert at everything but actually you're an expert at very little you're just you know how it is but when it comes to the library i would visualize that the library people involved with the library would know the most about who's best for the library rather than it becoming political because i i would rather it not be political but be library oriented and so we still have the option as council and whoever's counsel at that time if they think it's a bad idea but we might have more of a chance of it not

[200:01] being political if it's not picked by a city council mark creature one you know i think i think the coal is correct it's certainly um a more difficult process to do option one but i i think i still lean towards it in the following respects it's not uncommon for uh boards of this is a governmental entity but you know often happens with non-profits to get a little bit inbred and and not reach out to to look for other voices and other uh points of view um and ultimately no matter how these um commissioners are picked um we're going to be judged on it you know it's going to be council's fault if there are bad commissioners whether we ratified them or we selected them so in my view we might as well

[201:00] bite the bullet and select them um i believe in the good faith of any council and county representatives sitting we're going to look for library people we're going to look for people with experience in the field and i you know if i'm going to be held accountable for the performance i'd like to have a little more say in who is performing um that's creating the accountability that i have to undertake so i i although nicole is quite corrected it's a it's um really more of a pain to do it that way um i would still prefer to do it that way hey uh rachel lauren and matt um i don't care a ton about this if i'm being very honest it seems like either one's going to be just fine um so i'm just going to come down on the side of

[202:00] consistency and when yeah i i think we should consistency with how i think i've been in the past and and i think that the that path for me is option two but i honestly i i am i guess i don't understand like is this some of this exercise to have like our opening salvo of what we're taking to the county and then they will weigh in and then we'll have a group conversation around it because honestly if commissioners feel very strongly about it that's going to influence me so i'm a little bit confused about like the process as well so my inclination is don't care too much i'll go option two just you know for consistency with past votes of mine and i if this is something commissioners feel strong about say like i will defer there as well more than that thanks um i also um in warm support of option two both for the reasons sort of

[203:01] nicole and tara brought up as well as um it seemed like that was the way that the majority of um the example districts had also done it and so if it's good enough for i just think that if it's not broke um and the idea that council and the commissioners would retain ultimate control um does leave me with enough comfort right matt thanks aaron um i will well i think just uh share some of rachel's perspective that at the end of the day we still retain control the mechanism in which the the candidates funnel to us um i'm a little agnostic too but i do think it's important that for the sake of consistency we've spent through boards and commissions and other conversations of trying to whittle down our micromanagement of a lot of apparatuses and processes within the city so that we can be focusing on more

[204:01] long-term strategic decisions for our community and so i feel like as we talk about unleashing the freedom of a library district it's kind of like sending a kid off to college and saying go have off go explore the world but here are all the conditions in which you still must live in the house and so i think we need to kind of allow that freedom to exist and so having them nominate and then us ratifying to me seems like the best path for us to still retain control but not be totally micromanaging and over doing our commitment to too many processes right i think that leaves me um so i i think we have a direction to move towards option two based on people who've already spoken this is another one where i feel like the district can be very successful either way and like the last couple people who spoke i'm kind of agnostic about it like i feel like would be successful either way so i'm perfectly fine with option two uh given that we would retain um ultimate authority to approve uh but similar to what rachel said like if this

[205:00] becomes a sticking point in the negotiations later on i'm i'm perfectly fine if it moves to option one instead so so it sounds like we got a majority to go with uh uh recommend the trustees recommending new folks and they would then be ratified by the council and commissioners thank you um emily can i bring up the third question for council oh what options for the timing of disillusion of the district so again those options uh for you are several slides down or one side up or two sides up i think if we can go back to those on the slide i think that'd be helpful two sides up emily i think we have option one in option two yeah so option one is much like what you saw in the draft iga you read in february

[206:00] define precisely what years and how many attempts if you do support that option we would like to know what years and how many and then option two is the next slide please define a deadline date by which the district must obtain voter approval for funding this would look something like the electors of the library district approve xx mill levy to fund the district by ex-state or shall dissolve without further action by establishing indices into fraternity those are your two options so so the if i can start with a question here so the the first one is given number of years and the number of times an election can be attempted and the second one is just a deadline and leaves it up to the district trustees to determine how many times they go to the ballot that's correct great and so here's what i would suggest is that well let me know if you have any follow-up questions in a minute here but what i would suggest is that we start by

