May 3, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[6:48] and welcome to the may 3rd 2022 meeting of the boulder city council we're going to get started with a couple of announcements here so first off coveted 19 vaccinations

[7:00] uh for information provider locations for free coveted 19 testing go to www.boco.org covid testing and the boulder site is 2445 stasio drive that's open seven days a week from 8 am to 6 pm and for vaccine information and provider locations you can go to www.boco.org covid vaccine next 2022 boards and commissions recruitment the regular annual recruitment period has closed but we are still recruiting for the following boards due to the low number or no applications being received there are a few of them beverage licensing authority the boulder junction access district parking as well as travel demand management board of zoning adjustment cannabis licensing advisory board design advisory board downtown management commission library commission and the university hill commercial area management commission so these applications will be accepted

[8:00] in a total further notice and you can find those descriptions of those boards and commissions and vacancies online at www.bouldercolorado.gov 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 and with that i will go ahead and gavel our meeting started and alicia if you should call the role please of course sir and good evening everyone councilmember benjamin present mayor bronket present council member focus here mayor pro tem friend here present spear present wallach is absent whiner present and yates

[9:00] late but present mayor we have our quorum thanks so much i'll just note that council member wallach is homesick and we was to wish him a speedy recovery right i'm going to start by turning to council member speer who wants to make a few comments thank you mayor it feels important to acknowledge the grief and fear and anger some of us are feeling today so thank you to my colleagues for giving me this time last night we learned that the supreme court is likely to overturn roe versus wade this decision would eliminate reproductive rights for people of all genders who have a uterus this is the latest attack on basic rights by far-right extremists and in the face of a rising authoritarian movement it is unlikely to be the last those in our community who we marginalize will continue to suffer first and most but ultimately none of us is safe when any of us are unable to make our own decisions about how we care for our

[10:02] bodies who we love and how we vote and that reality is unsettling for everyone who believes in democracy i am grateful to our state legislators and governor for recently giving those of us with the uterus the explicit right to have an abortion i'm grateful to the reproductive health care providers who will be even more at risk now and to all those who will be working even harder to keep providers and their patients safe and thank you to those in our community who advocate for reproductive rights and other social justice issues every day i hope we as a council will recognize this moment as one in which we need to amplify our efforts to address the inequities in our community we are not exempt from the larger trends across our country and in the face of rising authoritarianism working for social justice is a moral imperative especially for those of us in positions of power i hope that all of you who are hurting from this news and from the biases and

[11:01] oppression you experience every day have the support you need right now if you or a loved one needs more support you can find mental health information and resources at coloradocrisisservices.org you aren't alone today or any day thank you again for this time thank you thank you very much nicole for those important comments good all right we will move next to a declaration for older american month to be presented by council member weiner older americans month may 2022 in 1963 only 17 million americans had reached their actually yeah only 17 million americans had reached their 65th birthday and approximately one-third of older americans lived in poverty with few programs to meet their needs to raise awareness of the needs of older americans and to honor and acknowledge the accomplishments of adults ages 60

[12:01] and over president john f kennedy after discussions with the national council of senior citizens created older americans month the city of boulder has recognized the value of acknowledging honoring and supporting diversity inclusion and equity for older adults in our community and the need to renew barriers for success based on ageism the city of boulder is committed to increasing access to services that support aging in place and building on current programs and services for older adults this commitment ensures that the sixteen thousand plus older adults in our community are welcomed included and supported each may the administration for community living sets the theme for older americans month and this year the focus is on exploring the ways older adults can remain and stay involved in their communities as they age the theme is timely as colorado is the second

[13:00] fasting aging state in the nation it is projected that by 2023 coloradans age 60 plus will outnumber coloradans aged 18 and younger in addition the only age group that is projected to see an increase in national workforce participation by 2030 is one that includes adults ages 75 and older in 2020 the housing and human services department in collaboration with other city departments began a two-year project called lifelong boulder as part of a statewide initiative to make colorado communities age friendly in recognition of these efforts the city of boulder has received the designation of a colorado lifelong city these efforts lay a foundation that assures all residents of boulder are valued as they live work and age in our community we the city council of boulder colorado declare may 2022 as older americans month and urge the community to take time this month to

[14:01] recognize the strengths of older adults in our community as essential and valuable members as well as acknowledging the individuals who support and serve them signed by mayor brockett thanks so much for that tara very good well now we're going to move on to a special occasion we have the honor of hosting uh representatives of the university of colorado who are going to come tell us about an extremely exciting initiative that they're working on so lori call if maybe i could hand it over to you and you can tell us some more about this thanks so much good evening mayor brockett and members of boulder city council i'm lori call assistant vice chancellor of local government and community engagement at cu boulder i'm here this evening with chancellor phil de stefano and john leslie who is our executive lead for the un summit u.n climate summit and we're here this evening to tell you a little bit about this event that we have coming up december 1st through the

[15:00] 4th of 2022 boulder's decades-long leadership in climate issues positioned cu boulder to host this international gathering of world leaders committed to climate solutions locally we've faced devastating fires and floods and we know that we are increasingly at risk while the international summit will certainly include a lot of global elements our goal is to also have local dimensions and to engage the passion and expertise of our local leaders and so we're here this evening to ask for your support we've had initial conversations with staff and we believe that this aligns with the work plan priorities and our hope is that with your support we can work with nuria as well as jonathan cohen and his team to identify additional opportunities for city leaders and residents to tackle the climate solutions at a local regional and global level

[16:00] i will now turn to chancellor distefano who will provide additional information and then john can provide more programming details thank you lori and good evening everyone mayor brockett members of city council i'm phil d stefano chancellor here at the university of colorado boulder and c.u boulder is thrilled to co-host the right here right now global climate summit in this december with the united nations office of the high commissioner for human rights the event is guided by the idea that climate change has become a humanitarian crisis with impacts like rising sea levels droughts wildfires floods heat waves and expanding disease vectors of course our community is no stranger to serious climate disasters and how they impact people's lives we know these impacts are particularly damaging for marginalized individuals

[17:03] the climate summit is focused on finding solutions and taking action by gathering some of the preeminent human rights and climate experts world leaders and cultural influencers we will outline concrete actions we can take to make the necessary changes cu boulder is uniquely positioned to convene an event like this because of our excellence in climate research strong track record on sustainability and our proficiency in several areas associated with human rights including law business engineering and others the summit is set for december 1 through december 4th on the cu boulder campus and will include keynote speakers panels and other activities with in-person and remote or virtual components we were thrilled to announce our first

[18:01] keynote speaker two weeks ago mary robinson she is the former president of ireland former un commissioner of human rights and a best-selling author an advocate focused on climate change with the visibility of this event and so many high-caliber individuals becoming involved the summit will be a tremendous opportunity to showcase not just the university but the entire boulder community and highlight our commitment to these issues the city of boulder has set numerous specific goals around climate action and i know that cu boulder shares the same concerns and a and ambitions when it comes to addressing this problem so i'm hopeful that we can collaborate and amplify the goals and solutions that arise from the summit my colleague john leslie will share a few of the ideas we are considering for integrating the local community into the

[19:01] event and we would love to hear your ideas for what else we can do so thank you for your support and john i'll turn it over to you thank you chancellor and thank you council members for the privilege of speaking with you this evening so as we started developing the overall agenda for the summit it became clear based on the interest and some initial conversations with jonathan's staff that we needed to really start building some local programming into this to really capitalize on the expertise we have here in the local community also it gives us the opportunity to bring the front range and colorado as a whole into the conversations that will be taking place december 1st through 4th so some of the ideas we have focus on bringing our own faculty expertise some of the local federal labs some k-12 content and activation opportunities but also some programming here in the city during the dates of the

[20:01] event that could include evening receptions other programming the use of venues in the city and really the opportunity to combine both this global expertise that we'll be bringing to boulder with the local expertise we have here in town so we've had some initial kind of speculative conversations we see opportunities for some lead up events that can really help the community understand how it can be a part of this how it can engage and how it can really show boulder in its best light relative to climate solutions human rights and the things we can take action on together we're really excited about the opportunity to work with staff uh work with jonathan and the team to start bringing those things together and with your endorsement we will we are ready to get started with the team right away so with that i'll open it up for your questions and thank you again for your time well thanks so much for that john and phil and laurie this is an incredibly exciting opportunity and what an honor

[21:00] for it to be coming to boulder and the university but given the university's status as a eminent world research institution and a long-time innovator on climate solutions it's only appropriate at the same time i think i speak for the whole council and the city organization to say that we are ready to partner with you however is helpful on this important event so just let us know and i'll see if my any of my colleagues want to offer a thought just a procedural question i i'm also very excited and think it's a wonderful opportunity for the city and grateful for cu for being such a leader uh within our community but when you say like let us know when you're ready do we have to like give an out of five or anything like i'm sure that we are all wanting to right can we just if there's something needed can we do it yeah we get all the knotting heads we need exciting thank you yes absolutely all right thank you so much for your time great well do keep us posted and we look very

[22:00] much forward to working together on this and thanks for being here today okay uh well with that we're now going to move to open comment so brenda are you going to do the announcement here about protocols very good come on up or down i will come to the podium and i think emily will share the slides but i will have my cheat slides here in front of me good evening council good evening community we remind you before open comment tonight that 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 as well as supporting democracy for people of all ages

[23:01] identities lived experiences and political perspectives for more information about this vision and the community engagement process please visit a webpage that you see there on the slide but the easiest thing to do is to search productive atmospheres in our search bar from the home page the following are examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder revised code and other guidelines that support this vision these will be upheld during this meeting tonight all remarks and testimonies shall be limited to matters related to city business no participants shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited and participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they're commonly

[24:00] known by and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online currently only audio testimony is permitted for folks who've joined us online tonight and that is it for the announcements and we can move into our public comment mayor okay thanks so much brandon right uh our first three speakers are patrick murphy ramsey abuelita and robert love i'm waiting for a slide and patrick we are pulling up that slide now i think you will be able to see it but if not we will let you know that it's ready and emily is pushing buttons very quickly when you open powerpoint just press f5

[25:02] and it'll display this slide full screen thank you there we go can you see it patrick yeah we're good great my name is patrick murphy i've lived in boulder 52 years the planet burns floods as both boulders don't miss next week's boulder excel advisory panel since it'll be three months before there's another i'd like to know how many of the 17 or 18 members of the panel actually show up it looks like it's only about 10 that show up for the zoom meetings and if that's true they should be asked to participate or leave and a replacement assigned i'd love to be a replacement not a critical point of view that's mostly missing boulder climate action is being led by leftover muni personnel and i guess the excuse they like to use is we were just

[26:00] doing what we were told they were told to not include stranded costs which would have been one of the largest costs of the muni they just went along they were told they could take excel customers and properties outside of city limits they just went along these are not leaders they are not demonstrably in a hurry in any way other than to continue the blah blah blah of climate change which provides them with a paycheck but accomplishes nothing of real significance if they want five million dollars more for climate mitigation and have no specifics other than platitudes then the meanie pattern is repeated remember when the muni asked for an additional 4 million in 2017 and got it remember when the muty asked for an additional 3 million in 2019 and got it can you see the pattern we got nothing for those 7 million and worse we got nothing for 30 million but lots of well-paid employees many of whom have left boulder

