June 14, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:02] [Music] [Music] do [Music]

[1:05] do [Music] all council members and relevance up here and the recording has started so let's get going well hello everyone and welcome to the june 14th special meeting of the boulder city council and before we get the official agenda started i'm going to begin with a couple announcements so the first one is about covet 19 vaccinations testing and vaccinations so for information provider locations for free kevin 19 testing please go to www.boco.org covet testing and the boulder site for that is 2445

[2:01] stasio drive and that's open seven days a week from 8 am to 6 pm and for vaccine information in providing locations please go to www.boco.org covet vaccine and on to the next announcement please all right council meeting day change beginning on july 14 2022 city council meetings and study sessions will change from tuesdays to thursdays with the start time remaining at 6 pm the new meeting day will impact some board and commission meeting times and the public comment sign up timeline so let's go through a few of those planning board the new meeting times will be first third and fourth tuesdays the month at 6 00 pm board of zoning and adjustments the new meeting times are on the second tuesday of the month at 4pm the design advisory board will now be at the second wednesday of the month at 4pm and the public comment sign up timeline will open friday before the meeting at 8 am and close wednesday before the meeting at 2 pm for a total of 5 days and more information about all of this can be found at boulder colorado.gov

[3:02] announcement council dash meeting dash day dash change all right uh with that let's go ahead and gavel this meeting started at 6 00 pm and elisha could we do the roll call please yes sir and good evening everyone we will start with council member benjamin president mayor brockett president council member faulkers president mayor pro tem friend here councilmember joseph present spear present wallach here weiner president and yates right here mayor we have our quorum wonderful alicia can you go ahead and move us into our first public hearing please we don't have a consent agenda or collapse i don't think yes sir i'll i'll ask our city manager

[4:01] chris maschuk to introduce me and this item for me thanks alicia and good evening council members we're going to turn it right back around to alicia johnson our city clerk who's going to walk us through our mid-year board and commission appointments all right thank you chris and again good evening council before we begin the process of nominating and appointing board and commission candidates to fill our current vacancies i'm going to provide a review outline of our process for this item there are three steps first i will present the slides for each boarding commission identify which seats are vacant along with their required qualifications the eligible candidates and whether they have applied for other boards second we will ask i will ask the mayor to open our public hearing close it when it is completed and turn the discussion back to me third following the public hearing i will provide counsel with guidance on

[5:01] how the nomination process will proceed emily if you would please pull up the slides for me we will proceed with the presentation of the information for each board and commission our first board that we are considering tonight next slide please emily will be our beverage licensing authority board that board has currently seat two vacant and we are requesting the appointment of a resident to the unexpired four-year term through march 31st 2026. we have one applicant currently being considered and that is lee roberts because ms spaulding has withdrew her candidacy next slide please our next board will be our board of zoning adjustment seat two is the vacant seat on that board and we will request the to appoint resident a resident for a

[6:00] five-year term through march 31st 2027 we have catherine crane to consider and michael hirsch mr hearst did serve on seat two from march 2017 to march 2022 next slide emily next we have the boulder junction access district parking commission board we have seat two that is currently open and that is to appoint a member to a five-year term through march 31st 2027 this seat must be um this person must be a property owner or representative of a property owner seat three is also to appoint a member to a five-year term through march 31st 2027 and that also must be a appointment for a property owner or property owner representative we have seat four currently available and that is to appoint a residence to a

[7:01] five-year term through march 31st 2027. tonight's consideration of candidates are ryan boenick he is only eligible for seat number four miss rebecca please forgive me if i mispronounce that she is eligible for seat two and seat three and she also applied to bed to the boulder junction access district travel demand management board matt mctaminy he is only eligible for seat number four robin rowland is only eligible for seat number four and thomas wells is only eligible for seat number four next slide emily next we have our bjet travel demand management commission we have seat one available to appoint a member to an unexpired one-year term through three thirty one twenty three this person must be a property owner seat number two is to appoint a member

[8:02] to a five-year term through three 31-27 also must be a property owner and seat three is to appoint a member to a five-year term through 331-27 and also must be a property owner we currently have miss rebecca demo shell who also applied for the bjet parking commission to consider next slide emily next we have our cannabis licensing advisory board seat number six is currently open to appoint a resident to a five-year term through 331.27 this person must be a marijuana or hemp business owner and we have one candidate to consider evan anderson next we have the library commission which is our last board to consider for tonight that's library commission seat number two is available and we are asking to appoint a resident to a five-year term

[9:01] through 331-27 and we currently have one candidate miss sylvia werba to consider mayor i will now turn the meeting back over to you to open the public hearing great well let's go ahead and get that public hearing opened i understand let's see i just lost there we go um i understand we have one person signed up for the public hearing so they'll get three minutes to speak and that person is lynn siegel sorry for the delay lane give me one moment my screen is fighting you should be able to unmute now yeah i have one thing to say about this and that is you might have more applicants if you had a um a more inviting 10 feeling about people coming to council meetings and

[10:01] speaking at public hearings and that open comment um so that i'm not the only one that you get advice from because it is so intimidating and so uncomfortable to be read the riot act before i speak each time that it makes me not even want to speak and i imagine it makes a lot of people resist having anything to do with the city council or with their public government so i suggest that you rethink your public engagement process and how you're dealing with people and there's no excuses of it's the virus and that's why we're doing all this no it's not it has nothing to do with the pandemic it has to do with your public policy of intimidating people because it never happened live and it doesn't need to happen any differently now and i'm sure there are i.t ways of you getting

[11:01] someone to sign on and say um you know i agree like before they sign up before they can actually get on they have to check a box that says i agree to these parameters to you know not swear or what have you that should be how that process works and to me it's just amazing that a place as quote unquote progressive as boulder has such an archaic way of treating its public so that's all i have to say i wish i had more to say about um you know advising you about who you should choose for these board positions but um i just don't so thank you very much bye thank you lynn um and then elise i think you're going to walk us through the guidelines and i'm having some audio quality problems so i'm going to leave the meeting and come back in but please proceed with the guidelines i'm familiar with them i'll be back in just

[12:00] a moment all right sir and just officially you closing the public hearing yes i am thanks for asking no worries thank you all right council um just wanted to make sure you remember the process that we follow for the nominations and i will now outline that formal candidate nomination process for those of you who have been involved in the past you'll remember that this process is detailed in our code we will proceed through nominations one board or commission at a time in alphabetical order by board title council members will make nominations to field vacancies one seat at a time once nominations for the seat have been made by council members council is welcome to discuss with each other before taking final action if only one person is nominated for a seat that appointment will stand if there are no objections

[13:01] if more than one person is nominated for the same seat we have a specific process for narrowing the candidates down to one finalist a vote of support will be held for each individual nominated candidates must receive a minimum of five votes to be declared the finalists for a vacant seat if the first round of voting does not produce a clear winner the candidate with the fewest votes will drop from the nominee per list and the vote will be conducted again this continues until a single nominee remains the order of nominees will be called either alphabetically or reversed alphabetically by last name of the nominees depending upon a flip of my coin from then on i will alternate the order for all further nominee votes during the meeting if a person is not selected for the

[14:00] first seat they are nominated for they can be nominated for one of the other available seats on that board or commission or for another board or commission seat they apply it to this process is followed for each board or commission once council has determined a single appointment for each seat the motion made and a vote taken to appoint the selected candidates this item will conclude for the evening any questions all right i will turn the meeting back over to the mayor if he's back or the mayor pro tim if she wishes to take the lead i'd be happy too but i think i just saw aaron pop back in oh right here i am thanks for doing that alicia mark you have a question uh your mute too often i'm unmuted and now when i'm

[15:01] trying to talk i am muted okay the last time we did this we declined to appoint an applicant to the boulder liquor authority on the basis that she was a sole applicant and we wanted to have a vote on at least two candidates today we have the same one applicant for the liquor authority one applicant for the library district one for the boulder junction traffic demand management appointment one for clab and one for boulder junction parking seats two and three are we going to be applying the same principle today or have we determined that it is no longer convenient to have that principle and we're going to act under a different principle do you mind if i respond to that mark yes please great and i'll point out there was um there were more than one board that only had one applicant like the library district the library board also only had

[16:00] one applicant and we deferred on on that one as well my understanding of the the thought that council was applying at the time was that it that the regular cycle of board recruitment had only gotten one candidate we were deferring those to do additional recruitment in the hopes of getting additional candidate candidates but not that we would necessarily never ever appoint um to a board that only had one candidate so maybe i'll put it to my colleagues that are folks um comfortable tonight um appointing people to boards that only have one candidate this evening and i got rachel and matt and bob have raised their hands i am i hope that we revisit this at our um kind of mid-cycle retreat it felt um clunky and particularly uh seemed like we were shifting in the middle of the process on some of this and it seems like it's taken up time and and caused boards to to function at

[17:01] uh you know lower lower board membership levels than i would have liked for longer so uh yes to tonight hopefully somebody can put that on the agenda for next month thanks matt bob lauren um yeah i i agree with sort of coming circling back and having a little better discussion of this i i don't i mean i like the idea that you know we gave it a second round we really tried to drown you know dredge out some more candidates and so i think we can't really hold these seats open indefinitely and so i think it's important for us to now fill them and move on and try to get the work that we can done we're still going to have some holes in it um and so i think for an early round trying to get as much competition as we can is a good thing to try to start with but that can't be something we hold on forever in a process when we have vacancies and we need to move some some process forward with these committees so i'm okay moving forward with who we got so we can put this to bed and move on to other stuff thanks bob and lauren yeah i agree with rachel i think the