[207:00] saying do we want to go with the the first approach of how many years and how many votes or the second approach with the deadline once we have direction on that we can delve into the either the numbers of years and number of attempts or the deadline date depending on which option was selected does that work for folks just just a process question aaron um i think i think there's an option three or maybe it's an option to be um which is i mean we're talking about how to measure the bites of the apple but what if if some of us only wanted one byte of the apple would we pick option two with december 31 2022 i believe so yes okay thank you could you not also do option number one with a one year time frame and a one vote allowance sure i just want to be clear because i i don't think there's much difference between option one and option two it's just it's the measuring and i think the broader question is how many how many goes at it i think that's the real question not whether you measure a number of votes or by the calendar i might actually suggest in the if people wanted to go that way that option

[208:00] one is the one that says specifically how many years and how many allowed votes right so that if you wanted to take that approach i mean david correct me if i'm wrong it seems like that's included in option one and it would only be implied in option two yeah well and i'll just maybe go by example so like the language that you see it for option two this is what lions did when they formed the lions library district it was just that they said you've got three years to do it um and um you know of course the first the first vote was set with uh you know the first year of district formation but i think it's a option two is a pretty common approach where you just leave it up to the district and then you set a time period okay uh do we have follow-up questions from nicole and rachel yeah it's a calculator but if no nicole is too well

[209:01] yeah it's i mean it's just a clarification of this but um maybe not i i still don't totally understand the colloquy so rachel if you want to go first that's fine well if i can explain it just very simply so option one could be you have 10 years to get your tabor measure passed and you can go to two elections so so um and the district would decide when they you know the district um um trustees would figure out you'd probably do the first one and then they might wait six years to try it again the second one you would just say you've got you've got 10 years and if you want to go every year that's your choice my question was just do they have to go this year under any any or all of these options uh well there's no legal requirement i don't think that they do it this year i think the typical practice is that they

[210:00] do okay thanks nicole i just had a question um for staff about this so it seemed like this was a place where the staff recommendation was maybe going in a slightly different direction than what other districts have done and what mr sater had recommended um and i was just wondering if that was an accurate understanding because it seemed like he was saying um to you know do it where it's like you have four to six attempts right is what most um districts have done but then staff was saying you know better simpler just to tie it to a particular year um and so i was just wondering on is it really just because it's kind of a simpler thing to say you can try it till this point i think um option two is consistent with the advice that we got from mr setter that you just set a time period and you let the district figure it out okay thank you rachel did you have another question

[211:00] okay so maybe we can take the slides down now does anybody else have any follow-up questions here um all right so i'll invite people away and i'll just note that so we'll start with option one versus option two if you wanna speak to how you'd implement them a little bit that's fine too um but if you don't feel that you need to talk i'll take a straw poll at the end on option one versus option two but feel free to talk if you want to bob yeah well i i'm not either option one or option i'm not i'm not i'm really keen on multiple bites of the apple we don't do that for any other tax we just go out there and we propose the tax and it either passes or fails so it's a little bit weird to me i realize that some districts have done this especially since they've had some bad experiences where the taxes have been voted down so but if i had to pick between option one and two i think i'd pick two because i would like to give the trustees a little bit of flexibility on when to go out um rather than telling they have to do their elections in certain years they may decide that this year or next year

[212:00] is not a good year so i would give them a deadline the deadline i would give was december 31 2022 i suspect i'll get out voted on that but if i had to pick between the two i'd have a hard date by which they um they need to get approval i i would observe that this is going to leave if the vote fails in november it's going to leave the library in limbo for many many years it's going to be like the muni we kind of kind of doing it but kind of not doing it and it's gonna be a lot of a lot of discussion this community i just soon have an up or down vote this november like we do with most taxes and if the pass is great if it doesn't pass then we're kind of done talking about it mark yeah i i understand what other jurisdictions have done but that doesn't imply to me that that's necessarily something we ought to be doing here and as much as we love our libraries i don't know why we should not respect whatever the vote is of