[27:00] so while the planet and boulder burns floods and dies are we spending money and time for paychecks or carbon reduction thank you thank you patrick next we have ramsey abueta robert love and lynn sequel hello can you hear me hi my name is ramsey abuela i work in the clinical research industry and i live in boulder i'm here to speak in favor of boulder decriminalizing psychedelics also known as anthogenic plants and fungi our society is currently in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance that spans multiple domains of society and culture including the neuroscience community the medical and therapy community the university research community the arts and music community the indigenous community and so much more the cultural tide is turning and these substances are becoming more normalized and destigmatized and welcomed back into polite conversation a few years ago the

[28:00] new york times best-selling author michael pollin published a book called how to change your mind which is an excellent example of conversations about these substances entering the mainstream and being regarded with the respect they deserve denver has already taken the lead by being the first city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms almost three years ago to this day and they subsequently published a report outlining the impacts decriminalization has had on the city and they unanimously agreed that no detrimental effects occurred in the city 15 other cities around the country plus the state of oregon have decriminalized psychedelics so we have plenty of precedent that shows that this is the progressive thing to do boulder is already a cultural and academic hub for the world of psychedelics with a large community of visionary and psychedelic artists such as the phil lewis gallery on pearl street and the psychedelic studies program at naropa university maps the multi-disciplinary association for psychedelic studies also conducts clinical trials here in boulder decriminalization will allow boulder to fully step into its role as a leader for

[29:01] responsible and safe stewardship of these powerful tools for the exploration of consciousness and healing these substances are impossible to get addicted to have lots of evidence backing their healing potential and there's already a thriving legacy community here in boulder that has cultivated safe containers for the responsible use of these medicines the time is ripe for decriminalization thank you thank you ramsay next we have robert love lynn segal and evan ravitz good evening my name is dr robert love phd i'm a neuroscientist and i specialize in helping baby boomers improve their memory and reduce their risk of dementia today i want to share with you some of the current science on psychedelics and why decriminalizing psychedelics here in the city of boulder will improve the health of boulder the current science shows that there are many benefits to psychedelics

[30:01] specifically for physical health and emotional health and based upon that data i believe it is important for the city of boulder to decriminalize psychedelics so that therapists and patients can use them safely without fear of arrest or criminal prosecution so this is what some of the top research institutions are saying in the united states so this is a direct quote from stanford university's school of medicine's website that addresses psychedelics quote preliminary data suggests that psychedelic assisted treatments may be effective for some of our most prevalent debilitating and fatal conditions if ongoing research continues to show efficacy there may be a public health imperative to advance our understanding and application of these treatments johns hopkins university did research on one of our most important public health challenges smoking

[31:01] they found that the use of psilocybin which is the ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms the active ingredients had the use of psilocybin had a cessation rate of 80 percent in other words those who used psychedelics with a therapist suicided with a therapist they were able to stop smoking 80 of the time this is by far the most effective smoking cessation treatment available today so please consider the science and data and take action to decriminalize psychedelic medicines so that these medicines are safe and accessible for therapists and the public thank you thank you robert next we have lynn siegel evan rabbits and keaton gray i'm waiting for the timer timer's going i'm waiting for the timer yeah i've got to see it on my screen thank you now well now it's off the screen i need the timer on the screen please

[32:03] lynn i believe it is now it is okay could you no now it's not waiting for the timer on the screen then this is brenda on our end um we have the timer displayed on the zoom screen so that's very nice but it's not at my end you may need to change i think you need to go this has been going on for months now okay now there's two images on the screen okay i think you've got it up now so you can put me on one and the timer on the other that's good but you got to restart it all right we'll go ahead and restart please go ahead and start speaking lin okay it's at one one minute now okay now great okay yeah it's um 45 minutes as this is supposed to be and you've got it

[33:01] down council to like tonight 15 minutes what is this is this what you think of your public you want to hear us for 15 minutes when there's eight people signed up why do you not have three minutes i wonder like answer me no you're not gonna answer well you know you're talking about video imagery tonight that should have been done two years ago go for it you know like boulder is so slow so slow okay now regards to prairie dogs there's an issue out at spine road development of course that um the celestial seasons originally had an agreement that the prairie dogs there would have a habitat preserved for them in the process of selling it to haynes and then to the developer coburn bill holike and andy allison and putting in a big development there suddenly the

[34:00] prairie dogs end up getting sent to rocky flats well not good we did not clean up rocky flats we remedied remediated it shown but one of those euphemisms double speak that is used in my opinion in an unconscionable way shown by when others argue that there are unknowns about where plutonium was buried at rocket flats and how radiation affects the body while the action level for petroleum and soil down to three feet was fifty pico curio from three to six feet allowable levels were a thousand to seven thousand he said burrowing animals like paradise could dig into the radioactive hot spots and carry the dirt to the surface said colorado's extreme weather winter chinook winds reached 90 miles an hour in the refuge and a major flood in september 13 was so powerful it changed the courses of many front range rivers could mobilize dangerously contaminated soils then we have fires there's a finite risk lynn your time is up but thank you for your testimony the

[35:00] consequences are extreme so no prairie dogs thank you lynn next we have evan ravitz keaton gray and michelle rodriguez heaven rabbits north boulder teddy roosevelt said behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people unquote that was the case in the gilded age of the robber barons and it's the case now with oligarchs and plutocrats including in boulder the progressive and populist parties answer back then to the hoarding of money and usurping of power was direct democracy so citizens could make their own laws and repeal laws made by corrupt politicians here's teddy in nineteen twelve

[36:12] themselves to rule themselves to control themselves i believe they are my opponents do not i believe in the right of the people i believe that the majority of the blame people of the united states will day in and day out make pure mistakes in governing themselves and any smaller class or bodies no matter what their thing will make him trying to govern i've spoken here before about how voters have the incentive to fix our mistakes unlike politicians who haven't sent her incentive to cover up mistakes to protect their careers and their donors interests teddy was right we're using direct

[37:02] democracy to fix our mistakes and mistakes made by politicians people not politicians are ending our real longest war the drug war state by state and substance by substance we're fixing gerrymandering low wages and many other problems kevin your time is up but thank you for your testimony we appreciate it next we have keaton gray michelle rodriguez and andrew mckenna keaton i see you're unmuted but we can't hear you

[38:05] keaton do you want to exit and return and try again and we'll get back to you after the next speaker thank you okay we'll hear from michelle rodriguez i hear that andrew mckenna is not present and then we'll see if keaton's available but michelle please go ahead michelle you should have a mute button now and if you press it that will allow you to talk michelle we're not hearing you so if you can hit the unmute button

[39:01] hopefully you can talk and we can hear all right well unfortunately it's not working out but michelle perhaps if you could email us any comments that you were going to speak about tonight so we can hear your testimony in one way or another and keaton gray has returned okay let's give keaton gray another try keaton you should be able to speak i'm afraid we're not hearing you brenda anything else to try uh i'm not sure keaton how we can help you from this end um i do think i am

[40:02] noticing that michelle is on the phone so michelle you may need to press star six to unmute on your phone and then also your phone's mute button so michelle why don't you go ahead and try that sorry mayor we don't seem to be able to get either of them tonight all right well and keaton i'd encourage you as well to email any comments that you're going to give us so that we can still receive them all right i guess with that somewhat unsatisfying ending to open comment we will move on apologies for the technical difficulties right uh so we're moving now to our consent agenda elisha if you could talk us through that please all right sir tonight's considered gender

[41:01] consists of i know a three actually you know what elisha i got ahead of myself since we had such a short open comment period but did we have any staff responses to the open comment i do not believe so we have that this time okay any anything from council okay sorry about that that's okay sir thank you again tonight's consent agenda consists of items a through c yes bob i would move the consent items item eight three a through three c thanks second all right we have a motion in a second um did you want to speak to that at all all right i'll just say a comment um glad that we're going to be able to have ted rose continue on the community working group for storm water and flood master plan he's been phenomenal on on rab and i'm glad he can continue to assist us in that role all right if there are no other comments

[42:00] i believe nope matt no i just um i'll just echo kind of what what our mayor just said i got the i was fortunate enough to actually serve on this working group prior to being elected and there's a lot of great individuals in this working group and ted really stood out quite exemplary so i know that report from them is is due to come to us quite soon so allowing him a chance to finish that off and help finish it i think is a great opportunity and it'll be good for the working group and good for the final product right on all right seeing none then i believe it's a show of hands yes all in favor of the motion on the table looks like it's unanimous eight to zero thank you sir okay on to our public hearing then i think you're muted mike next we have item five five a is the public hearing and consideration of a motion to adopt the east boulder sub community plan planning board will deliberate and consider a motion for adoption on may 5th city council will deliberate and consider a motion for adoption on may

[43:01] 10th very good and so we'll be welcoming our wonderful planning board virtually with us tonight i'll just mention the the run of show here is that we're going to get a staff presentation we're going to have the opportunity for council and planning board questions then we'll have a public hearing and then any follow-up questions that come from the public hearing and then we will not have any comments tonight we will adjourn at that point continue the hearing uh planning board will consider a motion uh for adoption on may 5th and then city council will take it back up on may 10th and with that uh is now uh cindy are you going to call the planning board to order here oh thank you mayor brockett and thank you council members um yes thank you for having me playing the board here tonight i'm now going to turn it over to you if it's okay mr mayor i'll turn it over to our chair john gerstel to call to order the planning board john

[44:00] thank you uh and thank you mayor bronkett we'd like to call to order a planning board meeting tonight may 3rd 2022 for the purpose of holding a joint public hearing with city council for consideration of a motion to adopt the east boulder sub-community plan planning board will deliberate and consider a motion for adoption of the plan on may 5th we have a full board of seven members in attendance which constitutes a quorum thanks for having us and i'll now turn the management of this joint meeting back to the mayor to conduct and chair the joint public meeting thank you thanks so much for that john appreciate that and very glad to have you and the rest of the board here i'll just make a note i'll be taking virtual hands uh from the planning board and physical hands from the council so i'm gonna be looking all over the place if i miss somebody please give me an elbow and notify me of someone that i've missed

[45:00] i'll do my best and with that i'll turn it over to city staff for a presentation great i haven't been here in a couple of years good to see you good to see you i think you're muted all right let's see does it look all good on everywhere it's supposed to be okay great so good evening city council and planning board it is great to be here with you all tonight as we collectively reach a major milestone on the east boulder sub-community planning project my name is kathleen king i am a city principal planner on the city's comprehensive planning team and tonight

[46:00] i am joined by my wonderful colleague from transportation gene sanson as well as a whole crew of city staff joining online who've been working on the project over the past three years and are here tonight to help answer any remaining questions you may have on the final plan and tonight we have about a 30-minute presentation and then as described by the mayor and john crystal we um we'll move into clarifying questions and then um i think we've gone over the schedule a couple of times but we'll be looking forward to deliberation and decision from planning board on may 5th and city council on the 10th i'm sorry to interrupt but planning board members can't see anything all we see is the words council chambers and uh and we also can't turn our videos on so sorry to interrupt sorry about that sarah i will um troubleshoot both of those we've got folks running around here in council chambers trying to solve that first problem for you and i should be able to

[47:00] fix the other with a setting are we good on also okay thanks sarah so we last met with planning board on march 31st and city council on april 12th to present the 90 draft plan and collect your recommendations for changes to the plan for adoption all of the recommended changes from boards council and the community on the 90 draft are listed as long as action taken and can be found in your packets as attachment a congratulations to everyone here tonight we've been meeting reviewing reworking and revising the plan with this boarding council over the past three years all of councils and planning boards input along with input from the transportation advisory board housing advisory board parks and recreation advisory board open space and mountain parks board of trustees design advisory board have all provided essential guidance and