[18:00] process was a little clunkier this march than it um should have been i think it was clunkier than it has been in past years aaron will remember that it is not entirely unusual for us to appoint somebody um if they're the sole candidate um i think there's a there's a potential for a little signal to us all candidate when we reopen it that you're not good enough for us and i think that's a little awkward i think if someone is putting themselves out there and they happen to be the only qualified candidate i think we should appoint that person so i i agree i joined rachel in in calling for council to revisit this as a matter of policy going forward i'm a little a little embarrassed where we ended up we are where we are i'm gonna vote for seoul candidates tonight um but i think we should also um maybe develop a policy for for going forward thanks lauren and tara yeah thanks for bringing this up mark it was something i wanted to make sure we chatted about before we got underway here i think um yeah i appreciate all the comments both around sort of how this has happened historically and what we might

[19:01] do going forward i also would like to just bring up that um you know i think something me and tara have both talked about wanting to do is looking at some of these boards that aren't having as many applicants as we would like and just try and look also at um what the requirements are for those boards see you know how we can make this make more sense for more people or kind of try and identify why we're not having as many applicants for some boards whereas we have an abundance for others thanks tara yeah i agree with everybody first lisa if you're listening lisa spalding i do want to apologize it was an uncomfortable um experience for you and we did not mean it i personally didn't mean it to come out like that we tried some new things this year and some of them worked well and some of them didn't work as

[20:00] well so i agree that we um need to re-look at things but i also want to tell council my dear friends that i'm hoping that you're ready for a few other changes that we are going to try and again some of them will be great some of them might not be as great and we're just going to keep working at it and hopefully you are looking forward to that right lord apologies for what didn't work counsel thanks mark again yeah i i want to support the comments that were made by lauren and tara and i would suggest that we um adopt policies that are good for all weathers as opposed to those which are situationally convenient which is what we had at the last go around for this um we ought to do something that is um satisfactory not at the moment but for all moments and i don't think we had

[21:01] that um previously so i'm very supportive of looking at this again and creating a policy that is actually going to be adhered to um at all times thank you very good bob rachel not calling myself yeah i just wanted to take a moment to actually thank and acknowledge lauren and tara for all the hard work that they have done both back in february and march and also in this go around i know um this has been a ton of work for the two of you i know you've got some recommendations to make to us which i'm looking forward to hearing uh with all due respect to anybody who served on the prior board and commissions committee i would say the two of you have taken your jobs really really seriously and i really am grateful for all the hard work you've done you're here go ahead i second what bob just said thanks um tara and lauren for all your hard work

[22:00] and and to follow up on lauren's point about some boards that we're having trouble filling seats on such as we've got the 2b jab that's i say bjid boards for parking and travel demand management and clab have resident requirements i just want to know the process for when we should pick that up and hopefully direct staff to make some changes if if needed is that uh something we'll talk about the process retreat is that a noddify we should give tonight because it's a bummer that those seats are sitting empty and i assume it makes those boards harder to function is that can somebody speak to that like um could we consider that at the process meeting we can add that to uh to the list of items that are considered i've flagged it for our team thanks chris lauren

[23:00] oh i was just going to say that alternatively we could look at it through the boards and commissions group we could try and vet a couple ideas for how we might adjust that and then bring those forward to council would be an alternate way of trying to bring that to the group too there's a chance of that getting done in the next month that would be great yeah maybe it's faster to just do it as part of our retreat i'm totally open to that i'd certainly take you up on that okay i'm actually going to turn my video off here because i'm continuing to have a couple issues here so bear with me all right can you hear me yes okay so um i'll just chime in on the previous comments and say i agree that it was a very awkward uh process this year i think we did our best um it didn't come

[24:00] out perfectly and i agree that we should look at how to do that differently and better in the future and uncomfortable uh pointing the single applicants to those boards where there's only one applicant tonight so given that can we alicia could you go ahead and put up the the presentation please and so my suggestion would be that we only go to the boards that have multiple applicants for consideration than in our discussion and so if we could get that up that would be great alicia all right i'm waiting on emily that would be our first board emily would be the board of zoning adjustment which is the third slide

[25:02] all right sir hey so if we had a coin toss to determine whether we start alphabetically or reverse no i can do that now with my official handy-dandy coin our heads we start in alphabetical order tells we start in reverse it is heads so we will start in alphabetical okay well once we have nominations then we'll do that thanks so much okay do we have a nomination this board lauren um i would like to recognized michael hirsch and his excellent work on this board and while well i think he's been a great member of the board of zoning adjustments um i would like to nominate katherine crane um

[26:01] you know i just talking to aaron it sounds like typically when someone has served a full term and we have multiple applicants um we you know it's common to look at sort of giving a number of people experience in these positions and so um while they're both highly qualified i would like to nominate katherine crane for this position thanks lauren any other nominations well seeing none then i think i'll join lauren in thanking michael hirsch for his service we've really appreciated his work on the board in the last five years but um sometimes it's time for for new faces and to give new people chances for the experience to lend their service so looks like by acclimation that'll be catherine crane for the seat right sir duly noted thank you next emily we need to go to the bjet

[27:00] parking commission great so i believe we'll have rebecca dumochelle uh will uh slide into seat number two here as the only uh eligible person by the way she's very well qualified i happen to know um and then we have uh four uh possibilities for the resident i'm sorry the general resident that's not a property under representative so can we take a nomination tara i'm going to nominate robin ronan right um i will go ahead and raise my hand here and nominate thomas wells any other nominations lauren i'd also like to nominate ryan bonick very good

[28:02] any other nominations all right seeing none uh do people want to speak to their people they've nominated terry you were first if you want to go sure she had a great interview robin did and she is very dynamic person she has a lot of experience in boards and she is highly qualified i think she's gonna be awesome you know i love that word great i'll go next being for thomas wells i'll just say thomas has been involved in city issues for many years and is well versed and experienced with the issues that this district deals with and i think he would lend some fantastic expertise to this board so i think he's a great candidate i'll see we have other good candidates as well it's always great to see multiple qualified candidates uh lauren let me speak to ryan

[29:02] thank you um yeah i just wanted to make sure to raise i mean brian gave a great interview and had a great um answers on the questionnaire and has served on transportation um and provided great service to the city ultimately partially from what i've said before i do think it's important to give people who haven't had a chance to serve on boards and commissions a new seat so i may not ultimately vote for him but i really wanted to make sure he got nominated very good thanks lauren so elisha since we did the last one by acclimation are we still alphabetical or do we need to switch to reverse we are still alphabetical sir okay very good so i'm going to ask people to raise their virtual hands uh because i can't necessarily see everybody's physical hand so and i'll so we'll go and start with ryan bonek

[30:01] okay i'm not seeing hands there so we will go on to robin roman roman and i've got let's see we've got six here bob tara nicole rachel lauren mark so that does it robin is gets the seat congratulations robin all right aaron can i ask a quick question on this one with appointing rebecca do michelle to this board can we also appoint her to the second one did we or do we need to talk about that just i think we're not going to point her to two do we want to talk about whether we just appointed her to this one i think we talked before about um appointing everyone where there was only one uh applicant for one seat um i do believe it's perfectly fine to appoint the same person to both be jad boards i

[31:01] don't think there are any issues with that but bob do you want to speak to it yeah now not only is it perfectly good i think it's actually a good idea we've done this before historically where we've had one or two people who have been on on each of the two boards i don't know if the city attorneys have an opinion about that but with regard to pgad which has always been a mystery to me why we have two boards which maybe the boards and commissions will enlighten us on later um we've had overlap and there is a president for this and i hope that rebecca will serve on both words awesome thanks mark have we asked rebecca if she wants the workload of two boards and we're making an assumption here i have no problem with the appointment but um we're kind of piling on the work good question i i'm guessing rebecca has served i believe on both of these boards in the past um and then left town for a while and has come back so i think she knows what she's getting into but but we could confirm after the appointment and

[32:01] un-appoint her i guess if necessary lauren i think um i would support offering her both positions um and letting her let us know if she wants to reject one of them um i would also just like to clarify that for the trans the demand management um position there were three different seats one of the of three different lengths and i would like to appoint her to a term that matches this five-year term that she would be have on the parking commission emily could we go to that slide please so we can just look at those seats so it looks like both of the property owner's seats so they're all three property owners so one of the five-year terms in other words any objections from anyone to to that

[33:04] not seeing any very good junie i just wanted to make a comment and i appreciate this conversation that we're having about appointing one counts one uh community member to two boards but i'm thinking there are people who's who we could appoint to to the other board so i'm just not sure why is it necessary or even ultimately important to appoint one person to two wards if there is other people who are available to take on that position i can speak to that journey if you don't mind um in this case uh in for both of these boards uh there are rebecca's the only eligible person and there are multiple seats open so um there's no one else available at

[34:02] this time to and in fact if she is appointed to vote there will still be empty seats for lack of applicants thank you thank you for the question um any other questions or comments or we we could move i think that the next step if people are comfortable with where we've gotten would be for somebody to make a motion to appoint everyone as designated through this process i moved second great we have a motion and a second uh and at least is this a uh show of hands no this is a roll call sir okay lauren you have something else yeah so i just want to clarify through this roll call vote will we also be appointing people to positions where only one applicant applied are we just voting on