[213:01] the people of boulder um if this thing wins that's the end of the conversation it's done we have a an approved library district um there will be people who don't like that do they deserve another crack at the apple and i think the answer to that is of course no so i and can somebody explain to me other than we wish to put our uh thumb on the scale why we would do multiple votes on the same matter simply to tell the community uh we didn't like the way you decided um think think harder i mean how does that work is there any other tax is there any other group in the city that is entitled to that when unexpectedly bedrooms are for people did not pass the proponents of bedroom said okay we get it we still want to talk about occupancy and we'd like to have some

[214:00] amendments to occupancy but we understand that that which we proposed did not pass so can somebody explain the rationale for saying if this does not pass we need to do it again and again well i i think the issue is not we need to it's whether you want to allow the opportunity to and i think that the thing that's unusual about this is let's just say the city council wanted to run a tax measure in november of this year on something and it failed and maybe it failed closely the city council could if it shows the next year put the same exact tax on and maybe there would be more education and all of the things that happened um in an election so you know the council has the ability to do that now the thing that's unusual about this situation is is if they if the library district fails

[215:02] the first time um and you set that date as a hard date which it's a policy call i'm not advocating um they don't get to ask again we have to go through this whole process all over so you know and like i said i'm not i'm not advocating one way or the other but that's just the outcome let me ask a question could this be done on a conditional basis so that if it fails by five points or less we do it again but if it loses i'm just making up numbers of course uh you know 58 42 we would not have that obligation because that's a fairly definitive a very definitive vote but if it loses you know you know 53 47 or 48 um then we give some extra time to see if they can generate

[216:01] the additional support they did not have yeah so um i can't think of a reason why you couldn't do that but i would probably want to run that by mr setter um and just see what his thoughts are because it's a it's a variation you know it's a minor variation on you know allowing it to happen at multiple occasion elections yeah so and i have no idea how it will come out i i can only speak to the the emails i have seen and received which leads me to indicate in the absence of the polling we have decided not to do um that this may be a more contentious and more closely uh contested election than we think um i could be wrong i mean if if it passes um you know 55 45 again at the end of the conversation and if it if it fails uh by three or four or five points there's there's a good argument for

[217:00] doing it again but not if it loses decisively at least to me i mean then you're spinning your wheels and essentially you're telling the voters you were you were really dumb now you know wise up and do it differently i i won't call anybody down here tonight um i see a lot of hands up but maybe janet if you i see your anime we can weigh in thank you mayor i i just wanted to well state two things number one staff is agnostic on this it's certainly a council decision but even if you did the percentage that you're talking about and it was decisive by the voters that they did not want to fund the district the advocates could the next year go out and circulate a petition and get this put back on the ballot or you know i mean as david said we'd be right back in the same place that we are so they it's the advocates that hold

[218:02] all right but that's the power that's a decision the advocates get to make and i i fully respect that they want to you know if they lose very badly and they want to come back again you know that that's their right that's their authority and i respect that um so okay well i think mark hopefully your question got answered i'd like to get people's opinions registered and we can move forward to the direction of council is uh matt lauren nicole and tara uh thanks aaron um so mark you you posed a bunch of questions that require some unpacking um i think a little bit um for one with regards to sort of answering the bites at the apple the inherent question really has two questions embedded in it and it's hard to suss out what the community actually supports we put something on the ballot with a particular mill levy there's a number of people that support funding our libraries through a library district but that price tag might be too high but how

[219:02] in one vote do we suss out which is it and so at what point do we find just at numerous bites at the apple as has been said that we can draw on the support for the district but finding the right price in which case a couple bites provides that opportunity for the community and for us and for the advocates and those in opposition to calibrate the ballot measure to appropriately meet the needs to satisfactorily accomplish that goal so to me the bytes at the apple serves a very clear function um as to how to achieve it and settle in on what that right amount is because you can't determine whether it's the support for the district or just simply i don't like property taxes it's hard to suss that out in one in one fail swoop with regards to sort of polling we've had some polling a few times so we're not flying blind here of course we could analysis paralysis ourselves were blue in the face but at the end they we have some good sense of where the community is kind of leaning and what they'd like