[48:00] direction throughout this process on april 27 the housing advisory board adopted the following recommendation the housing advisory board unanimously supports the plan and appreciates all the staff and community effort that went into the plan and recommends that planning board and city council adopt the east boulder sub-community plan the motion for your consideration is to adopt the east boulder sub-community plan including the incorporated 55th and arapahoe station area plan sub-community plans require approval from both planning board and city council each body can move to adopt the plan you can move to adopt the plan with recommended amendments if there are remaining changes to be made or you can deny adoption of the plan sub-community plans are defined by the boulder valley comprehensive plan as a tool to communicate expectations about the future of a sub-community

[49:00] they serve as an important bridge between the comprehensive plan and our regulatory framework of zoning and development standards as well as the capital improvement program in 2018 city council approved an update to the city's sub-community boundaries to better align the boundaries with existing neighborhoods and create defined areas of study for this level of planning also in 2018 city staff evaluated all 10 of the city sub-communities to prioritize different areas for study and planning council defined the criteria around areas experiencing change this evaluation identified east boulder as a top priority for planning and the project launched in 2019 the east boulder sub-community is generally located north of arapahoe avenue and east of foothills the sub-community includes around 600 acres this is about 10 percent of the city's land area there are 691 parcels but only

[50:00] around 500 residents who all live in the san lazaro mobile home community east boulder today is a job center supporting over 17 000 jobs which makes up about 17 percent of the total jobs in the city in early 2019 planning board and city council approved the six six phase scope of work for a sub-community plan the east boulder sub-community plan process began with the project kickoff in february of 2019 and has worked its way through the subsequent phases guided by community input since its launch this type of engagement was identified for the project as collaborative this is the highest level of engagement described in the city's engagement strategy and promises to commun promises to the community that we will work together to formulate solutions and incorporate your recommendations into decisions one of the key features of this strategy was the east boulder working group the group began meeting in person on a monthly basis in may of 2019.

[51:01] in march of 2020 we switched to online meetings due to covid restrictions and the group has continued to meet discuss debate and informed decision making throughout the planning process you met some of these dedicated community members during recent sessions at planning board and city council and i think the working group may have inspired some to pursue other opportunities to engage with planning the group included a planning board liaison john gerstell a representative from the boulder chamber a representative from naropa whose nalanda campus is just off of 63rd and arapahoe three local property owners seven residents from nearby neighborhoods including one community connector who lives in san lazaro and eight residents from across other areas of the city the process and engagement strategy was broken into three major stages who is east boulder what do you want east boulder to be and how do we get there

[52:01] the first stage focused on learning about the people who engage with the area the spaces across east boulder and how the sub-community performs against city-wide goals described in the boulder valley comprehensive plan we launched the project learning what people loved about the area local businesses boulder creek belmont bike park and its unique sometimes described as gritty character people offered really unique observations like the east boulder isn't as windy as downtown or that it's really easy to connect to other regions because of its close proximity to major arterials like flatirons parkway or east arapaho we also learned what people didn't like community members described a lack of internal connections feeling unsafe at night and a desire for more amenities in shops working group members disburse throughout the sub-community to meet community members and collect their input about east boulder that information was compiled along with

[53:00] more quant quantitative analysis of the area in the east boulder inventory and analysis report this report studied a wide wide range of topics from walk access to canopy coverage rental rates to impacts of the 2013 flood and many other topics and served as a basis for the team's understanding of the opportunities in east boulder the report was intended to assess whether planning in east boulder could offer contributions that would move the city towards our major goals around housing affordability and diversity access and mobility design quality and place making resilience and climate commitment local business and arts and culture the report identified that there was great potential in all of these arenas so we moved to the next stage if we have the potential what should we do what changes might we make and what would that look like we started by asking the community some basic questions

[54:00] would you consider living in east boulder we wanted to know if we plan for housing would anyone want to live here we asked people in person and online and found that there was an interest from both types of respondents of living in east boulder we conducted the in-person questionnaires on site in east boulder and so we're able to capture a lot of people who may work in boulder but live somewhere else most of the online respondents were boulder residents but some did live in other parts of the community as well we asked a lot of other questions about transportation arts climate and local business to get a baseline understanding about the types of changes people would be interested in seeing in east boulder then came the big markers working group members worked together with staff to consider how to approach changes in ease boulder identifying areas that could offer strategic change in land use areas that were important to maintain under current planned uses and key connections that needed improvements

[55:01] those concepts were cycled through working group members across staff from a wide range of city departments and through the community including boards council adverse advocacy groups neighborhood groups and school groups this resulted in the development of four concepts including a no change concept which was shared with boards and council in 2021 what was unique about the east boulder sub-community planning process as to pose as opposed to other previous long-range planning efforts is that we oops excuse me is that we did not ask the community to simply choose an option or pick a favorite we modeled out each different option and asked the community to consider the trade-offs of different land use choices and combinations of land uses in the sub community the engagement for this phase of work took place in the winter of 2021 and was a major engagement window that we had to conduct entirely virtually due to

[56:02] in-person restrictions of covid19 we moved our engagement strategy entirely online creating videos about the different options and trade-offs that community members could watch on demand collecting input through a b herd boulder questionnaire and hosting four live virtual events where community members could connect with each other staff and consultants to discuss the different options and impacts of the plan i think as staff we miss the opportunity to connect with community members in person and the spontaneous conversations that can happen over a table with trace paper and maps but what we found was that people who had never participated in long-range planning projects before we're attending our virtual events and completing the questionnaires we've learned in this process as have many other communities across the country that virtual engagement helps to democrat democratize access to meetings and gives people who may not have the time ability or option to attend an

[57:01] in-person event to participate when they're able from home that engagement window provided essential feedback to inform a land use plan for east boulder we learned that most people do support the development of some housing in east boulder especially affordable and attainable housing people wanted to see that new housing integrated in mixed-use neighborhoods there is very little interest in creating residential only neighborhoods there was great support for improving quality of life in san lazaro and community members provided some guidance around where to locate new housing opportunities near greenspace we also learned that the land use plan should preserve and prioritize business space for a variety of businesses business types and sizes in the sub community adding more retail to the area is an important consideration and there was interest in expanding medical uses as well we also heard a lot about space

[58:00] space for business community members sorry community members want to allow some flexibility so that this area can offer opportunities for small businesses to grow and evolve over time while still providing space to host smaller industrial uses and services a major interest expressed by the community was about increasing the amount and improving the quality of connections throughout east boulder and we heard people on both sides of the fence related to the availability of parking there was also a lot of concern about commuter traffic and managing that as the area grows over time some recommending mixed mixed-use land use designations as a way to reduce trips staff again cycled options and work to create land use and connections plans that would align with the community's vision interests and concerns for the future of east boulder we tested options at a variety of scales

[59:00] and worked back and forth across departments with the community and boards and council to deliver the plan that is before you tonight the first key element that a sub-community sub-community plan includes is a land use plan the land use plan will be used to update the boulder valley comprehensive land use plan and will guide future decisions about zoning the land use plan is informed by and balanced with the connections plan i'm going to talk through some of the key features of the land use plan and how we've updated the plan since we last met a few weeks ago gene sanson will walk through the connections plan and updates we've made to this element so this is the final land use plan it incorporates four major areas of change where single-use areas of the sub-community mainly light industrial are changed to mixed-use neighborhoods the plan also includes a new land-use designation mixed-use tod or transit-oriented development which intentionally focuses redevelopment and planned transportation

[60:01] investments to create a denser pocket in east boulder that is amenity rich and includes a mix of residential and commercial uses within close proximity to local and regional transportation options since we last met the plan has been updated in response to boards and council feedback including extending the mixed-use tod land use category along 55th street to align with community and working group direction to apply the innovation tod place type along this corridor and the redesignation of 5150 belmont road from community business to mixed-use residential in response to community input and council feedback overall this graphic describes the overall land use plan and amount of land dedicated to each category the lighter bars represent acres of land designated in the bvcp and the darker orange bars indicate how much land area is designated for different types of uses in the east boulder sub-community

[61:01] plan some important issues to note is that there is no change in the amount of land designated for general industrial use east boulder is the only sub-community that includes this land-use designation and as we heard from community members that loss of this land-use type was undesirable the plan maintains all of the space you may also note that there are some changes in land designated as open space other we worked closely with staff in osmp to redesignate some oso land and cleanup mapping errors of the past changes to land designated for open space were reviewed and approved by osbt last summer land designated for community business has been changed to mixed use designations which do still accommodate the types of neighborhood serving businesses that are expected in a community business designation the biggest changes i've described is the redesignation of about 290 acres

[62:01] from light industrial use to a mixed use category these land use changes support the community's vision for the sub community east boulder will evolve into a thriving industrial area with interesting places to work live play and do business this will be achieved by integrating diverse housing and retail options into existing industrial areas the plan envisions a mix of housing types with access to green space in close proximity to amenities and services and within a walking distance to bike and multi-use paths as well as transit stops and workplaces redevelopment should be focused on the creation of well-connected neighborhoods that offer social gathering spaces improved tree canopy and flexible corridors that can accommodate different uses throughout the day and year the plan encourages redevelopment that is context sensitive and looks to our creative architecture community to

[63:01] design innovative places that incorporate strategies for redevelopment infill and adaptive reuse of existing structures to create the spaces needed to achieve this vision those strategies will be guided by the plan's place types tool which describes expectations for allowed and conditional uses usable open space building character street level activation streetscape character access and mobility and parking the tool will be used in future phases of work to perform zoning updates code changes and the development of a form base code based on community feedback a number of updates have been made to this section of the plan in the last few weeks including adding housing as a use on ground floors in parkside residential innovation tod and neighborhood tod place types providing a recommended range for floor area ratios in the station area place

[64:01] types updating language around parking to better align with the goals of the tmp and updating expectations for the provision and long-term maintenance of urban canopy when we work to understand how these place types will play out over the next 20 years community members have expressed interest in two major metrics the number of potential residents that can be accommodated under the plan and the number of jobs that may result from land use changes the east boulder sub-community plan anticipates growth in both residential population and number of jobs this growth is expected to occur over a 20-year horizon and is dependent on the motivation of private property owners to pursue redevelopment envisioned in the plan the plan anticipates that the land use changes could result in significant increase in the amount of housing that could be provided in the area we understand that changes could accommodate around 5000 new units and a

[65:00] population of about 12 000 people the plan also increases the variety of business types that could be located in east boulder and the amount of space that those businesses could occupy it anticipates around 2 20 400 jobs may be located here by 2040. that mix of new homes and new jobs is envisioned to take creative design approaches where outdoor space is highly valued a variety of roof lines create memorable scenes throughout east boulder and the combination of places are highly accessible with that in mind i will turn it over to gene to talk about the connections plan thank you kathleen can you all hear me i jokingly tell kathleen i was here just so she could take a break and a breath good evening so the connections plan um you know this plan is intended to support the transformations of land use and the mix of residents and businesses and visitors that kathleen has just described

[66:00] and transitioning from a car dominated environment to one where active travel options are convenient and they're comfortable and safe and affordable requires two things it requires new connections and it requires enhancements to our existing transportation network this plan creates 12 new connections to improve safety and connectivity throughout east boulder by creating walkable blocks improving access into and through these redevelopment areas as well as expanding the pedestrian and bicycle network in addition to these new connections upgrades to key streets in east boulder will improve safety and encourage tram travel by transit foot bike or micro mobility and these range and scale from completing missing sidewalks in east boulder to initiating design of the 55th street corridor to incorporate protected bicycle facilities in conjunction with these infrastructure enhancements to be installed by property owners as part of redevelopment and through city projects the plan includes