[35:00] the appointments as we discussed where there was more than one applicant it would be for all the boards including the ones with only one applicant for each seat perfect thank you thanks um have we discussed design advisory we had i we had two candidates there above withdrew they both withdrew yes sir that's disappointing okay thank you you're welcome and for just clarity sir for the rebecca's secondary appointment is it going to be to seat two as well we have her on seat two for parking and we want to go ahead and just put her for seat two for travel demand uh rachel you're the motion maker is that are you comfortable with that i'm comfortable with that great uh matt you're the seconder you also have your hand up

[36:00] uh that hand is erroneous my bad okay great well we have a motion on the table in a second i think we've clarified it um alicia could you do the roll call please yes sir thank you we'll start um this roll call with mayor pro tem friend emma yes council member joseph yes spear yes wallach aye winer yes yates yes benjamin yes mayor brockett yes and council member folkert yes mayor the boards and commission's mid-year appointments as documented and discussed are hereby approved unanimously great thanks so much everyone for the conversation and congratulations to all

[37:01] of our new board and commission appointments we look forward to the fantastic work i know you'll be doing for the city appreciate your service to come and mayor we will just for the record the city clerk's office will reach out to rebecca to confirm that she is okay with being appointed to both boards and if we hear anything different we will we will relay that out to council excellent thank you all right well i think we can move into our next public hearing then can we get started with that chris you want to start us yep i might look too alicia if you want to introduce the item first and then we'll uh i'll jump in all right thank you sir item 4b on tonight's agenda is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 85 21 to amend the designated boundary to include all of block 13 of the property at 1236 canyon boulevard city of boulder colorado an individual landmark under chapter 9-11 historic

[38:00] preservation brc 1981 and setting forth the related details thanks alicia and i am going to introduce james hewitt uh who is going to present this item from the planning and development services department good evening can you hear and see me yes good good good um james hewitt uh principal historic preservation planner with um planning and development services historic preservation i'm gonna share my screen hopefully it'll work um actually it says that my ability to share is disabled right now let me take care of that for you james got your presentation for you it looks like okay you can just let me

[39:01] oh so i'm going to ask you to advance slides for me emily yep emily okay thanks sorry i thought i was going to do this um good evening and um thank you i'll try and be uh fairly brief because i know there are quite a few people um who would like to speak to this item uh through the public hearing and i should just point out too that uh we have the chair of the landmarks board uh in attendance this evening and the vice chair too that's abby daniels who's the chair and john decker who's the vice chair and abby when i'm finished and you've asked me questions we'll say a few words and so if we could emily if you could advance to the next slide i can walk um

[40:00] you all through the procedure for tonight's hearing would you like me to do that mayor yes please okay all right because this is quasi-judicial the city council members tonight will uh each need to reveal ex parte contacts i'll make as i said a fairly brief presentation and the council may ask me questions the applicant at this point has an opportunity to present and this is the applicant is actually the city for a owned property so um but there as i mentioned before abby daniels is here and she will be available to us answer questions the public hearing at that point is opened for public comment and the council may ask questions of any of the comments made during the public hearing and then the applicant owner has an opportunity to respond to any any

[41:01] um thing that has been said the public hearing is closed and the city council um will deliberate and of course a motion will require an affirmative vote of at least five city council members to pass the motion next slide please so um as do you all know the criteria for landmark designation is set out in section 911 1 and 911 2 the boulder revised code commonly known as the historic preservation ordinance and i don't i won't read through this uh i'm assuming you're all fairly familiar with this and have read the memo next slide please um actually can you go to the next slide i don't think that should be there let's see options in terms of your decisions uh your

[42:01] decision this evening you have an option to approve the designation in this case an expansion of an existing uh landmark boundary you may modify and approve the designation by ordinance or you may disapprove or deny the designation and if you could skip back to the last slide emily i'm sorry it was out of uh it was out of order could you go back two slides yep back one more please thank you um i i i put this on the screen because you know one of your considerations too as the city council is um looking at policies uh as far as as the boulder valley comprehensive plan goes and policy 2.28

[43:00] leadership and preservation does state that eligible resources that have been identified through survey including secondary buildings or elements that are part of and convey the cultural significance of a site should be designated and this is referring to city-owned properties next slide please next slide so i'll just go very quickly go through the history of um how this uh comes to you tonight in august of 2021 the friends of the band show which is a recognized 401c3 historic preservation advocacy group submitted a letter to the landmarks board requesting expansion of the 1996 bandshell boundary to include all of block 13 where it had been in 1996 the boundary had been cut to

[44:01] include only the north half of block 13. in november of 2021 the landmarks board held an initiation hearing um and voted to move forward with looking at the possibility of expanding the boundary and in january of 2022 the parks and recreation advisory board uh reviewed the initiation and requested this postponement of the designation to allow time for additional review of the application um the landmarks board did uh postpone the hearing to allow that time and and um i will say that i uh went to the parks and recreation advisory board to speak to them to explain uh about the landmarking and what it meant and there were some there were some concerns on the part of the the board members themselves although they did not take a formal position

[45:02] they did a subsequent meeting um write uh some comments that are in the actually an attachment to the memo that's in your packet um meanwhile april 6 the landmarks board did have a designation hearing um and they voted 4-1 to recommend expansion of the boundary now i should point out here too and this is outlined in the memo that staff's recommendation was in lieu of expanding to include all of block 13 staff recommended that this not happen at this time that is the designation and that the board not forward this to the city council but instead um it directs staff to look at a larger civic area district i'll talk a little bit more about that um in a minute um and so

[46:01] that recommendation um we are staying with um and i'll speak a bit more about that and that was um outlined in um the first reading memo that you passed on your consent agenda and uh that is our recommendation this evening and i'll read that more completely as i go on next slide please okay um in terms of the the property location i think everybody's very familiar with this this is the civic area um this is the you know the essentially the heart of boulder um along boulder creek and um across broadway from the municipal building which is landmarked across um also from the atrium building from the duchamp bay tea house to the south of that and the boulder museum of contemporary art

[47:01] building all landmarked um so just to key you into what these lines are showing you the green line indicates what was designated in 1996 and the hatched line indicates the requested expansion of the boundary next slide please and just some photographs showing um aspects of the area in question now the boundary currently runs along the berm so where the sawed-off tree is and the sign and the other tree that that's where the the southern boundary now runs and there is a berm and the seating um that is there was actually constructed in 1950 and originally we'll see some earlier photographs it was just an open lawn without seating and without the berm the photograph on the right

[48:01] just shows a little bit closer actually from on top of the berm looking northwest into the band shell itself next slide please and some more photographs uh top left looking southwest essentially from the band shell down onto the area where the proposed boundary would extend to the white rock ditch being on the other side of the path which is running sort of midway through that photograph the top right photograph showing um the view looking southwest again from a slightly different angle and you can see the berm in the seating to the right and then bottom left the view looking essentially from the southern boundary and you can see to the left is the duchamp tea house um on the other side of 13th street as well as the bimoka

[49:00] building and then to the right of the trees the area that would be included in the proposed boundary if it were to be expanded lastly the bottom left shows a photograph this is taken from google street view and we'll sh we'll look at a couple of views over time and it's really kind of remarkable how much uh how similar this really is for in the last hundred years uh but anyway this is looking uh northwest uh from the bridge you can see the man shell on the left and the paths and the ditch as well as the weir which is sort of hidden below the barrier of the bridge next slide please so uh this is actually a map um that was included in the 1996 um uh application to designate the band shell and you can see there's a sort of a i don't know quite how to describe the shape but it's kind of like

[50:01] a triangle and that was the application that was submitted by the um modern architectural leagues application for the designation so it included the seating the band shell but not so much room around it at the landmarks board meeting in 1996 they did discuss expanding the boundary and ultimately did to include half the lot and there was discussion about doing the whole lot but there was and this is in your memo too there was some reticence in doing so because of the location of the train which is now not there so next slide please so in assessing whether or not a property is or a property is eligible for landmark designation we have um

[51:01] we have criteria for evaluation and these were adopted by the landmark sport and city council in 1975 the first of them is architectural significance in looking at this larger area it was actually very revealing to find out how much conscious planning there was and how much planning really goes back to the turn of the 20th century in terms of visioning for what we now know as the civic area the photograph on the top left shows the state of this is looking from the bridge pretty much the same view just a little bit um over the rail than we saw in the last photograph from the google street view shot but you can see the buildings to the left there was a green house a row of trees and a house in the back now the band shell presently sits where those trees are in the middle ground

[52:03] that was cleared away and i'll talk more about that um right after this photograph was taken subsequently in the 1930s the city hired um sucko rink deboer who had done a lot of work and was responsible for the parkway system um in the city of denver to uh do planning for the civic area and he'd actually just worked on the first zoning code for boulder and introduce that he is recognized as a as an important and influential nationally renowned architectural or landscape architect i should say and you can see here there were some fairly um wild looking schemes that never came to fruition but they were automobile um sort of dominated plans that were designed specifically for this area by him during

[53:00] the 1930s and early 1940s next slide please so i mentioned frederick lomb stead before frederick law olmsted of course you all know junior the son of frederick law who did central park and so many other wonderful landscapes around the country junior was part of the firm and um the firm actually still exists today i believe uh but they were in uh after his father died the firm was very active and frederick law was brought to city the city of boulder by the city of boulder specifically to draw up a plan and one of the key components was the revitalization of the area along boulder creek because at that time it was a fairly industrial and not a very