[220:00] to see on that and then also with regards to a margin this this is this is in many ways this speaks to why we're trying to move to an even year election cycle because a margin with only 35 000 of our voters participating is likely not the same margin when you add 25 000 more voters on an even year cycle so picking an arbitrary margin is really discriminatory towards a lar a group of people that typically vote in a different cycle so i think setting that number is problematic on a lot of fronts um depending on if you have three years and we go odd year even year then odd we're sampling a different electorate each time and so i think it's better for us to just be fair and not set that margin i think there's a lot of problems associated with but but the big thing with the bites of the apple is that we get to figure out what the community wants and we can throttle that number appropriately to settle in on a number and maybe it's just outright rejected but at least it gives us a chance to sort that out over subsequent cycles but there's no specifics in the ij that

[221:02] i saw that deal with amending the terms to do exactly what you are suggesting if that were the case it makes a much stronger argument for coming at it again if you want to take the 3 eight down to three one or you know change the leasing to purchase or purchase to leasing you know changing the terms a little bit um creates a better argument so correct me if i'm wrong i thought we would have another yeah i'd rather not i'd rather not have an argument back and forth here i'd really like to zero in on how we move forward on this particular question so did you have something super quick but it's super cool it's just i thought that that was uh staff answered kind of that question and preface that in our previous conversation about it but but if it's still unknown or there's an issue i'd certainly love it clarifying but that can be done in an email or subsequent after this but thank you um and matt i didn't hear uh did you

[222:00] prefer option one or option two uh sorry uh option two please okay great uh lauren nicole tara i actually had the same question that matt and mark were talking about which is um what would be allowed to change legally between different asks like can we change the mill levy level or is there because i i know there's some things that we're not allowed to change right like the um the boundary of the district um and things like that so i was just wondering if anyone could provide a quick little legal tidbit on the way the mill is currently written thank you lauren and matt the question is up to 3.8 so it could be it could be three the way the way the draft ig is stated and i believe the way the petitioners submitted their

[223:00] petition in 2019 was an up to amount so in their case it was up to four mills the way the iga is currently written and written as up up to 3.8 mils so they could easily change that right thank you if i could follow up on that could could the uh three organizations renegotiate the iga in between votes to tweak a couple provisions of it i don't know the answer to that i would have to dig into this it's not critical for tonight but just maybe that'd be interesting to learn at some point um okay lauren did you have a did you want to voice a preference season two uh nicole's here also too um yeah sure nicole you just said that one thing more power to you

[224:00] all right you know i'm not a big metaphor fan but i will talk about bike to the apple if pushed although as much as i really do like apples a lot my initial thought would be really just one choice because i feel like you're setting a precedent by saying over and over and i don't really think that sounds fair to me however i wouldn't mind two being what matt said and i would just max it out at two with the most just because everybody's gonna want to do that then right they're gonna say oh i'll just try again every year and i just can't see that going well for the city in the very short amount of time been on city council help me which one do i want one or two aaron being that i said that uh you could go with option two with the two year expiration or option one with two allowances for votes

[225:00] but we're gonna i don't care okay fair enough i said and uh mark did you have a preference on option one versus option two two with a fairly tight timetable um you know and as i said i you know if there are conditions we can attach to it i would i would make it one year unless it comes within five points and then take another crack at it amend it to your heart's content and uh see if you can make a better sale okay so i'm hearing a fair amount of interest in option two and i'm fine with that does anybody disagree with going with uh option two okay not not seeing any thumbs down or angry of matt just to clarify we're just selecting on the option we're not specifying a date or how many fights at the apple is that correct correct now if we go to option two you don't get to specify it's the apple only an expiration date right all right

[226:03] david wait hold on erin if you can you say the last thing you said one more time uh option two you specify an expiration date but how many times not how many times it can be put to a vote within that time period so then wouldn't i want option one because if i'm saying one but two max yes you could you could do it either either way with option two you could do a two-year expiration date and it has okay all right thanks okay so it sounds sounds like we're okay as a council with with option two now the choice is about expiration dates so maybe we can do this kind of like we do boards and commissions appointments maybe people could nominate expiration dates and then we could we could have a straw poll to vote on those what what do people think about that approach is that is that right okay all right y'all aren't being very expressive with your faces here i'm just i'm just saying