[67:01] a number of supportive strategies like managed and paid parking and the management of curbside space to allow for goods delivery passenger loading and even more flexible uses like parklets next slide please one of the refinements that we've made to the connections plan based on board and council feedback in the last few weeks and that we're most excited about is that we've more intentionally incorporated shared street design into the 55th and arapa arapaho area to prioritize active travel so shared streets basically support environments where there's high pedestrian activity and lower vehicle demand and slower speeds and so the design that you see here allows the street to function as a shared space for people to socialize or travel or shop or dine or recreate and to better balance the needs of pedestrians bicyclists and low-speed motor vehicles and as i referenced in the previous

[68:01] slide the design also allows access for passenger drop-off and pickup and truck loading and unloading of goods and that's going to be an important function in this area as it will continue to include businesses and expanded commercial uses next line so transit over time enhanced regional transit service including bus rapid transit along east arapahoe connecting boulder to our neighboring cities to the east and i-25 and expanded local transit service like the extension of the hop circulator into east boulder will offer convenient travel options for people living working and visiting east boulder excuse me gene uh can you uh speak a little louder okay let me speak into is this better john can you hear me better okay um yeah closer to the mic thank you um thanks for that

[69:00] so you know that said rtd provides most of the public transportation in the boulder area and today the organization is facing serious financial challenges and we fully recognize this challenge and the city will continue to explore in coordination with rtd as well as with other regional and state partners ways to provide regional bus rapid transit service to each to east boulder which may include alternative operator partnerships so more broadly speaking when we think about transit as a component and it's a very important component of creating mobility hubs throughout east boulder we think of it as one part of a larger system where options for families to bike walk and take transit feel safe vibrant and welcoming next slide please so zooming out even further one of the most important benefits of a well integrated land use and connections plan in east boulder is the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

[70:01] particularly from the transportation sector results show that by creating more opportunities to make trips closer to home and giving people a greater range of travel options like walking and biking to jobs and services per capita ghg or greenhouse gas emissions is 28 less than if current trends continued and this analysis i will note is the same methodology that our climate initiatives department does as part of their ghg inventory each year but has been isolated for east boulder and what this data proves out is the benefits of a well-connected walkable and bike-friendly transportation system paired with a mix of land uses goes well beyond mobility and quality quality of life enhancements to truly help our community move the needle toward our broader climate goals so thank you and with that i will turn it back to you kathleen thanks gene so the final stage of the planning

[71:00] process oh boy this is sensitive there we go the final stage of the planning process surrounds the topic of how now that we have a vision how do we achieve it and this is one of my favorite components of the plan throughout the course of the process we received hundreds of ideas for policies programs and projects that could help east boulder evolve and i really mean there were hundreds and hundreds um i know that people worry that when they submit comments during a process like this that maybe they don't go anywhere um but i just want to assure everyone that we read every single idea and as part of the collaborative engagement strategy we evaluated all of those ideas for alignment with the bvcp alignment with other city master plans and strategy documents feasibility and the ideas ability to achieve multiple benefits we took those ideas and funneled them into recommended policies programs and

[72:00] projects that can help east boulder achieve the vision outlined in the sub-community plan in my career i've never gone to this extent to incorporate community feedback into the final recommendations before and just um i it was really rewarding and i think it's just very exciting so it's not the most colorful part of the plan but i think it's my favorite part of the plan um overall the plan represents a vision honed through community engagement over a three-year period over 2000 people participated in the process balancing the input was challenging but we hope that everyone who participated sees their mark in the document at some level to move the project towards implementation the next steps for east boulder include plan adoption hopefully soon next land use changes to the bvcp land use map as soon as the plan is adopted

[73:01] we can move forward with the public notice process and begin working on these changes which we would hope to complete this summer we would also work on making those connections updates to the transportation master plan when that goes for its next update and then as our department begins to restaff our team we're hoping to work on code updates zoning recommendations and form-based code work to implement the plan later this year and that is it for the presentation thank you thank you thank you um again for your collaboration on the project and um i know we have staff available to respond to clarifying questions just so staff knows i can't see zoom or teams or anything so feel free to jump in if you're out there i can't so okay great well kathleen and

[74:02] gene thank you so much for that extremely informative and concise really truly a wonderful presentation and i'll thank you and everyone else who's been involved this for the incredible work on this project we'll say that a number of times before we're done with adoption but just want to get that in there pretty quickly all right so now it's our chance to ask staff questions so uh council or planning board i welcome you to raise your physical or virtual hand and get some questions out there ginny thank you aaron i just have a question on slide 43 when you were talking about the the scenarios and the amount of residents and employees did you say the for instance the for the east boulder sub-community plan the 12 500 would be over 20 years period i think that's what i heard yeah so that anticipates the full build out of the plan okay so

[75:00] i think part of my question or at least my first question is you mentioned 20 years how about five to ten years from now what does it look what does the area look like yeah that's a great question i think you know just anecdotally um we know that there is a lot of interest in redevelopment at 55th and arapahoe in particular and so as we think about you know what areas might change sooner than later that that would be an area i would anticipate seeing some change in the near term as far as being able to project the number of units that might happen in the next five years it's really hard to know that without knowing which properties are are going to turn over and sell and redevelop

[76:00] so i don't have that data and also i have a question that might be a teresa question what would prevent another we we're really working hard here to make this happen and looking at this project over the next 20 years what would stop a council let's say four years from now there's a chain on council and the council wants to go another direction thank you for that question council member joseph um it would have to be the will of council i'll tell you master plans sub-community plans tend to be our guiding documents and and in that vein garner a lot of deference from subsequent councils there are also people who will have relied on on this plan for their property interest and so that would be another deterrent to council changing changing its mind thank you so much thank you got questions from sarah silver and john

[77:01] gerstle and then we'll go to council thanks so much so kathleen i'm going to follow up on the back and forth that you and i have been having about the jobs um projections the um the when we met planning board you told us that the jobs projections for the flat irons park area was based on the um a function of for i think it's 480 square feet per employee because that's the current light industrial um uh ratio that you use but we know that that area also allows will allow um office space and that ratio is 230 square feet per employee so i'm curious if you could um unpack for us what uh your formula was in terms of

[78:01] what percentage of jobs you measured out as office and what percentage were measured out as light industrial because i think the numbers uh that you projected should reflect uh you know some combination of those two since both types of uses will no doubt be implemented over time in that area yeah so for um the overall projections for jobs for each of the areas of change we actually took a pretty fine grain approach and developed concepts that were modeled and the job projections are measured by space and so we modeled out we're anticipating you know so much light industrial space so much retail space so much office space and then did

[79:00] calculate jobs um based on that can i still share my screen is that an option well um i can okay because i have the um the numbers for folks if that's of interest okay so um we did model out the different spaces and then we used these multipliers to calculate a total jobs number when we were at planning board in march there was a request that we um put together a projection that could anticipate or would model what um the absolute maximum build out would be so we looked at i think it's all maybe 70 parcels in flatiron business park and um built built a model to measure those and

[80:01] because we don't know we we didn't design on a parcel by parcel level what that space mix might include we used a general 490 square foot per job multiplier because that is the amount of square foot per job that's in flatiron business park today and if kalani's on the line i just would have her check and make sure i described that appropriately and then can i follow up after you've checked with kalani sure did go online i'm trying to figure out one of my buttons looks like it's missing yes that's correct okay okay yeah that looks good so okay so i appreciate i'm sorry uh mr mayor just a follow-up please so um you're calculating the job projections

[81:00] for the east boulder sub community plan as if everything that's going to get built there is going to be light industrial except that we actually know that that's not the case because we already have an example of that at 2400 central avenue so might it be possible at planning board on thursday to just do a couple scenarios like half half light industrial half office space and job projections for that so that we can actually understand what the different mixes might be in terms of the jobs and dwelling units combo that is likely to emerge out of this project sure i just want to correct one statement we did not apply that 490 square foot per job across all of east boulder that was just

[82:00] for that flatiron business park exercise for the other okay for the other areas we did i did understand that but that flat irons business park is where the most there's we we know that it just got purchased for a great deal of money and is likely to be targeted for redevelopment pretty quickly so i think it would just be helpful at least be helpful to me okay to have a little bit more mix in there than than the assumption of all light industrial work ratio space okay yep thanks thanks sarah john gerstill then we'll have some council members and then lisa smith yeah thank you um could you go into some further detail about your assumptions about the increased housing uh numbers that you came up with uh with respect to distribution between say missing middle and uh stacked flats and

[83:00] other types of housing that you use to develop your estimates yeah so we we took a similar approach with the housing units we actually went into each of the areas of change and used the place type tool as a guide to develop a potential scenario for how that might play out and then that that is what you'll see in the plan for each of those sections on areas of change in neighborhoods that mix that's included in that um is what what was modeled and we do have i think i'll call to kalani again if if you want to describe the um maybe the spread of unit sizes that we looked at to model out that mix so we looked at units everything from about 350 square foot efficiency units all the way to

[84:01] a variety of attached single family that includes live work and that includes um two apartment styles flat style apartments in there also and all of those were based on the 2019 census data average square footage for those units yeah kalani thank you do you mind introducing yourself to the public hi i'm kalani pahoa i work in the planning department thanks go ahead john okay if i can just follow up on that so can you describe how many units say where you know garden apartments or or duplexes or flats of various sizes i'd have to look at um just in general across the every area of change or specific to certain areas of change no in general because i think you um you and and your colleagues introduced numbers for the entire area of the

[85:01] sub-community plan so just to aggregate it at that level would be interesting i can look that up for you but i um kathleen do you have that um the whole mix of the units the percentages offhand if not if you give me a second i'll take a look for that i i don't have that mix i don't have a slide for that you give me a one minute i'll i'll take a look and get that mix for you thanks connie all right so john we'll come back to that um move on to another question i saw some hands over here i got yep nicole then matt thanks again for the presentation super helpful um as well as this very comprehensive document and all the work you've done my question is referring to slide 48 in the presentation and it's just the one that's playing out the greenhouse gas um emissions and i apologize for not sending this in advance i didn't catch it until you're going through the presentation here um

[86:01] my question is i mean it looks like overall greenhouse gas emissions are going up right um just because there's more people right so per capita it's going down but overall going up and you know i'm just thinking about this in regard to our community greenhouse gas emissions goals um it seems like that's going to be sending us in the wrong direction and so i'm just wondering what are some of the thoughts around how how we can overall lower greenhouse gas goals to be in line with our community goals um in this area if that's just something you know that will evolve over the next few years or um what what's the thinking there yeah i would be happy to address that um council atmosphere from a transportation perspective so you're right there's more activity in east boulder you know in 20 years there'll be more people living there and more people working there and so as a result the total ghg and v you know this comes from an analysis of vehicle miles traveled right and so

[87:00] there are things that we can do and i think that some of the estimates that we use so for example we apply a 20 reduction to generally you know industry specific standards for how how many trips a certain use generates and we know that people in boulder travel differently than that because we have higher mode shifts in our community than we do in typical more suburban communities so we apply that and then on top of that application we apply another 10 percent rejection which we actually think might be fairly conservative because there are other things that we can do that we know will move that needle even further so for example as we think about improvement districts we can require that eco passes or you know micro mobile or it's not micro mobility but what am i trying to say scooter sharing i know you know passes are put in the hands of the residents in these communities as well as the employees so there are a