[54:00] very pleasant place so uh peter pollock who's the former planning director gave a talk several weeks ago to historic boulder and has revealed some very interesting information about uh frederick lomb's that's planned for this grassy area in front of where the band shell now sits and it was implemented in the early 1920s we'll see a photograph of that so you can see the photograph of saco dubour and then lastly glenn h huntington who was the designer of the band shell and a very prolific architect um designed all sorts of very diverse buildings all over boulder next slide please and then finally uh environmental significance um you know it is clearly an urban uh a park it has been used as such for over a

[55:01] hundred years in again in looking at the the history of the area we revealed um it was revealed to us just how much has gone on here over the years and it is a whole so it does make sense that the park should be recognized as part of the bandshell landmark it was a consciously designed landscape by several design professionals it is really quite intact today um and certainly uh you know an urban civic area civic gathering place and has been for 100 years next slide please so i said i was going to show you this um this image the photograph on the left is taken we looked at this one before 1921 before that all that

[56:00] uh all the buildings were were cleared away in some of the trees taken away as well 1925 this was actually the realization of of a plan specifically that frederick longstead had done for this grassy area was subsequently in 1938 the lions club and the parks and recreation board at the time had the band shell built after designs by glenn huntington and then the seating was added in 1950 and then the view today i mean it really is very recognizable and this was surprising i think to us and it is part of a whole so to the next slide please and sorry i'm going on so long um oh i just wanted to mention too that you know boulder does have um several city-owned and designated cultural landscapes not the least of which is the colorado

[57:00] chautauqua which is in itself a vernacular cultural landscape that has evolved over the years and i just wanted to point out that um i think sometimes folks have the impression that when something is landmarked or in a historic district the change can't occur and actually the the truth is that change occurs all the time um and historic preservation is just one filter to manage that change in a way that recognizes the historic character another uh property that uh is also designated and owned by the city of boulder and um clearly an important cultural landscape is the columbia cemetery of 10 acres next slide please so um our recommendation staff's recommendation is consistent with what

[58:01] we recommended um to the landmarks board in april and that is to in lieu of doing a larger expanded district now to to look at the possibility of doing a larger and more encompassing holistic historic district that recognizes the very historic resources and the evolution of this place over time from its establishment in the early 19th century through to the duchamp tea house which is which was constructed nearly in the 21st century it is a vibrant organic changing place and i think with the um with plans for revitalizing the civic

[59:00] area uh it would make sense to uh to have a historic district which would roughly we would look at the area in the red line um hatchling there as being a possibility so staff's recommendation in lieu of doing this is of expanding to include all of block 13 would be to look at a larger more historic uh or more encompassing historic district next slide please um and i put on the slide a couple of pros and cons or advantages and potential disadvantages to doing this and i'll just read through them very quickly and then wrap up but the advantage is that doing a district represents best practices in terms of historic preservation that's the guidance given by the national park service in the national register of historic places

[60:01] and briefs related to the management designation and assessment of cultural landscapes another important advantage to this is that staff believes it would allow time for the prabh and the landmarks board to meet and plan collaboratively unfortunately for one reason and another not least of which is that the process for individual landmarks destiny landmark designation happens very quickly from the time an application comes in to the time that you see it as city council um with covid and staff changes that have been occurring in the last year that was that made that time much shorter so a district would allow for an additional public process um because through the application process for designation of a district there is more public hearing and

[61:01] actually the development of specific design guidelines for a district requirement and that's a collaborative pro process so staff thinks for all those reasons that would be the pr preferred approach and um that is our recommendation the disadvantages to a district is um it is inconsistent with the landmarks board recommendation to expand just that block and staff certainly takes very seriously um you know the landmarks boards thoughts concerns and um recommendations and then um another potential disadvantage is not expanding the boundary today would mean that technically the area would not be subject to landmark alteration certificate review until district designation [Music] is commenced and i will say that once an application is submitted then

[62:01] it is dealt with as a landmark and so it would need to go through the landmark alteration certificate process that is any changes that would occur in that potential boundary next slide please so um my recommendation me or our recommended motion is on the screen and um we have made as part of this recommendation uh or part of this motion i should say the requirement that staff would be directed to make the um to um process and an app an application or a designation for a civic area historic district as a work program priority in 2023

[63:00] and i should say that i wanted to be very clear um with um claire brandt that i work with because she'll be here and this is actually going to be my last visit to you as a city employee because i'm leaving at the end of this month um but we do have the capacity to do that in 2023 work program-wise um and as part of the motion two and chris messchuck suggested that we do add this language as well because this is not in a memo that the the motion would include council directing staff to ensure that the landmarks board and parks and recreation advisory board are appropriately engaged in the park design process and that the band shell is included in the design and continues to be a centerpiece in central park that concludes my presentation and um i will stand for

[64:00] any questions you may have thanks so much for that james and i just said i've heard so many presentations by you and will be very sad to not get any more we'll say a few more words about that at the end of this item but uh for now any um questions for james uh bob and then tara yeah i will have a question but james i do want to add a personal note now and i think we will have some more to say in a few minutes i i um it's been my honor and pleasure to serve with you alongside of you not only for the seven years i've been on council for many years before that and you and i worked on a lot of projects together and i really respect you and your team and all the work you've done for historic preservation through the years and so we're gonna we're gonna miss you so early and i personally wish you uh the best um after you after you depart um i did have a question or two for you james um i believe tell me if i'm wrong that we do have i think 10 historic districts already in the city and you know things like um chautauqua and um

[65:02] mapleton hill and and and university place and some other places and each one of those also has historically designated structures in them in other words i think i think i think it's true but tell me if i'm wrong but that we in some instances we designated historic structures or houses or buildings and then we also designated a district later on in other instances we designated district but then we also designated properties within those districts is is that is that true i mean is there is a kind of like there's there's a district umbrella but there's also specific um properties within districts that have been designated yes that's true and actually um the first historic district and i think people are surprised to learn this is floral park um you know a neighborhood that was built in the 1940s um and at the time it was not even 50 years old that it was designated so um but yet to your to your question

[66:00] the individual landmarks were located all over town and yes districts have been formed around them over time and and that includes the buildings the property they're on and then the space between those properties too to protect and recognize the context so we could we could we could do both of the things you're recommending that is or one of the things one of the things recommending one thing that has been submitted to us that is we could we could designate the rest of the um the bandshell property as a as a landmark but then we could we could do exactly what you're recommending ask um the landmarks board and park sport to get together next year and to potentially um designate um the whole district which um most of most of the buildings on the map in the east have already been designated like the adrian building and the tea house and and the cold storage building but then also potentially in i think the municipal building but then also potentially

[67:00] create a district in other words we could we could designate this tonight but we could also designate a district it doesn't foreclose that is that right no that that's absolutely right great thanks so much james thanks uh tara matt lauren rachel mark so james isn't the band shell already landmarked and we're just we're talking about the park part right now is that true yes the band shell and actually half of the block is landmarked okay so you did a pros and cons which i thank you because i really do like pros and cons lists they really help me decide you didn't do a pros and cons though of why we would or wouldn't landmark the second what would be the con of landmarking the second part of the park um okay well the i i think there's not necessarily a con to that i think what the pro and i would just emphasize this is

[68:02] that it would provide time for the landmarks board and the parks and recreation advisory board to meet to discuss um the designation and and the overall planning process for the civic area as part of the consideration of designation so if it's park park or if it is all park actually why wouldn't the landmarks board want to include the parks board or they just didn't want to wait well i i don't think it's uh necessarily one board didn't want to include the other you know i don't mean that in a negative way i'm trying to figure out why you know what happened really well and i'll i'll defer to abby but um you know as i pointed out that the application or the letter came in in august and the landmarks board discussed it and um

[69:00] you know after that and and as far as i know prat the pram did as well but um there wasn't uh there wasn't direct dialogue between the boards and there's probably should have been and that you know i take responsibility for that landmark now if we did what by said would the parks board be able to weigh in or will they not be able to weigh it well they could weigh in but it would be an after the fact sort of weighing in and um they did have some concerns as you'll note in in you know the attachment that was there and it seemed like some most of those concerns could probably be explained through a dialogue um i just want you to know them i'm a big fan of all of our historic um

[70:00] our historic areas and i'm excited about the historic civic area as well thank you thank you and i'll just note thanks to tara that uh we do have allie rhodes from the police department here and i think after ms daniels from the land mark sport speaks we're going to give ali a chance to talk a little bit about what the park sports concerns were so stay tuned for that okay matt lauren rachel mark thanks aaron um actually i really like the questions that have sort of come uh already from my colleagues helping me refine my thoughts a little bit um i have a question kind of next parte questions i don't know if that's a question for now or maybe later um but i'm really curious as to what that means in this instance because normally i'm used to ex parte being like a developer or a property owner but it seems like in this these are questions of ourselves and so are these dialogues with staff are they dialogues with uh landmarks board or parks board or or council colleagues or

[71:01] worse off internal monologues um so i i'm i'm curious where what does ex parte mean here as once that question gets asked i kind of just want to know where that resides and what the boundaries are well you know um you think after all this time i would have known to ask you to reveal ex parte before i started but i didn't i went into it but i'd defer to uh sorry about that uh i'd i'd defer to the city attorney's office in terms of you know what you're revealing but i think it's communication that um you know my bias decision i'll jump in this is theresa taylor tate city attorney um yeah this is your you're right it's unusual because we're the applicants um and so if you've had uh conversations that are substantive in nature prior to this it would be a good idea to disclose