[227:00] let's sure i have ptsd from that last tears your hand up on purpose okay bob i think maybe yours is do you want to nominate a date sure i i would nominate december 31 2022 um but i could live with a hybrid of what tara and mark suggested which is december 31 2023 provided that um the vote was within a certain pretty night tight margin of error or difference i think mark suggested five points i could live with that five points eight points something that's we'll look at so yeah it's pretty close 47.53 they can do it again but if it's if it's a swamping if it gets defeated 70 30 i i think that the deadline should be this year we should get one by the apple and then we're done talking about it so that's where i'd be nicole i'm gonna nominate december 31st 2025. my logic there is that it does seem like most districts have had kind of four to

[228:01] six i think was what our memo said um shots at this i don't know we really need um that many and you know having uh i think this would be the way i said it in 2025 would be um four potential election cycles and the folks could decide they want to run every one they want to just run you know one or two um or we could just be like most uh almost all districts that uh folks investigated and just get it through on the first one so i i just don't want to um again my my main motivation is how we can make the library district six most successful and give it the best chance of success and treating our library district differently than any other library district has been treated in the state does not seem like we're setting ours up for success who knows what could happen like i think it was lions that had the flood or right right right before their district was voted on um and it passed by flying colors the second time so i i don't this world is

[229:00] kind of a mess right now we got a lot of uncertainty um i would really love to set the district up for success and give it a few shots if it needs it i don't know that it will thanks matt and rachel i couldn't have said i did owe to nicole i was spot on in the example alliance was exactly right that providing flexibility is is the key to success so thanks for nicole for being succinct and saying it that way appreciate it uh let's see rachel i'll call myself i guess um we have a lot of focus on uh the benefits of even your elections and i i struggle to imagine that the library district will run an election in an odd year so i would probably go 12 20 24 or 12 20 26 if we think it needs more than two in the 2022-2024 not not my call but i don't know what what the real advantage is to that extra year when it seems like an unlikely

[230:00] time to schedule a vote so i guess i'll put out 12 20 24 or 12 20 26 both as options great okay so i was going to say something similar i was going to nominate 12 31 2024 and the reason why i'd choose that say nicole over to 25 is that i do really feel like our elections um do better for our community when there's the greatest number of people voting in them so um i'm i i'd like to give the district some flexibility to have um a couple of tries potentially as as david gear noted we have that discretion at the the city that we can put something on multiple times if we feel like it's necessary so i'm comfortable giving that option to the library district but i would i would like to focus them on the even year elections where turnout is much higher so uh because of that i would put the expiration date at the end of 2024. okay so i'm here well let's see so we've got um

[231:01] i've got a 22 i've got a 23 if there are conditions i've got a 24 i've got a 25 and i've got a 26 out there that's a lot um i'm gonna we could just go through it and vote on it and then we can drop off any that don't get any votes um and then move on to another round i i would propose to do this like boards and commissions since we all have the traumatic experience of that fresh in our minds but mark and nicole do you want to add something else listen i can live with 2024 if it's only the second election if the champions want to run in the year elections and it's their second election i think you know i can live with that um uh i would not like it to be 2022 2023 and 2024. i just think that's beating the issue to death um so if there's some way of getting them to agree to

[232:01] um run it twice if necessary um in the even years i i you know that's not the worst outcome in the world to me otherwise i would i would run it twice um conditionally um and you know if that second time was uh 2024 as opposed to 2023 i could live with that it's just doing this three years in a row would just be ridiculous i'm smart nicole i just want to withdraw 2025. i see your point about even your elections so um i i think sticking with options of even years would be fine i think in in that case 2026 sounds good to me um that that way they could potentially just run to even your election cycles i don't know i don't know but right now the idea of running one every two years sounds uh truly exhausting but um you know for three years but uh they