[88:00] number of travel demand management strategies and tools that we can use to change how people travel and quite frankly an investment in these other travel options because we can do you know only so much through managing that demand and then we it's become an incumbent on us to provide that infrastructure and the services that we need for people to conveniently travel differently so you know it's twofold it's it's the incentives and then it's also the requirements to provide those capital and infrastructure investments that we need and we actually think based on that that this is a fairly conservative estimate and will probably play out differently as time moves on great um we'll do matt and then tara and then lisa smith thanks mayor and staff thank you for the presentation it's uh great to see the evolution of this over time and and i think setting a course for our future is quite important and certainly it's great to have planning board here um it's nice

[89:00] to be able to sort of walk through this together um this evening my question centers around a letter we sort of recently got with regards to cordon pharma and its proximity to the mixed use transit oriented development that's uh south of the tracks but north of western avenue and really kind of thinking about the appropriateness of housing that close to a pretty heavy industrial use and and business that is loud it operates 24 7 has large lighting and so i just wanted to kind of get your thoughts on whether you know whether that was considered in the close proximity with regards to that space north of western avenue to the train tracks and whether housing is an appropriate use there versus maybe having a more transitional zoning to perhaps the well-needed housing don't get me wrong we need housing but in that specific spot i'm just wondering given that gordon pharma's close proximity if that's the most appropriate use of housing in that space yeah we looked at

[90:00] we looked at that area in particular related to some feedback that we've gotten from cordon recently and still believe that having housing there would be an appropriate use and help to create the type of neighborhood that we're looking for at 55th and arapahoe but we have talked about some strategies that we that could help manage that interaction and create more of a buffer so one of the things that we talked about is is as we look at and start working on code updates and and form base code and design guidance for this area in particular looking for a larger setback from the rail along the parcels there we're also talking about ways that we could step back the upper floors of buildings so that there wouldn't be as much of an interaction or view into the cord and pharma site but that all i think needs further study as well thank you i

[91:02] appreciate that great i hear that kalani has the requested housing number so maybe we could get that before going on to further questions hi thank you again so um as requested we have small studios well existing mobile homes is one housing type on in the plan small studios which is 350 square feet or less efficiency units than mid-sized apartments approximately between 500 and 1200 square feet large apartments from 1200 to 1800 square feet town homes and then live work and um the mix is primarily it's 20 small studios mid-size apartments about 70 percent large apartments 2 percent town homes 3 percent and then live work about 1 and the individual numbers if you need that it's

[92:00] about a thousand small efficiency units about 3 500 mid-size apartments about 100 large apartments and about 150 townhomes and 75 live work units so if that helps rip clear that up kalani could you email that information to all of us would you mind i don't mind at all let me take a screenshot of this and i'll send it on over thanks john did that answer your question yeah that was that was very useful uh when you talked just a quick follow-up when you talked about the percentage are you talking about number of units or total area devoted living area devoted to that in the in the suburb in our entire sub area so um just the units the the percentage of the mix of overall units so the total out of the 5 100 approximately units

[93:00] that's the percentage okay well thank you great tara then lisa and i'll call myself hi gina kathleen thank you for that very great presentation thanks for talking to me today earlier that was fun so my first question is is gene you mentioned that we cannot rely on rtd we know that we can't we obviously have a transit village with very little transit and we're trying not to duplicate that although it doesn't sound like we will because we have a lot going on at arapahoe 55th as far as transit options so i would rather not as everybody else who would rather not rely on rtd as they have broken promises in the past when do you think we can expect the regional transit do you have have you been talking to the different communities the different cities what do they say what are the odds that

[94:00] we can really have this or is it just a pipe dream yeah that's a great question um and i'm sure on the minds of of many of us can you hear me okay i really have to like put my mouth on this um that yeah that is a really great question um so yeah i think that you know we are all um of the same mind that we need to look at options that go beyond rtd we know that there are certain commitments that they've made to us that we will continue to advocate for to restore transit service within our community but when we look at expanding the transit service that we do that we need beyond that in 5 10 15 to 20 years we need to be creative and look at alternative options so we are having conversations with boulder county our partners within the county and our neighboring jurisdictions to look at what those options might be and it could be everything from continuing to submit things like applications for federal funding to begin to pilot regional transit service

[95:00] which we're hoping to do this coming year to putting out rfps for other types of operators cdot is very much getting in the game of providing transit service between cities intercity transit service like a busting type service so there are options and we're getting more and more focused as we have these conversations with our partner agencies to determine what that might look like i don't have a crystal ball i would say that if we are successful in receiving some of the federal funds that will that we're requesting we could see service as soon as the next two to five years but i believe that would i mean that's very that is hopeful thinking i wouldn't say it's wishful okay and my second quest thank you perfect and my second question is a lot of people not a lot of people some people have been writing to us in regards to what they would like to see who weren't included in the um let's say in the community that worked on the plan and they mentioned supermarkets and more

[96:00] restaurants at what point do we do we ever get to weigh in on that as council i'm sorry i don't know that or as communities that are adjacent to 55th and arapahoe particularly like let's say south of there so at what point are we going to be getting into the nitty gritty details about what will go there i'm thinking about uh inviting buildings versus large big cold structures etc because i would love it to be a community a community gathering place yeah so um what we're looking at in our work plan in the planning department right now is that as long as we're able to staff up over the next couple of months we would take on zoning updates code updates and the potential development of form based code for the 55th and arapahoe area in particular later this year and so once we get into that process um that will involve

[97:01] a myriad of of code work but certainly work on the use tables and that that form base code development those processes will again include an engagement process so there will be opportunities to continue that conversation and for people to weigh in good enough yeah okay we got lisa then myself and then mark and then laura thank you um so i'm going to follow up on councilmember weiner's excellent question on transportation so now you talked about alternate operator partnerships and options for regional transportation um and forgive me if this has already been covered but i was just curious how you envision additional needs for transit within the city itself you know so um what do you anticipate needing to do in terms of budgeting for that uh and so on i know we do a lot with them the hop the skip and the jump and other services that go above and beyond what rtd

[98:01] currently offers us within the city boundaries um and how do you envision that happening and when i know that with new development and we may have some increased density or quite a bit of increased density here it could be a little chicken in the egg but um what's the vision for that yeah that's an excellent question so in thinking about how we provide more localized transit again we do continue to rely on rtd to provide you know the 200 series for example but we supplement that with partnerships with cu and and others to provide the hop circulator which we hope to extend into east boulder in the coming years we had had plans to do that pre-covered we have since pivoted um how those federal funds were used to help to electrify the hop vehicles that we currently have but our long-range plan is to still continue to work towards expanding that hop into east boulder you know another option that we've been considering of more recent um uh times

[99:01] with with covid and the different ways that people are traveling is thinking about the hop as perhaps a more flexible route so more of a micro transit service so if you can imagine sort of like a lift line or an uber pool but for with larger vehicles for transit we're starting to think about how to pilot things like what they call microtransit in east boulder but in the meantime i will say that we continue to advocate very strongly to restore the services the fixed route services that rtd has provided into east boulder and you know quite frankly like we're seeing we've seen service spans shortened we've seen frequencies lengthened and you know that's having real impacts on how people particularly like when you think about the san lazaro mobile home community have access to transit in this community so we're taking many different angles on this problem to move forward thank you and then one other question um well i have a floral first a compliment

[100:00] i'm very excited to hear about um form-based code and use table work coming up my my nerdy planning heart is delighted um and uh and then i just also something that that has come up for us quite a bit in past planning board meetings and which i'm sure members of staff had have heard me harp on a bit um it's just kind of an understanding of industrial space and how that's changing across the city um so you know looking at this east boulder you know planning area and what we're doing with that but also understanding how those changes to light industrial the incoming you know new housing all the different uses that are showing up what what that's doing to our overall industrial space in general um and so i guess i'd just like to again ask i know i know i was reassured recently um by planning staff i think i don't know six or seven meetings back that that's on the docket when there's um resources and people power available but is that still something you're looking at and how might that inform this plan specifically this area specifically

[101:01] moving forward yeah as part of this process we've certainly studied some of the national trends on industrial space and how that the need for industrial space has been growing but um also looking at how we know industrial space is being repurposed and reused in east boulder there is a recommendation in the east boulder sub-community plan to conduct that industrial land study so we can dive deeper into understanding how our industrial industrially designated lands are being used today and how we can anticipate they would change in the future so that is that is a recommendation all right i'm going to go ahead and call on myself i want to look at page 40 slide 42 in the presentation if you don't mind and it was the place types one with the show the different uses and the different place types if that's very good thanks so much all right so i appreciate the modifications that you made um from last time i did notice that

[102:01] there are three of them that are grayed out and i wonder if that was intentional and what that means it's like on the innovation tod on the second floor uh for the residential and the innovation td non-residential on the first floor yeah that's a really good point we don't have that in the key and it is significant that indicates that it would be a conditional use as opposed to the fully saturated icons which are in allowed use got it so that just a quick comment to be helpful to get that in the key plan because i i didn't see that in the plan i may have missed it and let me just ask then on innovation tod residential you've got conditional for residential on the second floor but not the first and the third through fifth am i reading that right i i you are correct and i think that that's a graphic error that we can um change okay great that that makes sense all right thanks for that the other one was um i saw that you

[103:00] changed the minimum fars to a range which i thought made sense you know as a flexibility thing but you changed the minimum from i think it was three or more to one which was a pretty drastic drop so just wondering why you're thinking thinking about dropping it that far down as opposed to like two for a minimum yeah so we um met back up with our consultant team mig to talk about those and um i think that we had in the last version of the plan actually had just an incorrect descriptor those were meant to be maximum fars but because they received such positive feedback from council and um some community members in our last um online questionnaire we put in that range to really start to think about minimum fars so uh an error that resulted in in an opportunity okay very interesting well we'll talk about it at our hearing next week but thanks for that explanation

[104:01] all right that's all i had so i've got now uh mark and then laura and then oh george from the playing board and then we'll come back over to council so all right and then and then i'll get to you after that but mark hi thanks um so i am a transportation advisory board veteran and a planning board newbie and one of the lessons i have learned is that insight review and in our in our in our plans and this is a great example we have visions and we have desired goals and outcomes but when it comes down to site review and what gets constructed on the ground we resort to the code and our design and construction of the dcs which guides actual street construction how wide streets are where there's

[105:01] parking how tall curbs and gutters are and we have long um undergone a an attempt to revise our dcs my question is for kathleen and or jean to realize the greenhouse gas reduction goals as stated in the in the east boulder sub community plan to reach our vision zero goals in the tmp um to to do this how how reliant are we on completing a dcs update so that as things are redeveloping in east boulder right now and as they redevelop we're using the current bcs not a forward-looking uh updated dcs and so how in how important and how integral is that to achieving

[106:00] our east bowler sub community plan uh vision um i might ask charles farrow to describe um where the dcs update process is and um maybe it would be helpful if you could also describe um how that kind of exchange and back and forth between sub-community plans and existing code works when projects come through site review sure i'd be happy to i know we have other folks from well first charles farrell planning and development services and i know we have other folks from transportation on the call this evening um i know that an update on the dcs amendments is scheduled for planning board here in june i believe so uh work is ongoing um and kathleen i'm sorry i missed the second part of um the

[107:01] question just the relationship between current regulations and how we implement yeah and how um maybe sub community plans would be referenced in site review sure well so um one of the site review criteria talks about um consistency with adopted area plans so it's absolutely one of the the main things that we're reviewing for when we review discretionary projects um that are situated in um you know areas that have adopted area plans so um those are those are very well honored through the site review process but i guess what i would say in response um or remember mcintyre is that we have a tremendous opportunity in front of us in drafting the form-based code to help implement um the east boulder sub-community plan and i would agree i don't know that there's a lot of value in adopting a plan that we don't have the tools to implement in detail so as we move into the form based code um i think all of those things are