[72:01] those and then also disclose on the record whether you can still be objective or not and i'll uh i'll share the apologies for not getting that done here but why don't we finish our uh staff questions and then we'll go to ex parte reveals thanks for that matt yeah and thanks for clarifying uh james entries i appreciate that good lauren rachel mark thank you um so we've talked about the similarities between the landscape as planned and the landscape as it currently is but when i look at those photos i see some mature like what looks like more lines of mature trees in the historic photos versus what i see now is sort of more random trees all over and then i was also noticing in the drawings it looks like they're all shown as the same type of tree versus

[73:00] you know now we see a more more of a variety of tree type species than what to me those drawings implied and so i was wondering you know have we done a tree inventory what of the existing trees actually were part of the original landscape how many of the new trees are matching the specifications or you know replanted versions of the trees as they were originally yeah that's a really good question um and i will say that um and ally can speak more about this but the historic um preservation plan that parts and rec is uh currently working on um being prepared by mundus bishop who is a very well-known uh architectural uh or sort of landscape architectural firm but also landscape architectural historian firm and they have done a lot

[74:01] of work at chautauqua as well um you know there is an inventory i think of those trees but i i will say too that i think that's part of what's different about landscapes too is that they do evolve uh recognizing that you're talking about organic matter right you know you're talking about trees that come and go and die and grow and and there is also um you know what what's practical and what works in the climate and i think we've found that um and i'm not a landscape architect or a an arborist but mapleton hill was named precisely because it was planted with silver maples and we've since found that silver maples really just have a tough time in our climate so um yeah so i think that's just part of the evolution of the landscape and this might be a question for ali later as well but i was wondering about

[75:00] the embankment condition um and how that was historically done versus how it is now if that's evolved i'm just i'm you know the paths are somewhat different i'm trying to sort of latch on to what exactly other than it being sort of generically trees with grass under it is um are the qualities of the historic landscape that we are preserving well i do think it's the trees as you pointed out it's the lawn area which was intended to be a a great area for people to gather to watch performances and to recreate um and then i think the ditch at the southern boundary as well and that weir it may have been rebuilt at times over time but i think it is pretty close to what was there historically i think the steps may have gone um the paths certainly have changed over

[76:01] time but there have been paths there for um gosh close to 100 years and then in your presentation you mentioned as one of the possible disadvantages um that this wouldn't i forget what what exactly the wording was um one of the cons i think was about things not needing to go through um a landmark alteration review do we have any i mean this is a city property that's in a um significant flood plain um are there development projects that we're expecting in the next two years in this location well i might let ali um answer that question she can do that better i'm sure

[77:00] so the development in that area is guided by the city council approved civic area master plan and it includes um development that extends for the park um ellie i'm supposed to interrupt but you might introduce yourself please thank you so much i'm sorry i forgot folks i'm allie rhodes i'm the director of parks and recreation for the city of boulder so uh central park is the park that we're talking about block 13 and it is included in the civic area master plan developing phase two of that project is included in the 2021 voter approved community culture resilience and safety tax um as outlined in that master plan that next phase would include the park that is east of broadway what kind of modifications does that include that's a really great question lauren so the civic area master plan uh is really well done and highlights how i think james used these words earlier that that the pacific area is the the civic heart of boulder it's the

[78:01] green heart of boulder right i think our our friends downtown and on pearl street that certainly could be our in so many other ways also the heart of boulder but the civic area is close to it and it's our biggest green space in what is a very dense neighborhoods and so um at its heart and is outlined in the civic area master plan it's a park at its core and so what we could expect in that area is just revitalization of the park there's parts of it that our drearion could use with some activation and what does it look like to activate that so um but i think the key thing to call out here is related to this conversation is that the civic area master plan calls out for i mentioned the park at its core but both maintaining and where you can expanding green space in this area um so details of path alignment mobility and connectivity is a key guiding principle of the civic area master plan so there would be conversations about um especially with the development the 13th street underpass that was not developed when the civic area master plan was approved in 2015. the atrium was not a

[79:01] landmark building in 2015. we had not had a pandemic in 2015 and so since then i think our arts and the parks program that was so successful last year and has continued this year has shown that the bandshell really can be a vibrant part of the civic area so all of those would be factored in what is developed but at the end they would be guided by the civic area master plan thank you thanks lauren rachel and mark okay thanks um and james i just want to echo um i will miss you so i'm sorry to read that in the email that you were leaving um so i wanted to clarify council looked at this in like 1996 and then sort of nothing until we got a letter from friends of the band shell in 2021 is that accurate oh well they they did look at the the area and they designated that half

[80:00] right they chose not to expand it to the whole and it had to do with the location of the trains apparently was it council was it the 1996 council's intention that it would be revisited and landmarked the second area or had they decided like something different i think it was the intention of the landmarks board that it should be revisited once the train left that's what i understand and when did that happen uh when the train left that's a good ally when did the the train train wave i would be guessing sometime in the decade of the 2000s and i can find the exact tier that's okay it was a little it was a little later than that you might remember there was a couple of fires in the trains and then i think we actually took him down to golden around 2000 12 or 13. i'm probably off by year but chris you remember i don't remember either but it's somewhere in that range because uh i

[81:00] remember the conversations and i remember when we when we pulled the trains out of the park so we'll find it that's fine i was just trying to understand the history of like how we got from 96 to 20 25 years later um and then following up i think on maybe lauren's thread um james you said earlier you know pointed at your tackle like change can still occur and that's sort of a mis misperception or misconception of landmarking which was interesting and that that's helpful to conceptualize for me and that change does occur where these spaces are landmark landmarks so if we were to landmark this maybe this is a question for both james and ali what does that stop from happening from the park side like what change can't happen then or is it just that it's another stepper review that's a little bit cumbersome i assume we're not marking every blade of grass as an example here yeah i think that's a bit of an open-ended question

[82:01] but i think something like building moving the the band shell for instance but i mean it's already landmarked right but um that's you know keeping the essential character of the place um doing changes that allow for evolution and you know enhanced use but does that in a way that honors and respects and is consistent with you know the historic uh design and the historic intent of the design so but that i know that's kind of vague but it um it really depends allie anything to add from the parks decide on sort of what if we land market what does that stop or or how does that yeah angle you i think i agree with james that it's hard to say specifically what it what it could stop right i mean i think what it ensures is is that um any design considerations any future programming would be reviewed by in addition to the parks and record

[83:00] advisory board by charter their purview includes capital expenditures on parkland um that the landmarks board would also be involved which i think you know the the verbiage and the memo it would ensure that that any changes are in character with the historic nature of the area you know the most recent example we have in our system james shared the um colorado should talk about the entire site is historic so recently we refurbished the playground it's incredible um it didn't stop that right um it just adds to your point i i'll leave it it adds another layer of view to development in the park and ally i think that even included the addition of the fourth flat iron right the playground isn't there a new flat iron the climbing structure yeah that was a little joke but it's like wow that's i don't understand how that happens um okay i guess maybe another and maybe nobody knows this off the top of their head but have there been situations where

[84:00] parks property is landmarked and the landmark board has said no to something that parks wanted to do so i assume parks is already trying to keep it within the character like that that makes that area the area wherever we're talking about because we have such a great parks department i think i mean i think that's a good assumption and it's a documented guiding principle of the civic area master plan which you know as i noted earlier is going to guide the development in that site um and i'm distracted i'm trying this training question is bothering me that i don't know the answer so yeah i can't wait till you get that and shout out i'm going to let it go because i think it's it i'm going to go with it's been more than a decade yeah i you know i i've been more closely involved with the land side of our operations for about that same decade um i can't think of an example but you know the two properties that are currently in addition we have we have 13 cultural and historic properties and in your memo it talked about our historic places plan that

[85:00] we're on we're working on to make sure that we have detailed and thoughtful treatment recommendations for those properties and so it's not our intent to do anything outlandish or out of character at any of our sites and certainly at our historic sites okay that's helpful thank you um i think that my last question tethers back to bob's first question which is you know if if we don't go with staff's recommendation and landmark this tonight what does that does that somehow hamper the next phase that that staff is is excited about um and i guess part of my why i would be wondering about that is because you know we did we kind of lapsed from 96 to 2022 and we do have a lot of staff turnover right now in landmarking so let's say we weren't able to do this in 2023 and maybe didn't want this to continue moving across councils to reconsider and reconsider is there something if we did do this

[86:01] that that would just hamper the the district or or tie staff's hands in some really difficult ways i think that's to james okay um no i i don't think it would um i i again i think it's it's it's primarily because we like to look at things holistically and look at how how this can fit into the larger hole but expanding the boundary wouldn't preclude that from happening and then the other point is just uh to allow for more time and more um collaboration i guess is the best way to put it between the boards i appreciate that okay oh ali yeah i was just going to add to that and and earlier there were comments about the process and i i just i want to acknowledge the prab was not engaged in this until january and that is absolutely on us i think that part of if