[233:01] could have the option of how they wanted to do that seems like maximum flexibility thanks if i can interject here with a question for for david just following up on what mark said could we write into the iga that their deadline is 2024 but that uh elections should be held in even years i i think i would well my advice would be to leave that decision up to the board of um trustees in terms of when they pick because um i don't know that everybody would agree that local elections do best in even your elections based on which side of the issue you're on um so it's really kind of a i think that that's kind of a political call um what point taken that perfectly fine uh matt and then rachel yeah i'm okay sliding back from 2025 to 2024. um you know that gives you two even year cycles and and as to david's point if they chose to run an odd fine

[234:00] i'd to mark's point i don't see why you would go bang bang bang bang through three in a row i think you'd maybe want to take a break to reevaluate um to get it right anyway and chances are you want the massive input from the community considering this is a large issue affecting a large geographic area so uh yeah i'm good with the 2024 date that you recommended eric yes rachel i know we said this at the outset i'm sorry i didn't retain it but can we do both can we say two elections until 2024 2026. we hybrid yes but that would require switching to option one so i might propose like you know to nicole's point like what if 2026 is better than 2024 and i and i appreciate david's point about um even your elections i think that you know there's a there's a sentiment that it is uh you are regardless of of you know what turns out like i think there's a bit of a movement towards

[235:01] helping more people to to have um their voice heard so i i imagine that that might be motivating to the library champions but either way you know 2024 2026 can we say two and that's option one maybe i'm asking if we wanna look back at option one and and give them the the flexibility with um with a limited number and and the only reason that i would favor a limited number is because you know elections are divisive and a lot of work and so um you know i don't know that we do want to have like five elections on this issue in a row and and i mean it's not a lot but there is some money attached to to running an election um so if we did i'll you know we did 10 of them i think that that would be a probably not fiscally sound on our part so my question is can we say it sounds like there's i'm hearing support for two and a little bit of debate over when to cut it off but i guess maybe option one

[236:03] all right rachel muddy's the waters that's intriguing proposal so do you have a in you're muted i just wanted to say that i told you from the beginning i wasn't sure about option one or two and so i'm gonna agree um i i was thinking what rachel said i mean just max it out at two and i'm going to agree with rachel again well let me just see if there if there's support here this rachel has essentially proposed as i understand it switching to option one with an expiration date at the end of 2024 with two allowed elections and uh maybe i'll just test the water just check in can we do a straw poll like this what does council think about that i would ask for a thumbs up if people think that's the best approach and we can take it or leave it so i got it i'm gonna give a thumbs up but i also did say 2026 could be an option

[237:00] okay so either 2024 or 2026 um and we i had mark did you still have your then i'm okay we got i'm i'm fine with that um that's four so that's that's i think split um uh so not not not a full majority in that nicole did you want to offer a thought yeah i just um i think that going back and forth is confusing my brain which is dealing with a headache and i apologize but um i i really like in my mind three is just the right number if it takes up to three whatever so my response is just different depending on whether we're talking about option two or option one and so i apologize for muddying further but um if we're doing option one i just have a different thought in mind than option two that's totally fine well it sounds like you don't want to only allow two elections you know which would which is what rachel was

[238:00] proposing exhibits yeah i i would i would just really love to give the district some flexibility in in how they're thinking about it and what they're doing and okay so so we we didn't get a full majority support for that one what if we switch back to option two and i'll just put out there an expiration date of 12 31 2024 and that this is the one that i put on the table i'm not trying to elevate my voice over others so if people want to tell me that's please give us other options as well do it right tell me right now but i was thinking of a stronghold on 1231 are you saying two times only no that that just did not gain majority support only four four people were accepting of that one so i'm now saying going back to option two which means there's an expiration date but it's up to the district trustees to propose how many times they would go for an election so it could be one it could be two it could be three it would be up to them with an expiration of 12 31 2024

[239:03] would a majority council support that approach i'm fine with that so i got i got four again okay um so we still we don't have a majority on that one either can i ask what the what what was these option b bob that was yours you had a 2b of um do you want to explain what you're thinking with that well i it was really actually mark and tara's idea it was it was really two two votes um but but the second vote happens is allowed only if um if the margin of loss of the first vote is relatively small we can define what small is okay um tara do you have your hand up still okay nicole you have another thought yeah and