[108:00] absolutely on the table um so that we're implementing it consistent with um the adopted goals and policies in the plan and i think we've seen that through um the transit village area plan the north boulder sub-community plan where we really wrote specific zoning you know to honor the spirit intent goals and policies of the plan so i don't know if any of my other colleagues in transportation want to comment on the dcs at this point but i'm happy to answer any other questions i think you covered it well charles okay good enough mark okay great laura thank you um so i'll try to be quick because i know we have a lot of folks here so the last time this plan came to city council was the 90 draft and there was a request to see where you could incorporate more housing could you please describe specifically

[109:00] what changes were made to the 100 draft since the 90 draft to incorporate more housing and how many units you think that added yeah so we looked um specifically at the place types and tried to find opportunities where we could incorporate more housing units and so considering allowed uses on ground floors where previously we were looking for maybe a more active use was updated and so when we look at how that impacts the numbers of units i you know i we we haven't calculated that um but just kind of exp based on experience i i would imagine it would be just a couple hundred units not just i mean every unit counts it would be significant and that was just to the hands-on industrial place type right oh no sorry

[110:01] not the hands-on industrial the main street live work main street live work and um innovation tod and i think neighborhood toda as well oh i i think those were those had ground floor residential in the 90 draft if i'm not mistaken i'll have to look back um i don't have a printout of attachment a but that is described in attachment a okay thank you and and would you say that you feel as staff that you have maximized the opportunity to add housing and that there's nothing else that you would recommend as staff to increase housing i think that the plan balances the community's desire to incorporate housing in strategic locations with the community's desire to preserve space for business uses and preserve space for industrial i would not

[111:00] characterize it as maximizing the amount of housing thank you that is helpful i have just a couple more quick questions um so uh this may be me being a planning board newbie but i'm uncertain what would govern the maximum building heights in east boulder i know the mixed-use cod is a new land-use designation and i'm not sure if that's what governs maximum heights but just curious what is the guidance that planning board would use to think about maximum height and then any height for community benefit in these areas of mixed use tod land use designation and mixed-use industrial land use designation or is it the place types yeah so um citywide the maximum height is 55 feet no matter what so you can depend on that and then when we go and do the zoning updates

[112:01] we will look at um building heights as part of both form base code and and other code updates for this area and that would provide a a maximum building height um but i i do think that we're going to remain pretty dependent on the community benefit as a tool and so right now this area most of this area is zoned for industrial which has a maximum height of 40 feet but we'll we'll consider that when we start looking at code updates and it's not the same for the mixed-use industrial designation is the 40-foot is the standard maximum and to go above that up to 55 you'd need community benefit so the um mixed use industrial is a land use and not a zone um so i might ask kalani um or charles

[113:01] i think some of the zones that are in a mixed-use industrial neighborhood might be like is-1 or is-2 i don't know off-hand what the building height limit is for those zones typically 40 to 45 feet but again i think something that we would look at as part of the drafting of the form base code as an implementation tool and you know anything that would go over you know the minimum height i think we could talk about how community benefit um plays into that so so am i understanding that what we're being asked to adopt with the sub community plan right now we don't we don't actually know what the height limits will be in these different place types or land use designations that that's gonna be a next stage with zoning yeah i think ultimately that's something that we'll have to determine through the drafting of the form based code and i think just for context that the conversation of building heights

[114:01] um was robust in in community conversations and among the working group and the feedback that we got from both groups is an interest in providing flexibility and i would say not wanting to limit a building height greater than what is already limited by our code um so that's just some kind of background information thank you that's useful and then if if i could have the floor for just one more minute um looking at policy d7 it encourages varied rooflines and integrating mechanical equipment into overall building architecture and this is something that just came before our planning board in a concept review with a building in an industrial zone that was asking for additional height in order to not have flat roofs with screened mechanical equipment

[115:01] and so i'm wondering if having this policy d7 in the sub community plan which as charles noted you want consistency with sub-community plans when you're doing a site review would that language and the sub-community plan be considered a rationale or a criterion for additional heights during a site review uh kalani could you respond hi kalani pahoa um i'll also probably ask charles to weigh in here but the um for yes it does help with getting some varied roof lines to have that extra height in there so we could there's a couple ways we could do it in the form based code there's different building types those building types have floors they have four thresholds they have roof um roof requirements so that could be part of the form based

[116:00] code as far as a site review charles i would ask when we're looking at that is that the mechanical screening is that something we could do in site review or is that something we would want to handle in form-based code as a mechanical screening requirement yeah i think ultimately we would probably want to study the typology of the buildings to better understand you know what the root forms would look like but you know through other form based codes that we've done recently um like out at 30 perl um we've tried to incentivize pitched roofs and try to incentivize screening mechanical equipment and embedding them within buildings but again ultimately i think it comes down to the building typologies and how we draft the form based code to respond to that i'm too much of a planning board newbie to fully understand that but maybe i'll follow up offline for my own education thank you so much

[117:01] thanks laura so uh mr boone do you mind starting by uh clarifying your preferred pronunciation of your first name i don't want to get it oh wrong you can call me whatever george georgie people call me all kinds of things all right i've called you both tell me what you'd like them to yeah okay um so um kind of follow up on laura's question a bit in regards to light industrial zoning and what exists in this area today the staff took us through a really nice comprehensive tour i think all of council on planning board and transportation advisory were able to participate that that was really great to provide context one of the things that staff was talking about as we walked through there especially at the beginning of the tour was around some of the lighting industrial um uses that currently exists like the banjo maker uh and the art space and the rv outfitter in contrast uh the

[118:02] the the project that uh laura mentioned that planning uh saw just on tuesday was a redevelopment of a light industrial zone from a restaurant supply to a um a light industrial lab space quite large 120 000 feet and my understanding after that was that that um that space is going to be marketed somewhere at about 60 to 80 dollars a square foot triple net or roughly about when you calculate all the costs then about a hundred dollars a square foot gross and so to give people context on what that means a thousand square feet would rent for gross about a hundred thousand dollars a year and so when we play that in contrast to the existing light industrial uses that we're proud of in this area like the banjo maker and the rv outfitter

[119:00] where do they fit in in this plan um as um as as it develops and has the city put some thought and economic analysis as relates to these types of businesses that are thriving in an area because it's expensive and where those businesses might fit in in this plan yeah so i think that the types of businesses you're describing are really what's envisioned to be incorporated into those hand on industrial place type areas that's that's really what i think we've heard from a lot of people in the community that is very important to how this neighborhood evolves um we had a market profile done for the 55th and arapahoe station area and it did look broader into east boulder as well

[120:00] and i think that market report was um really helpful because it it did dispel some um i think perceptions that we had about affordability of space we learned that rents in this area are not necessarily cheaper than other parts of boulder rents are going up but you know i do think we've heard anecdotally from community members it's it's a more affordable area today we have not done additional economic analysis on how redevelopment might impact those rental rates um in since that initial market profile okay is that something that we're intending to do as a city because i guess i have some

[121:01] substantial concerns from what we're seeing coming through these areas and planning board for instance the project i mentioned that came through on tuesday you know they're they're looking at sixty to eighty dollars a square foot and they're comping against the national market and feeder areas like boston and san diego that are already at a hundred dollars a square foot for that light industrial and i have some concerns around um how we manage that as a city to preserve the types of businesses that exist so hopefully there's a there's a plan around that um that type of study is not described as a recommendation in the sub community plan but i may ask um chris jones or jennifer pincino if they are in in the zoom world to um comment and and let us know about any next steps that um community or economic vitality

[122:01] might be working on thank you kathleen we do not have any imminent affordable commercial work plan elements oh sorry chris jones interim director of community vitality but we do have some resources within the caged budget um to be looking at possibly in the in the year ahead to pilot some possibilities around affordable commercial that could be looked to as a model as uh east boulder develops um to to resolve some of these challenges um but uh when i see jennifer pincino has turned her camera on as well so i will see if she has um additional to contribute i would say one of the things that we're planning to do is updating the economic sustainability strategy that city council adopted in 2013 and certainly affordable commercial would be something that we would be looking at

[123:01] as we do that update thanks and jennifer can you introduce yourself sorry jennifer pensino city manager's office thanks uh georgie does that answer your question it does thank you great thanks uh we got lauren next and then matt thank you um so most of my questions are sort of around the next steps and just to make sure that some of the things that i'm concerned about would be able to be taken care of in future processes so um as we look at zoning and form-based code is the intention to have new zoning districts um that would apply to this area or are we trying to map current zoning on to this plan yeah i think um we will be looking at whether there are existing zones that

[124:02] could be suitable for any as a match for any of these place type areas but we would also study the creation of new zones and and um if that's a better kind of tool to get what we're um describing as as the vision for the area um and as we go to look at those code and zoning and use updates do you foresee having implementing any kind of types of controls to ensure that we're maintaining a certain amount of industrial space you know for instance if office space is more value you know seen as being able to be more valuable to a developer it seems like all of these zones either allow residential or office and so if for some reason it wasn't you could see things being redeveloped

[125:00] away from industrial uses potentially depending on the market conditions yeah i think when we um go into those conversations we that would definitely be something that planning board and city council would weigh on weight in on the future if there were certain uses that um you may want to prohibit in in these zones thank you and then um lastly we've gotten some concerns around sort of noise lighting those kinds of things right now do we have any difference in standard in terms of the amount of noise or light pollution that can be created in these zones compared to the rest of boulder or currently it's sort of the city-wide rules are the same all across the city right so i would ask charles to respond to that about um

[126:00] light regulations yeah as far as um you know lighting goes um the city's lighting code is pretty uniform across the city i think we do have you know some little more intense allowances for our commercial and industrial areas but on the whole still require full cut off fixtures you know no light intrusion on other people's property and with regard to noise we have some specific standards in our regulations that talk about construction typology for residential uses in industrial zones so things like additional sound proofing um ways to achieve that either with insulation or windows but i think absolutely two things that we should consider as part of implementation of fundraise code as we think about how these types of uses will interface that sounds great thank you all right matt good to follow uh thanks aaron uh my follow-up actually

[127:00] kind of connects a little bit between uh how junie started us off with her question about what future councils may or may not be able to do and and and lauren talking about the future stuff and i guess where i want to call coalesce around that is previous area or sub-community plans were kind of just done and and that was the way things were and we we did them for all time without much cooking in time for adaptability it is an exercise of hubris for us to assume we know the full outcomes for 30 years from now and so how do we cook that in how do we not bake in obsolescence when we start a plan we have the best intentions we have some areas that are going to be adaptable but how do we cook in those check-ins like we do with the boulder valley comp plan so that we can actually just be like all right where is the community at where where are regulations at where is the market at and do we need to make some large or small adjustments to these plans to continue to meet the needs of our community going forward so that's a concern i have and so i'm just

[128:01] wondering is it appropriate to even bake that in in a plan like this to say hey every 10 years like we do a comp plan can we just check in because i agree with juni's point you don't want just any counsel at any time to kind of throw up the the curtain and say we're going to redo this now but but when it's planned and staff has a chance to work through that knowing it's coming on the horizon so i'm kind of curious about is there a process for that and can we do that yeah so um a couple things one um one idea that we have that would be part of the implementation of the project is on the city website and the webpage for this having a tool that would track implementation so all of those programs policies and and the prioritization that's listed at the back of the plan creating some kind of tool so the community always knows where we're at on on each of those ideas