[87:01] there's a perception of discord again they didn't take you know an action on this was that there wasn't time for thoughtful conversations they're used to parks and recreation projects where there is out loud in place public engagement whereas with landmarking it's through you know the board conversation and so some of their concerns were just really around the process and to james point i think um we've learned a lot through this conversation we certainly would love for things to go a little bit differently um so so i'll just i'll just stop there and say that i i think we can keep doing better thanks sally that's all my questions mark and nicole and back to tara okay thank you um james i also wish you the best um i would hope you would miss us a little bit but not nearly as much as we're going to miss you um only two or three questions first is there any distinction between being in a historic district and

[88:02] being a landmark in a historic district is that distinction if there is such a distinction what is it yeah um that you know they're they're they're there isn't there isn't and that sounds like a bit of a wishy-washy answer mark but i i would say that um you know buildings and features that because it's much more than buildings in all our districts that are contributing are landmarked things um so when an individual landmark is considered we look at what the features are and sort of consider you know how they might be managed in the context of a historic district you actually can do that in a more detailed way because you can say well that building or that sign or that walkway might not be

[89:00] historically important and then design design guidelines to acknowledge that and to be more specific about the change that can occur so i don't know if i'm answering your question but i guess the the my point would be that landmark properties and properties that comprise a historic district are of equal value um since this piece of property is as part of sort of as he said the civic heart of boulder is there any possibility whatsoever that if we did not land market tonight it would somehow be subject to any other use or development other than as a park or to put it another way is there any possibility that the end game here is something other than um a landmarking of this property and if there is

[90:01] can you tell us what it might be if there's not i i think that's reassuring but if there is i i'd like to understand what that potential might be well maybe i'd defer to ali in terms of what could happen there but i think she said it's i think the pacific area master plan talks about the green and expanding the green if anything and not so i don't think i think it uh at one point you asked whether there might be a costco or something happening there and i think that's not going to happen probably and so yeah i ali i don't know i'll just i have um i think i think the possibility of something that is parkland in the heart of boulder becoming something other than that is um is very very low if i were a betting person i would bet zero dollars on that possibility i'll note that by charter the disposition of any parkland has to go to go through an incredibly robust

[91:01] process that i don't see happening here in this town and and one of the goals that was stated at for kicking this off to a 2023 um historic district conversation is the opportunity for crab and landmarks to have a conversation uh about this how could that conversation affect its ultimate use i mean it seems to me that it's an either or either it's going to be landmarked or it's not and i'm not sure that that a subsequent conversation is going to change that dynamic i'll offer that i think it might provide more assurance that parks and recreation you know as guided by the advisory board certainly they they have an advisory role is going to fulfill the intent of the parks and recreation master plan that's that's the work and so i think that's you know that was staff's recommendation to the landmarks bird in november that you allow time for the

[92:00] historic places plan that i mentioned earlier it's going to provide specific treatment recommendations for each of these parks and and our work is focused on that and so the request for more time in november was to let these play out so that their findings can inform the conversation it wasn't ever a conversation about whether or not to landmark it was about timing and capacity yeah i agree with that and and just to add to that too um not to to um you know pound the design guideline thing too much but they really can through that conversation design guidelines can be developed to um allow for the owner and this is this is when we whenever we do a historic district and there's usually multiple owners they have input into what they want to see and how that district is going to be managed over time so that that can be expressed through design guidelines and that can be very useful

[93:01] especially in the context i think of the civic area master plan which is quite broad still very good but i think it's it's it's quite broad so this would create a little bit more definition could yeah okay um i'll save the rest of my comments for comments thank you nicole tara thank you um james i'll just echo everyone's best wishes and your your next endeavors and thank you for your time here um i i think i'm still just a little bit confused about why um why this sort of sense of urgency to do it this year versus um waiting until uh next year when it seems like there may be more capacity and time for some longer conversations because if if i'm understanding this correctly we have master plans that are kind of guiding the thinking about how all of this should unfold um so i just don't quite understand

[94:01] why there's a push to do it right now when there's some compass staff capacity concerns and some engagement that folks would like to do so was that a question for james yes james do you mind responding to that yeah well i mean i think um you know abby daniels is here and she might be able to respond to that question because our recommendation is is a bit different in terms of that so um i don't know if now would be the time or not but why don't we get through our questions for for staff in just a minute is that right thank you yep that's fine thank you i wasn't sure who it was for so thanks thank you all right let's see if we can wrap up terry you're back for another question real quick i what happened was i was waited for with

[95:00] i was waiting with baited breath about the discussion about the chautauqua park which ally as you know as i used to be on parks and i miss you um it's my favorite part even though i'm probably not allowed to give you my favorite part so can you do you mind just taking one second and i'm so sorry to make you repeat this what uh would we be able to do something what was the discussion about before my computer froze on chautauqua park and what does it have to do with this discussion and i guess that's my question do you mind just repeating that real quick yeah i was just sharing that as an example as james did in his presentation that that is it is a historic district there's lan i'm probably bungling the words here it is it is basically landmark right but but yet it is evolving we just refreshed the playground as you're aware as your grandchildren are aware and that went through a landmark review to make sure it was in character with the historic nature of the site and so it was it was sharing that as an example that landmarking doesn't mean a site can't evolve it provides an additional layer

[96:00] of oversight okay well looks like that wraps up our questions for staff really appreciate all those answers and um abby daniels chair of the landmarks board thanks so much for joining us tonight if you wouldn't mind saying a few words about the landmarks board decision and thinking apologize i didn't give you much notices is abby still in the meeting i am checking abby is oh but it looks like she must have dropped off because she's back in the attendee list um abby you should be on your way too here we are hi abby thank you i've been dropped out of this meeting a couple of times since i'm out of town um and in fact i may follow the

[97:00] mayor's lead and turn off my video while i speak to you all thank you as the elected steward stewards of boulder's irreplaceable historic and cultural resources on behalf of the landmarks board thank you for your dedication your countless hours and your service as staff's memorandum states the design landscape identified in the 1995 boulder band shell historical study and confirmed by consultants mundus bishop this year are existing an expansion of the boundary to include all of block 13 would be consistent with the national park services guidelines for evaluating historic designed landscapes past memo goes on to say the landmarks board's recommendation on april 6 is based upon the findings that including all of block 13 will protect and enhance

[98:00] a property important to boulder civic history as you all know all of block 13 is a historic cherished community amenity in the heart of boulder this area continues to play a vital role as both a place of respite and a gathering place hosting everything from ballet performances to movies to memorial services to vendor spaces for the farmers market and wildly popular festivals the amended designation for the expanded boundary will retain the original intent of the park design and honor both saco de boer and frederick law olmsted's junior's contributions to boulder when the glenn huntington band show was originally designated in 1995 the proposed boundary including block 13 was deferred because of the trains that once stood in the park the landmarks board received a request in august of 2021

[99:00] from friends of the band show to finally amend the designated boundary as proposed 27 years ago since the trains have long been removed it was a very simple straightforward request there was an overwhelming groundswell of public support to expand the boundary from the community including historic boulder our premier non-profit dedicated to historic preservation celebrating its 50th anniversary this year as well we heard from former planning preservation staff former landmarks board members and chairs former council members and a former mayor quite a few of the letters and public comments were from people who played a vital role in the 1995 designation for the boulder revised code once the initiation was voted on unanimously by the landmarks board in november 2021 the designation hearing must be held within a very specific time period it

[100:02] was not a matter of rushing things we are bound by the code one difference with preservation staff with all due respect is incidental and that we initiated the action before we were told of any overriding planning initiative and that we should have been at least advised of these things earlier in the process the landmarks board does welcome and look forward to greater collaboration between city departments and boards in the future however the landmarks board up held the ordinance requirement to make a decision within the time frame the expansion clearly meets the criteria and james excellent presentation spoke to that and it is eligible for the staff's own conclusions so the question really does appear to be one of timing the landmarks board has not discussed the historic district in any meaningful way other than a few questions directed to staff about whether the expanded boundary and

[101:01] the historic district could be determined separately they can and they should be we focused on the request to add all of block 13 to the designated site of the glenn huntington bandshell i personally am concerned about delaying this designation and tying it to a potential historic district especially before the boundary is resolved while such a designation would showcase the growth and development of boulder over many decades the scope large footprint and lengthy public process will take considerable time and resources the amended designation to expand the boundary is simply an up or down vote by council tonight i think it is imperative to vote on the inclusion of block 13 before such a process commences to create a historic district additionally i personally voted to

[102:00] forward this designation to city council now because it is critical to make a determination before the historic preservation plan is completed through the state historical fund and the grant is closed out additionally with the passage of the community culture resilience fund safety tax in last november's election the boundaries should be determined prior to the allocation of funds and the planning process begins in earnest for the east bookend the boundary expansion does not preclude development of the site as has already been discussed but it does require review this is typically accomplished during our weekly landmarks design review committee meetings that approve landmark alterations certificates in an efficient timely and collaborative manner as the 200th anniversary of frederick law olmsted's birth was celebrated this year across the nation i share this quote the most essential element of park

[103:00] scenery is turf broad unbroken fields because in this the antithesis of the confined space of the town is most marked and so i appreciate ally's remarks about parkland and preserving as much of it as we can although it was his son who brought his father's legacy to boulder both olmsteads embraced the promise of parks as a social force that would become amenities and city lives for decades such as central park in olmsted seniors views parks offered an exquisite kind of healing power he idealized him as literal common grounds forging communities where all were welcome regardless of social economic status age race creed or gender i direct your attention to the alternative motion to amend the designation boundary on page 16 of staffs memorandum and with that i want to thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration and i know that