[240:00] sorry i think i'm just i'm i'm going all over the place with them it feels just a little back and forth to me right now um initially aaron you had mentioned just kind of doing it like we did boards and commissions where we had you know a couple deer years we're narrowing it down narrowing it down can we still do that right i'm still stuck on like whether you know i want 20 24 depends on whether 2026 is an option you know so okay let's let's go back to that because that's where i was going to go next so very good okay so i think at this point i think we have um 22 24 and 26 are on the table i believe so um maybe maybe i'll take them in reverse order um if that's all right and we will start with 2026 and how many people that is that their preferred date wait aaron i have a question first and that is if i want to for sure only want to do two are you saying that now i have to pick a year anyway so we're going back to option two which

[241:02] had majority support from before and uh rachel's attempt to bring it back to option one was unsuccessful so we're we're going back to option two which means there's just an expiration date and you don't get to specify how many elections there are before the expiration date so and then a reminder i do this like boards and commissions so after we'll vote for all all three and the one with the fewest votes gets dropped off and then we'll read to the vote unless there's a majority on the first round we only get one vote in this right only one only one vote in each round so just like we did boards and commissions what's blazoned in your memory i know lauren what okay i had a crazy proposal what if we voted first on the number of bytes that we think is appropriate and then on the number and then once we get the majority on that we could determine how many years we want to spread that over so you're switching back to option one here

[242:00] well no no i just mean in terms of how we're voting because i feel like it might get us depending on how we answer it could end up being either option one or option two but it's a way to get us there if you're specifying how many votes you get that is option one like unless it's also the exact number of years we decide to give for but never mind so if you if you don't mind lauren i think like we we did earlier there was like a clear majority for option two so i'd rather not mix up and if this crashes and burns we'll come back to it if that's right so so we got um we got three years on the table 20 22 24 and 26. uh do it like boards and commissions start with 26. how many for how many people is 26 their preferred number year okay we got we got two how many people

[243:00] is 24 their preferred number all right we got three and for how many people is 22 their perfect number we've got three okay so then that means 20 26 drops off and we start over again so go in reverse order again how many people 2024 we got five and then 22 grab three okay so that's got majority council support for a deadline of 24 with um with it left to discretion the district how many votes that they take whether it be one or two or three that feels like will of counsel between all the different options we worked out is does that feel like we've fairly determined little council took a little while rachel i think it's the will of council um i think that it's it's it is confusing because

[244:01] like i would definitely like to have if we were if we're limiting it to those you know three bites at the apple to 2024 i'd rather have three bites of that until 2026 or two bytes until 2026 so it's been cobbled and i don't know if this is something that we will get back to is this again the initial salvo and we talked more about it with the commissioners and then this one has to get written into the formation on the april 5th okay i'm gonna i think we should go back to what lauren said and do the bites of the apple first i think somehow we didn't understand the option one and two and um so i'm not sure that this is the world council but if everybody else thinks it is then it i'm with you tara i you know if people want us to take another crack um it's getting late but um but i i don't want to suppress people's voices and we don't have another chance at this so um so that word so what we would um so let's try to get through quickly

[245:00] though like and can i ask if we could take a straw poll on this on whether or not we want to change what was just done would that be possible that is perfectly fine right so how many people would like to re-poll on the number of bytes the apple and leave behind what we were just voting on all right so we we got we got three on that one okay so nicole basically called the question there um about whether to continue with that so i think that was a fair thing to do can people live with that then uh that we came to a majority vote on an option and there was not majority support for looking for another option so all right may not have been everybody's preferred first choice but i think i think we sussed it out okay well that was simple

[246:02] all right so um david farnam it took a little while but do you have what you need to proceed to the next steps we certainly do thank you very much council and sorry that took so much time um i have two more slides if you'd like i think i can cover them quickly we want to cover the next steps and if emily could bring that slide presentation back up or at the very end or close to uh you can yeah all right so next steps april 5th 2022 there will be a joint public hearing with city council and the county commissioner to consider adoption adopting uh council will consider adopting a resolution to form a library district and appointing a committee of two from your from council to appoint the district initial board of trustees on april 7th 2022 the board of county commissioners will consider adopting a resolution to