[129:00] in the plan itself the sub-community plan on the very last page describes the amendment process and expectations around amendments so that that piece of it is included in the plan but as far as a regular check-in for sub-community plans that's that's kind of a new idea for us but certainly open to it okay rachel and then sarah super quick question on that last point i assume um the question was was put like how would council look at it but we're together with planning board tonight and i don't want to dismiss that it would be a planning board and council like both would have to change this right and both would have to look at it yeah thank you great sarah and then let's see if we can go to the public hearing um so i'm just wondering if you could um explore with us a little bit about the overlap between east boulder sub community uh

[130:02] boundaries and the opportunity zone and what the implications are in terms of the discussion about incentives that are that were mentioned at the planning board hearing back in march to try to encourage um developers to redevelop the stamp area in the ways proposed for the plan i just would really like to have you walk us through those areas that are already pretty heavily incentivized because of the opportunities thank you yeah so i put a map up so folks can see the um hatched area on that city map is the um designated opportunity zone and so that includes um just so you know can't we can't see that oh you can't see it oh shoot i'm sorry

[131:01] um well i don't i don't know how to share but uh um i can describe that the opportunity zone in east boulder is north of arapahoe west of 55th and south of belmont and i might actually ask jennifer pincino to speak to incentive programs related to the opportunity zone and how they might impact redevelopment in this area sure jennifer pinsknow city manager's office the opportunity zone incentives that is a federal program and so the city doesn't necessarily i mean we have business incentives but they are totally independent from opportunity zones um again it's a federal program my understanding is that those incentives that come through are their benefits that accrue to the people

[132:01] who invest through opportunity funds into opportunity zones but that the develop developers themselves don't necessarily directly get those benefits but again federal program um it doesn't apply in every situation and it's it's something that if you're really interested we could do more research on but it's something that um somebody who's a a tax expert could provide um a more definitive answer so if i can just follow up my i would appreciate more information on that and uh i realize it's a federal program but lots of developers across the country are benefiting quite significantly from the opportunity zones and i think for as a city we should be looking for ways for the city to benefit that aren't just in terms of building new buildings but in terms of

[133:00] uh letting those who are benefiting from the opportunity zone uh uh windfall so to speak uh carry some of the cost burden rather than the city always carrying certain cost burdens so it would be very helpful to have some additional information thank you and i'll just note the extensive analysis was done on this topic in 2018-2019 and it might be helpful to pull up some memos from that time period which i think contain a lot of that information so sarah that might might be a good source of information okay so if not seeing any other questions here how about we go to the public hearing so i'm going to go ahead and open that up we have two people signed up to speak oh wait john john's got his hand back up follow-up question yeah thank you um i was wondering if you could explain how the plan takes into considerat the draft

[134:01] plan i should say takes into consideration the concerns of the folks who use the airport and presently have their you know glider towing operation focused on over this area because it's not too much resident activity there and they've expressed concerns to me about what the impact might be on their operations and it'd be interesting to know how this plan addresses that yeah so we met with um a couple of folks who who fly glider planes out at the airport and there's a they use a tow plane to take off um so the plan i think we met with them maybe a month and a half ago a month ago and since that conversation we've updated um recommendations i think it's maybe we added i think it's m16 is the

[135:02] the actual recommendation that describes um future steps for doing a part 150 study which helps us understand any noise impacts that might indicate compatibility issues and then as part of future steps we would look at expanding that we could potentially look at um expanding that airport influence zone um um and that's outlined in the plan now so so how would that impact uh what the plan proposes and what we're dealing with at this point yeah so some of the things that might come out of that study and an expansion of the airport influence zone and i think what some of those advocates are most interested in would be something like a

[136:00] navigation easement so just letting property owners or potential property owners or potential renters know that gliders fly in that airspace and that they use a tow plane to get up there so basically requiring uh information to be provided to anyone proposing to have property there is that is that how it's dealt with yep that that's correct and and you know my understanding from those folks is um their their concern is that there would be an increase in complaints about um flights okay well thank you okay now i think we'll go to the public hearing uh we've got two people signed up lynn siegel and kurt nordback so if we can get that started please unbelievable two lousy people unbelievable you're not lousy at all

[137:01] you better you better get some more interest in this because this is big just say no east boulder sub community no no to the opportunity to zone moratorium up on the uh odds in 10 years you can just walk out free of cost this is outrageous where's my timer again can't we get the timer on here guess not economic analysis how could you possibly be thinking on going forward with this without an economic analysis you need per capita charges for each person no notice the rec centers lately there's nobody to work there and we're going to flood more people into the rec centers that we have this is not a freaking after thought like brock creek was they build the town and then they figure out the streets and the community centers and the infrastructure as an afterthought no way snap out of it council snap out of it

[138:01] planning board you know you want industry in the industrial zone you want the banjo store i think i know the guy that has that store you know how are you going to do this when you're funding micro micro housing micro units are not cheaper snap out of it not cheaper they're more they they're more expensive the smaller they are the more money they can get squeezed out growth equals growth say no to see you south and east boulder sub-community or base code zoning do whatever you want multi-use zoning but you know what growth equals growth and that's what drives up the cost of everything and the hedge funders and the equity investors love it they just love it how dare jane brodicam have approved the opportunity zone put a moratorium on it

[139:00] now now let's see here if you had my video on right now you'd see my thumb running over my four fingers that's what this is all about thumb over four fingers it's all about the money follow the money honey that's micro units that's where they get their money um the health sciences center that was entertained at planning board last week yep that drives up the cost big time apple you know big time and and you're talking about making this affordable more housing you know what more housing drives is more service workers and guess what it doesn't matter if you have transit those people don't want to be on the bus all day when they have families and they have lives also

[140:00] they don't want to let not only that someone in gun barrel but gusky left for denver because there wasn't enough there anymore there's not you know don't press your life your time is up that's desirable a place thank you for your testimony uh next we have kurt nordbach hi kurt norbeck 777 delwood avenue i'm continuing my campaign to get us to think a little bigger picture about parks in east boulder currently there are just a couple of big parks mostly belmont city park and the bike and dog parks across the street there's also a large undeveloped parcel east of valmet city park that's planned to be additional park space directly but there's currently little to no park space walkable from where people work or and live or from where a lot more people will be working and living in the future i understand the history behind

[141:00] innovation but it's contrary to most of our transportation and planning goals if we were to develop the empty parcel east of belmont city park it would create as a part it would create what i call the big box store of parks the big box store is large scale something most people drive to that sucks the energy out of small local local walkable stores if developed as currently envisioned belmont city park would be similar so my suggestion is to exchange that empty park for additional small neighborhood parks distributed across the east boulder sub-community area would allow many more of the future residents and workers to walk to a park and it would allow the parcel to be used for a mix of uses hopefully including a lot more housing in a great location next to goose creek and the existing park this seems completely aligned with the goals that staff heard from the community

[142:02] hillary clinton's one key to a delightful walkable sustainable urbanism please consider not creating a big box park and instead allow for both neighborhoods and a richer mix of uses along belmont thank you thank you kurt okay we'll go ahead and close the public hearing that's everyone who signed up were there any follow-up questions prompted from the public hearing rachel i just one on the parks question my understanding is that the the belmont park space is already parks owned and it's planned as a large park so i don't i don't know that there's much movement there but in i don't know also that it's either or that we can't have the small neighborhood parks along with that so just wondering staff are there is there room for more parks do we need more parks are there already enough uh in there in your estimation you know where there's going to be housing and people working yeah so we've had um the great benefit of

[143:00] the parks and recreation master plan going on at the same time as the sub-community plan so we've been able to coordinate with that group and when that department has been looking at levels of service they've looked at our projected populations and we're we're on um we're anticipated to meet our our level of service for the amount of park space per person um but the plan also includes an idea for a program about privately owned public space and so this is a program that we've seen implemented in other cities where as development occurs we can work with developers to help identify and create more social gathering spaces especially when we're thinking about potentially larger development projects and being able to kind of work across different parcels to create more green space access

[144:04] okay well seeing no other follow-up questions then i would then request for someone from the planning board to uh to make a motion to continue your agenda item to thursday may 5th for this island john well uh uh i think we're happy to do that i i had thought that there would be an opportunity for all of us to ask additional questions of staff if there are any i i had offered that opportunity and if you missed it you're welcome to do so now well i just want to make sure everyone realizes here that this is their best chance to do that seeing none i uh i think i'd like to ask for a motion to for planning board to continue this agenda on thursday may 5th 2022 for board deliberation and action on the proposed east boulder sub-community plan

[145:00] we won't take any additional public comment then on this item and i'd like to see if we can get a motion to do that okay a second second okay we have a motion and a second all in favor raise your hand looks like everybody likes that idea so that's what we'll do thank you and uh we appreciate uh joining you for this uh public hearing it's been great having you all here with us tonight really appreciate the the questions and look forward to hearing the results of your deliberation thank you all right have a good night all right and then do we need a similar motion um for the council yes mayor you sure do anyone move to continue this all right i just recognized you started talking all right go ahead no no i'm second in emotion

[146:01] i move to continue this public hearing until uh next week may 17. may 10th i'm sorry may 10 thank you second thank you great we have a motion second all in favor okay unanimous so that is continued all right well thanks once again to staff phenomenal presentation great answers to all of those detailed questions really appreciate all of your work and looking forward to coming back in a week and see if we can't finish this thing out we'll see you next week all right thank you take care all right that closes our public hearings for this evening at least you want to take us into our next item yes sir thank you we have next item six on tonight's agenda matters from the city manager six eight is a discussion on allowing video testimony from public participants at council meetings thank you alicia and sarah huntley is

[147:01] getting ready to take over that issue thank you i should continue talking just to give you a moment to say good evening council um let me just queue up the presentation if you don't mind okay the mouse does not appear to be working here to get me out of this presentation onto the matters presentation would be terrific we appear to be thank you for your technical support

[148:00] deputy city manager chris is a man of many talents he absolutely is okay all right i found it okay terrific we're in business thank you for your patience um we are anticipating that this will be a relatively short conversation but i wanted to bring up a topic about video testimony for council meetings this is a topic that we've talked about in the past with previous councils we have some new council members and as you all know we're about to enter an exciting new phase where council meetings are actually available to the public both in person and online so we are very excited about that

[149:00] offering it's definitely an enhanced engagement service but we do have some questions for you with regard to video testimony we're just going to run through those today so as a recap for past council members and a little bit of a guidance for current new council members we have been welcoming testimony for community members throughout this pandemic virtually for city council meetings in march of 2020 we pivoted pretty quickly to learning some new technology to try to continue to allow for public participation however due to security and first amendment concerns we had to make a determination pretty early on in the pandemic that we would only allow testimony to be audio in these virtual environments we had at least one unfortunate situation in a city council hosted event and i know some community groups have also experienced some unfortunate incidents with what we call

[150:00] zoom bombing people showing video of inappropriate things in public meetings really designed to disrupt those sessions the issue today is whether we want to continue to allow video allow testimony in a virtual space to be audio only we've talked about this a couple times and council has opted to keep the testimony audio only what's different about today is that we are as i mentioned going into this exciting new world where we are going to starting may 17th be giving our community two different ways to participate in council meetings one is from the convenience of their own home they can continue to testify as they have throughout the pandemic signing up for public hearings and open comment in a virtual format the other is for people who really desire to come down to council chambers and be here in your presence they will be able to do that once again