[104:02] the chair of the landmarks board when we went through this process before tonight is also on this call if you have any questions of either of us thanks so much for that abby appreciate that information and for your presence here tonight and also uh to your colleague john decker for being president here as well thanks to both of you do we have questions for our landmarks board representative i think nicole had one and nicole do you want to come back to that yeah i just um really trying to and thank you abby for for that presentation um and joining us tonight um just really around why the kind of urgency when when there are master plans and things that are guiding um you know how this area will unfold in the the coming years i don't think that it was the urgency we felt i think it was the process codified in the boulder revised code that gets

[105:00] triggered once an initiation hearing happens and in fact we did extend um when it was voted unanimously to hold a designation hearing on november 3rd we actually should have held the hearing by march march 3rd and we went ahead and extended a month so it's more that we're bound by the timeline that is triggered when the initiation process occurred okay and so so sort of in response to the initial um application that they came forward that is what is kind of guiding this now i mean i guess i guess i'm just curious why why the landmarks board wanted to kind of put this um was it just to move this application forward versus just saying you know no let's let's wait on this until um next year when when we have a little more time to work on it i think it was the process as designed in the code but also and i think you are all about to hear this the overwhelming

[106:01] support from community members that swayed some landmarks board members that that you know this was actually long overdue and that because the intent was always to revisit this after the trains were removed we feel the time is now and i think many members of the community share that feeling can i just ask um one one follow-up question aaron is that okay on that topic um and it's just i'm just curious about the um engagement process i know you know the as the city many years ago we kind of developed this engagement process for making sure we're hearing from lots of different folks in the community and so the did the engagement process that you're talking about did it follow the city's kind of standard engagement process or was it just people kind of hearing about um this moving forward and so they were writing in to landmarks about it well i value parks and rec's very robust

[107:00] public process but the landmarks board also has a very public process things are noticed signs are placed at properties before public hearings and everything so i think that that people were well aware especially um in whether they were neighbors members of the preservation community or people who had actually been involved with the designation in 1995 of the glenn huntington bandshell so i think it was that people just you know it just sort of spread it was a groundswell and i think people just knew that because we do have public process and as well and we we do get a lot of um responses from the public and i think that when friends in the band show submitted this request we took it up as i think we had a responsibility to do and i think james touched on it is unfortunate and you know i applaud all of your work too it's

[108:01] very challenging during a global pandemic and you know we've made fits and starts and kind of um moved forward move backward and so forth and even though the letter was submitted august 27th to city staff landmarks board actually didn't receive the letter to sip until september 28th so i think with everybody doing their best efforts and you know good faith with everything it just sort of um didn't travel the smoothest path it could have all right thanks for that abby do any other questions for abby or john all right seeing none thanks again so much for being here i appreciate you lending your perspective and for your service to the city on the landmarks board so next ally i'd like to check in with you we've already heard um some things from it but do you want to give a brief additional overview of the what the park sports concerns for

[109:01] sure um they're summarized in the memo i believe and i don't know the page number of the time i had the one point i want to be super clear is that um we tried to be very clear with the parks and recreation advisory board their role on this matter there was no action similar to the 1995 conversation for the original landmark the parks and recreation advisory board was consulted and provided input um for the landmark board's consideration so really there were three categories one was just around the timing um i think generally they were aware that staff had requested that and i want to be clear to your question nicole the question is more about the workload to explore thoughtfully and prepare for landmarks board and council the landmark at this point the work is is done whether to landmark or none we've done that work so the capacity question at this point is more to james's conversation could you thoughtfully explore more holistically the historic district but so prab um thought that that made sense and and would have appreciated given they're they're very clear about our workload

[110:01] and capacity and so i think that they they they expressed support for that recommendation um second they had concerns just about what it means for um as a precedent for when um parks can be eligible for landmarking and what it means given um that the park is already landmarked through what i would suggest and i agree with certainly i appreciate abby daniel's passion for parks and park land and what it does for community um especially in light of frederick law olmsted's 200th birthday which has just been celebrated we you know research has proven what he just instinctively knew and you all know that i could talk about parks all day long i'll get i'll get back on subject here that um the parks board just had questions and again this goes back to i think the engagement when there was the initial initiation in august they they were not um i think the landmarks board talked about it in september there wasn't a conversation with prabh then nor was they in november when when the landmark sports so we brought it to them in

[111:01] january saying hey wait before this goes for vote for landmarks council we want the proud to have the opportunity to private input and at that point things were moving quickly i know some of the friends of the band shell offered a tour with co-co limitations staffing limitations we weren't able to do that so that all those words to long story short there were questions about process and then there are certainly questions about motive just um given that there is a civic area master plan that had very robust community engagement um intentional outreach multi-board engagement the civic area master plan outlines the roles of the various boards the landmarking board will absolutely already have a role in any conversations about central park because the bandshell is a part of central park and is landmarked thanks that's very helpful ally any follow-up questions for ali before we go to the public hearing all right seeing none well let's just take this moment to ask for people to

[112:01] disclose any ex parte communications which is a little fuzzy out i've visited the this area of the park many times i've talked to city staff many times i think we can all say the same but i guess if you felt like you've had a substantive conversation with a community member that you feel uh prejudices you in this matter uh mark i don't feel that prejudices me i've had conversations with staff colleagues and i have spoken to abby daniels previously but i don't think that's going to prejudice my judgment on this great thanks so much anybody else okay elisha are we cleared to go to the public hearing yes sir we are okay very good uh brent did you want to read our public participation guidelines uh would you mind since we got a few speakers here sure and if emily wouldn't mind sharing those slides that would be great thanks emily

[113:02] all right so um as many of you know but some of you may be new to our process um we have engaged with community members to co-create this vision for productive meaningful and inclusive civic conversations we strive toward a vision that supports physical and emotional safety for all of our community members our staff and for council members as well as supporting democracy for people of all ages identities lived experience and political perspectives for more information about the vision you can go to our homepage older colorado.gov and search productive atmospheres in the search box next slide please the following are some examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder revised code and other guidelines that we use at the city to support this vision these will be upheld during the meeting and this public hearing tonight all remarks and testimony shall be

[114:00] limited to matters related to city business and in particular this issue no participant shall make threats or 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 in advance as each of you have and use the name you're commonly known by and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online i've checked and hr thank you so much for that currently only audio testimony is permitted at this time thank you mayor with that we are ready to begin the hearing great um so we have nine people sign up to speak so each person will have three minutes and our first three speakers are katherine barth payson sheets and leonard segal catherine you should be able to speak

[115:00] okay did i do it yes um hello everybody um i'm sorry i only have three minutes because i think i could answer quite a number of the questions that lauren and and nicole and and rachel and others had but i will try and give you a background i'm representing uh friends of the band shell and um we put in this the application in august and the reason we put the application in was quite practical in and we wanted the site to be joined so that with the new funds that had been approved by the voters we did not want the ban shell in its site to be divided or half of you know how would you do that also thinking about grants

[116:00] if there is a split in the site you really can't write a grant to for example look at the trees which is something i would love to do and that's down the road a bit but we had one tree walk was summoned from the forestry department and it was absolutely fascinating i mean such interesting work the olmstead drawing they're two olmstead drawings and i saw these in carnegie library just this last week one is from 1916 and it has a plant list on the drawing and you can see where plants were supposed to go there is another drawing of 1924 which has a drawing but there's no plant list and they say that the plant list was on a typewritten attached sheet so almost

[117:00] 100 years later i'm doubtful that we'll ever find that but it certainly would be very very interesting as far as saco de boer is concerned in 1937 and 1938 when he was preparing for the planting of the band shell he had a number of meetings with the parks board and it was very very interesting because he came with his list of uh desired trees and plants and um then the plant the parks department would release money for him to buy these these trees and these plants so there's a lot of very very interesting um information and ours was pretty much a a practical thing we wanted the site to be joined and we wanted it to go together through whatever process might be for funding or design or anything else we didn't want to split

[118:02] now i'm coming to the end of my time there was a solution that our city attorney all right i don't know i apologize your time is up but we really appreciate your testimony and your work on this matter thank you now we have payson sheets leonard siegel and deborah yen [Music] okay can you hear me yes okay um payson sheets i was born in boulder in 1944 and i'm still here 78 years later i have a lot of time depth in that area that i want to share but i want to start early i have very fond memories dating back to the late 1940s the 50s and into the 60s where from our neighborhood centered at grant and euclid had multiple neighbors on families on having picnics especially

[119:00] saturdays but often on sundays and almost always on on holidays the we would play i hear i'm talking when i was really young um we'd play with other kids that we hadn't known before and one thing that happened regularly is the after kids from different families were playing together the parents would get together get to know them and we ended up with long lasting friendships from that what i want to do is get to an issue in the present day um but the band show was involved and and and it was wonderful out there in the grass i'm an anthropologist now professor of cu and one thing we know this general knowledge that that all countries all cultures um where there is diversity the people in the dominant groups the outsiders as inferior they discriminate

[120:02] against them they feel threatened but the experience that we had um is now happening in the farmers market there's a huge change now multi-ethnic multi-racial groups are using it i hear spanish i hear other languages from europe people are sharing experiences and pleasures and understand from that comes understanding and inclusion and so i feel very strongly if you stand for inclusion you're opposed to discrimination and let's landmark this property now to give it a solidity and the lawn can continue with families meeting i see families from different races different languages getting together because their kids play together the kids the children are the catalysts in this and the adults then