[247:01] form a district and then the next slide is really for your reference i'm not going to go to into it in detail this is the current timeline if a district is formed by a resolution um [Music] may 3rd you'll come back with the ratification of the board of trustees may 5th the county commissioners would do the same at that point you have 90 days to negotiate an iga that puts us into august sorry for a final approval of the iga county commissioners are scheduled to do so at the same time then uh in october of 2022 the council meeting approval of the 2023 budget and uh potentially a table election then um in 2022's i believe given your current decision that leaves the option open to the board of trustees to decide whether or not they go for an election or not and that concludes our presentation i believe are there any other questions

[248:02] well um on behalf of the team uh chris and david and janet and jennifer thank you all very much i did have a question david i'm sorry yeah i want you one of your sides you said a two-member committee to appoint the trustees or are they going to nominate the trustees no you will appoint so what yeah i'm sorry so the initial appointment of the trustees you need to have two members of city council and two members of the county commissioners and you will need to identify and name um seven trustees that will be uh approved uh ratified in may by two-thirds majority of both bodies okay so just plain back to you these four people two from the city and two from the county commissioners would nominate the seven people but then the the the appointment of those seven people would still be up to the commissioners and councils that right that is correct

[249:01] right and enough uh thanks david and then the other question is um are they permitted to nominate and are we permitted to appoint um current members of the library commission because because if obviously the library district goes forward in the and the tax passes the library commission may become moved um and um could people serve in dual capacities as a library commissioner and a library district trustee we believe yes but i'll let david gear jump in well i think uh we would need to figure out what their role would be um and uh yeah he's just saying if they would if it would be the same uh four or five members of the library commission it'd be appointed as trustees well there's it's kind of there's kind of a built-in conflict there in terms of their fiduciary obligation to the city versus a fiduciary obligation to a library district so i think that if we were to do that we would want to

[250:00] look at that a little bit closer that's fine and i'm not implying that we would do that i just i wanted to know if there was a rule or a conflict or something that caused us to to not consider those folks because they're good folks and we've already pointed them to the library commission but if the lawyers advise against then we can obviously look at other good folks right and and i i do think that we should look into it further um but that said um you know if they resigned their library commission uh their city library commission post in favor of being a library district board of trustee you would remove the conflict by doing that great thanks well maybe you guys can look into this and write us a memo or something like that before we get to that point okay yeah i would say yes we don't need to pin that down 100 tonight we can hear about it further but right you want to add something just curious why would we still have a library commission if we've just created a library district so i'm wondering what how is there even a conflict because wouldn't one be dissolved upon the creation of the other am i missing

[251:01] something or i'm just curious no they wouldn't be dissolved because we we don't turn over uh we don't turn anything over until after a successful um tabor election and then you know during that transition year the city's basically responsible for providing the library services so we would probably still want the advice of the commission uh to help with that so it's that little that short few months of transition i got you okay appreciate it thanks david okay um i believe we're done alicia do we have uh anything else to talk about well let me just say before you go though uh just enormous thank you uh to david fernand for all your extraordinary work on presenting this to us as well david gear for your legal advice and janet as well and just everyone who's been involved in this this is not a light lift and really appreciate your dedication to the question

[252:00] well we certainly appreciate your kind advice and guidance and and we give it so quickly too yeah thank you very much thank you very much no we did we got a lot we got a lot of ground tonight i think that was good yep so alicia where are we we are at the end of our agenda sir all right well i want to thank everybody for it was a it was a robust discussion this is a complicated topic and obviously we all care very much about our library and want the best future for it so it's worthy of taking some time and guess what we get to do more our next meeting on april 5th will be all about the library so we'll get a chance to talk through it in more detail in the meantime we've got spring break and a fifth tuesday so we'll call this a recess we'll call it a vacation we'll go out and enjoy your spring break and with that i'll gavel the meeting closed at 10 04 pm

[253:02] good night everyone good night [Music]

[254:30] do [Music] you