[151:00] the the situation that we have however is that we will have two different levels i suppose of participation if they're in an online space people will still be only audio that's the staff recommendation because of the very same security concerns and first amendment concerns that existed when we were in a virtual only space if people are here however they can stand at the podium and they can be fully seen the your facial expressions can be seen by each of you so we think that actually what we're offering is two different opportunities and community members are free to decide what's most important to them the convenience of being in their own home or coming here and being seen fully in person we do very much see this as an enhancement of engagement experience but we recognize some folks really would like to be able to turn their camera on and we're asking you once again what your thoughts as a council are about that given some of the concerns that have been expressed in the past and

[152:01] the experiences that we've had so to be clear the staff recommendation is that we welcome the community back in both these forums starting on may 17th but that we um continue to have testimony from the public be audio only if they're testifying in our zoom platform gives us the best ability to control and prevent those unfortunate incidents if somebody really wants to be seen they're more than welcome to come here and stand at the podium and be seen by their counsel as they express their viewpoints thanks for that sarah thoughts from council see junie nicole thank you thank you i just have a question i really appreciate giving community members both opportunity um especially if someone cannot come here due to various reasons so that's really great um my question to you it relates to having i wonder what's the issue because i

[153:00] remember i'm not sure if the rest of council some of the new council members know really what's the security reason as to why we don't allow videos sure i can be more specific so um in the zoom world we have found that there are sometimes folks who are more interested in disrupting the meeting than actually participating in meaningful engagement and we had a incident very early on where we hosted a public engagement event actually around covid and what people's needs were where council members were present and we had some folks come in i actually don't believe they were from the city of boulder but come into the meeting and they were displaying child pornography pornographic images um on the video behind them in fact even when we turned that video off some of them were using the name screen to display some still images that that were similar in nature and that put staff moderating that meeting namely myself in the difficult position of having to make

[154:00] a determination about whether to allow that person to stay in the meeting and we've since been advised by the city attorney's office that we have to be very mindful of the first amendment we obviously want to support everybody's rights to speak and express themselves um and that situations that put staff in that sort of content arbiter role are very challenging and so we made a determination to not allow video from that point forward people are able to speak their mind of course and be heard verbally by you all as council members but we limited the video capability i'll just either ask a follow-up or also make a comment i am on a different board but at the state level where community members well community members meaning the whole state of colorado people come in and they actually use their videos in their we've never had any issues but i do

[155:00] understand the concern but i'm wondering is there a way that you can control the background or is there is no way to control that background that once you open that video it's just anything can be seen from that side so i'm going to address both parts of that if i can we know that there are government agencies that are allowing video testimony it's really there's a wide range we did a little bit of a brief survey of some local governments i know the state in many instances is allowing video and i truly believe that in 99 of these situations community members and folks who want to testify on these matters are showing up in good faith it's that one percent chance which we've already experienced that causes us a lot of difficulty we can't unless we gave everybody a background screen and required them to use it had in some sort of enforcement if they didn't use it and gave them the technical training in order to activate it it's not really something that we can control from here

[156:01] thank you do you want to have a question to that folks um do we have additional implications because we're broadcasting the meeting on tv you know we've we've received some conflicting information on that we certainly have to be thinking in general we want to be thinking about fcc regulations we are a government access channel and some advice i have received suggests that we are not as that's not as applicable to us as commercial channels but nonetheless we want to make sure that we're maintaining good standards of television for people who have access to this in their homes thanks nicole and rachel yeah i think my only concern uh with the um zoom option i think i've stated this before as well is covet is still going on right people are still dying um they're still being hospitalized and for folks that have um that are immune compromised or have some

[157:00] sort of disorder that makes them very susceptible to covid is there any way that we can have an option for them to have a video for zoom as well so that it is equitable and not just kind of offering them the chance to hear their voice but to actually see their faces in the same way that they could if they came in which poses a health risk to them yeah i greatly understand and appreciate the equity concern for folks who cannot physically make the choice to come into the council chambers i may let our city attorney weigh in here but i think that the the challenge is that carving out exceptions requires us to make some determinations that could could step over the line but theresa do you have some thoughts about teresa just before you i'm just wondering i mean to me it feels very similar to say having a wheelchair accessible um door or something like that and so i would be interested too and just understanding what's the difference here um that makes that not possible

[158:02] thanks for that question when we're talking about the first amendment it's hard if we start parsing out groups of people for different treatment than than others um you know your ada accommodation idea is an interesting one and frankly not one i've looked into um how the ada would intersect with the first amendment here i will tell you that i have some reservations about creating special classes of of folks to have different rights than other people who are participating in the meeting rachel minimum i'll call myself uh well first of all um listening to that sarah bob and i have been the uh council members of the subcommittee on engagement since i got on council and you know hearing you talk about like pivoting really quickly in in april 2020 and that i think bob and i were the ones in that meeting where the zoom bombing

[159:00] occurred and it was um uh i guess for anyone not understanding it it was uh extremely graphic and difficult things so i'm still pretty chastened from that as well and i do want to say i'm so appreciative of all the work that you've done on the engagement subcommittee for the last two years it's not been easy and you've been working hard and i know that you've been looking and the team at issues of equity and fairness and and i also appreciate that for you know other cities or other agencies that are able to do this may have more robust staffing like we've lost half a lot of staff during covid so appreciate um you know the balancing act that we have to find um and then also just want to say that i used to testify a lot in front of council and there was just a few weeks maybe maybe it was a few months where we could call in a couple years ago and it was difficult

[160:00] it didn't work um and there were a couple times where i was sick and i couldn't get here and i had to cancel so i think that this is a silver lining to kovid that now we are going to have an opportunity to still be heard that we didn't have two years ago so again just grateful i think we are adding an extra layer of engagement that wasn't possible two years ago so um i i i wish that we had a more perfect solution but i think this one's pretty good so thanks for all your work so i'll call on myself i agree with the staff recommendation to keep it audio only i think the the difficulty of making a a determination on the spot about whether something is speech allowed by the first amendment or not in terms of visual um offensive material is a very difficult one and i hate to put staff in that position i might find myself in that position or a future mayor might which would be a very challenging one not being a first amendment attorney might make the wrong call um but nicole i really appreciate your your equity point and i would just say that i've heard a great deal of public testimony

[161:01] over the last 10 odd years and i've found the the zoom testimony to be audio only to be as impactful as the in-person testimony that i've heard over the years so i view it as different options for community members for what they would most appreciate but i feel like their testimony will be the give me the same amount of impact in terms of the the weight that their voice has um so so i'm comfortable with keeping it audio only um for for the remote testimony so any other thoughts on this matter before we thank you we will be preparing some guidance to prepare the community for this exciting opportunity to have two options um and be publicizing that and we will be as clear as we can be in what people can expect in terms of their options to testify i appreciate your feedback this evening thanks very much for revisiting the question as we move into this next phase okay next we got a couple matters of mayor members of council yes sir we have uh item eight a which is

[162:02] a discussion endorsement or not a five that's related to the letter of support for council member joseph's election to the colorado municipal league board junie do you want to just give us a quick description of what you're going for here yes thank you i'm a member i'm a member of the policy committee for cml which i was appointed by the council and i will be seeking election to the board this summer and i had to submit a letter and basically i'm just requesting another five from council great well i'm just going to call on myself and just say as mayor i'm extremely grateful to you for stepping up and submitting your name forward i know you'll represent the city incredibly well at the cml policy board so i just wonder if we can just have an acclimation here for yay okay thank you thanks so much for stepping up thank you good luck okay one more

[163:00] yes sir next 8b discussion that's related to councilmember folkert's participation in a regional minimum wage working group lauren you want to describe what you're up to here yeah so um as you know the state preemption on minimum wage has changed and we're now allowed to enact local minimum wages through the boulder county consortium of cities we're forming a working group to look at that a number of neighboring communities all looking at it together because under the state the new state law there's sort of a maximum number of implementations of this that can happen that along with the benefits of implementing over a wider area so that some of the pitfalls to minimum wage can be eased you know for instance if all

[164:01] the surrounding communities do it we don't stand such a risk of businesses maybe moving just outside of city limits or something like that so i would am looking from for support from council to join this working group and as we progress so as this is something that would have to be implemented by the city eventually for it to come into play here um i will also maybe coming back with a request for staff time just to look at you know review what we're working on and make sure that we're going in the right direction we are starting so when the working group is formed which will be in the next consortium meeting one of the first things we'll be looking at will be an outreach and engagement sort of um plan to make sure that we're

[165:01] getting a number of stakeholders involved as well thanks for that i'm going to ask a clarifying question over here to teresa so by uh designating lauren for this with a knot of five my understanding is that we would be empowering her to participate in this working group but that any official action to raise the minimum wage in the city would require public hearings and public engagement later on in the process is that is that correct yes your understanding is correct mayor great so any comments from folks on on this idea let's see i'm seeing them all okay 100 thumbs up i really appreciate you taking this on lauren this is an important discussion really look forward to what the working group comes up with sounds good thank you we are being efficient tonight so i think that's it does anybody have any other final thoughts jenny sorry um there was a cac um

[166:00] comment that was sent in by council member mark who's not here today so i'm wondering is that discussion happening next week about revisiting or rules when it comes to attending remotely or in person yeah so uh what happened was uh we were all set to authorize mark to participate remotely tonight thanks for bringing this up juni but um because he was he did initially inform us that he was ill and would not be able to attend in person so we were getting set to authorize him to attend virtually um then it turns out that he was so sick he was not even up to attending virtually so it didn't end up coming up here but we are having a larger discussion on exactly when you attend virtually and when in person i think generally the the agreement is that for a one-off it's fine to participate virtually but we'll have a larger discussion teresa do you want to i'm not theresa nuri do you want to tell us sure we do plan and we had planned to bring this forward um around this time actually but with all the sort of rebalancing of meetings we decided to wait a little bit but we

[167:01] want to make sure that we give you options on some rules as we move forward i'll also say that virtual attendance may be impacted by whatever state laws may impact attendance for meetings right now under the emergency orders they're allowed to be virtual and we'll be looking again into whether that can continue in the future but if it does we want to make sure that we offer council some options whether it's it can happen anytime or you want a limited amount of time in which you're virtual because you prefer to be together as a council body so we'll be doing that in the future let's answer your question thank you great matt so this was this was brought up at cac and i just sort of maybe want to catalog it for my colleagues here is a and so i'm sort of doing it in a way to set an example for the conversation we may want to have um which is just the process that is if they are for matters of counsel and i know we're very formal with sending in a

[168:00] hotline and requests and i'm wondering if there's ways in which we can talk about the organics in which those matters for council come up um where at any point or at the end we can bring up a situation or an issue and it can be either quickly resolved or dealt with rather quickly and it requires a longer conversation the discretion of mayor and of course our city manager can say yep let's do that later but it may be just a little more clarity i think for all of us as to where and how those matters come up for some of that small stuff that doesn't require either formal letters or emails and then long duration waits before we get to address it because we can then just knock some of that stuff out rather quick like perhaps even lauren's request could have been knocked out pretty quick if it was brought up as a matter you know at any given night so anyway just a thought for down the road hopefully we can maybe have a more detailed discussion of that matt you're out of order that was inappropriate no i'm just kidding so but it's a fair point and we're having some process discussions coming up right i was just about to comment on that certainly there are some guidelines in the handbook um and but we are coming back with some opportunities to do process changes we're actually really

[169:01] glad you're thinking about this because one of the reasons we chose to remove or separate process changes from the beginning of the retreat was to give you all particularly our new folks some opportunity to be in the midst of council meetings to see what are those things that you want to change as you've as you really settled into your new roles and so we hope to bring those up soon as well we'll probably be bringing both the timing and those process changes at the same time great anything else well with that i will gavel is closed at 8 46. great meeting everybody [Music]

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