[121:01] follow behind as a silverback male the loss they're the slowest to accommodate to this but they do do it so we've got something going on that does not need any outside authority no but no no um control from above it's a natural process and let's dominate let's landmark it right now thank you mason appreciate your comments next we have leonard siegel deborah yin and patrick barourk hello can you hear me yes great hi this is len siegel i'm speaking on behalf of historic boulder i'm the executive director and uh as was mentioned earlier we are celebrating our 50th anniversary in preserving important sites in boulder and i thank you city council members for deliberating on this and staff

[122:00] both landmarks and parks on your serious approach to this um just to kind of circle back on some of the things that have already been said mr hewitt said that he did not oppose the designation um he just thought it should be delayed and until a civic area historic district was achieved and historic boulder would be in favor of such a district but we don't think the inclusion of the picnic listening lawn with the landmark bandshell area should be held up pending some future landmark district another reason to designate it as an individual landmark is that it has a better chance of getting grant funds than if it was just a part of a historic district itself the other thing is the staff said that the city staff would like to have more time with parks and landmarks board and

[123:01] yet you've heard that the process followed the correct timeline so um and if you think about it this process started in the 1980s when judge holmes and his wife june started talking about this park i was involved in 1995 as the applicant to get the bandshell landmarked and so that was 27 years ago so it's not like we didn't we don't really know and we we haven't known that this is an important parcel of land and that it really should be reconnected with its um full property boundaries um parks also said that they wanted to delay this until after the historic places plan was completed but um ali rhodes said that really over the past eight months most of that work has already been completed with recommendations for an improved lighting better sound shading and accessibility to the stage all of those things could be modified within the guidance of the landmark and

[124:04] um another thing that the land the parks department said was it would be a bad precedent um to landmark a park and we already know that there are precedents that uh around the country and also most recently with the legion park that was designed by saco dabur out on arapahoe road so just to conclude this property is like a three-legged stool the legs being the banjo the tiered bench seating and the picnic listening log it isn't complete until all the parts are connected in the mind of the city government and in the perception of the citizens thank you very much thank you then next we have deborah young patrick o'rourke and lynn siebel hello am i connected yes okay uh deborah yin former landmarks board member first i should correct my written comments which confused block 13 and the applications proposed boundary it is the

[125:02] latter i urge council members to support here i'll read part of the city's consultant mundus bishop's conclusion on the expanded boundaries eligibility then give an example about how the parks advisory and landmarks boards might work together if this application is successful review of historic photography and the analysis of integrity revealed a fuller extent of central park to be associated with deboer's 1939 park design design and subsequent evolution of the band shell and setting during the period of significance than what is currently within the designated boundary this additional area extends south of the designated boundary to left hand and boulder ditch this space has the same historical associations and architectural significance as the current designation and retains integrity to the recommended period of significance skipping to the end the historical and architectural significance of this space which also retains integrity suggests this area of

[126:00] the deborah design park and bandshell setting could be eligible for inclusion with the current designation let's say parks or others decide to replace lamp posts and re relocate the band shell to make room for a wide paved multimodal path the latter change was in fact a proposal from the city in early book end planning landmarks board would suggest modern land posts rather than the art deco style a recommendation consistent with the preservation design guidelines landmarks likely would have great concern about a ban shall move because moving a landmark is a goes against best preservation practices landmarks might suggest a less impactful path that's insensitive to historical landscape design integrity the final proposal from the two boards combined inputs will certainly produce a better result enhancing while protecting thank you thank you deborah next we have patrick o'rourke lynn siegel and mary ellis

[127:03] good evening how are you today uh my name is patrick o'rourke i'm the preservation chair for historic boulder one of our roles at historic boulder is to be an advocate for the preservation of historic sites throughout a community the bandshell expansion is one of those sites and the question keeps coming up is why now well i listened to all the questions that city council had for staff and i didn't hear any negatives i mean the question was asked the staff what's the negative issue of landmarking this now and there wasn't one so you know we bought this forward to the landmarks board in august of last year it's 10 months later the process is working properly and the hearings are thoughtful four or five hours long january and february the parks and rec

[128:01] plotted up at their meetings all the meetings are recorded i listened to them i sat on both of those meetings and i didn't hear any real objections to landmarking and i heard objections to process well the process was straightforward and if a land if a parks and rec board member wanted to hear they hear the application it was recorded and they could have gone back and done it so i was just kind of disappointed that the answer for why should this not happen now is we need more time the time is is now there's no reason to extend it staff has enough time to review it now i want to take it to the next level james hewitt is leaving in 30 days marcy who was the other preservation planner left earlier this year there's no institutional knowledge at the city council at the staff that even comes close

[129:00] after james is gone what are we are we going to call james and ask him questions in 2023 it's just not going to happen um so i always thought the process was there and it's been followed and you know preservation in boulder is not an accident it's a thoughtful process we're part of it you're part of it the landmark sport is part of it the friends of the band shell is part of it and you know the thought process is there so waiting to me makes no sense at all and i don't think you're going to hear anybody objecting to this and the capacity issues i think has has been brought forward and it's been addressed so past that i want to thank you for your times and james i want to thank you for an incredible presentation i thought it was well done and thoughtfully uh and well balanced thank you thank you patrick next we have lynn siegel mary ellis and susan osborne

[130:04] stop me if you can't hear it all um this seems like a big bureaucratical thing um and from my recall of hearing the discussions about the atrium and about the ban show and such it sounds like oh well i was gonna go ahead with waiting because i wanted to see this landmarking track down the city spaces along the creek and all the way up to eben fine park and have it one contiguous thing but we can do that later um the thing that changed my mind was len siegel's discussion of the fact that individual landmarking rather than district landmarking enables more funds to come to the space and

[131:00] i really liked his discussion of the atrium project um which i mean the atrium exists there now and it's just a super cool building if you look on the back of your dollar bill you see an eye at the top of a pyramid and it means favor on endeavors and then underneath it it says another latin thing that means it's the beginning of a new era or this a series of ages that begin anew and it's on a dollar bill and this used to be a bank the atrium and it's like pointed um just like a pyramid and it has a um open um skylight at the top where the eye is it's like just so cool um and i loved hearing about that from when and um i thought this the discussions around some of this seemed to be

[132:00] the area around the atrium being expanded out and i am concerned about that area being expanded so that we don't get skyscrapers right next to the atrium the plans for the atrium look really good and it is all integrated with this whole civic area and band shell and such so that's a concern and also that i don't know the downside of the landmarking might be that toxic area there was either gas station there's underground toxins or from one of these healthcare research groups a bit east of town that had some toxic stuff right in that area where they do spoke dancing by the duchamp tea house um as far as why this is coming up now

[133:00] and and and then consideration of being delayed i don't i still don't really understand that um but your time is thanks very much for your testimony next we have mary ellis susan osborne and robert holfelder can you hear me yes my name is mary ellis i'm on the board of a store folder as a landscape architect by training i would like to address the design rationale for extending the landmark fan shell site to include all of glock 13. first the original landscape design by denver landscape architect sacko de boer covered the entirety of block 13 as an integral part of the bandshell project the berm that transects block 13 and currently marks the bandshell site's southern boundary was actually part of the landscape as shown by a topographical map of the site drawn by

[134:00] the olmsted firm in 1917 more than 20 years before deboer set pen to paper and incorporated the burn into his design the train cars that were later parked atop the berm have long since been removed and with them any need to exclude the south half of block 13 from the bandshell site secondly the architectural movement that gave rise to the construction of numerous fan shells across america in the early 20th century included lawns as part of their design these include the nomberg band shell in the middle of new york city's central park olmsted's crown jewel all were created as public outdoor music venues surrounded by extensive lawns to accommodate seated concert goers picnickers and casual passers-by as well our band shell while on the smaller side was designed as part of this movement

[135:01] finally the current truncated version of the bandshell site betrays its designers intent of creating a cultural amenity in a natural setting that is open to the public far from welcoming public participation the band shell and stands today are cut off from the lawn portion of its original site by offense an obtrusive dividing line that constitutes a visual and physical barrier to public access by restoring the original design bounded by the band shell in the north and the irrigation ditch on the south the van shop can once again constitute a public amenity as part of a landmark historic property thanks very much for your time thank you mary now we have susan osborne and robert hofelder

[136:01] can you hear me yes we can oh great um so this is susan osborne and um i'm speaking tonight on behalf of the extending the landmarking boundary um to the full extent of the um city block that the land ban show was designed to um include um i guess i wanted to start first by just commending ally and the work of the parks department in really enlivening the bandshell in the past couple of years great credit goes to the parks department for the programming and really showing um how important the bandshell can be not only as the meeting place when of important events and things to protest come up but also as a place where there is um

[137:00] [Music] happenings going on that everyone can participate in so i my name is susan osborne i was on city council for a while i also served on the parks board and was chair of the board for three years but i also was the city planner who back in 1985 led the staff team that developed the plan for the boulder creek greenway and one piece of that was central park and it seems to me that the decision before you is a simple and positive step to expand the boundary um much of the historic sakura devore landscape is still in place on the lot and it creates a frame for the band shell and it just seems to me i guess i would just simply end by saying

[138:00] um to me it just makes a lot of sense to get this one piece of what i hope will ultimately be an historic district that includes the whole civic area but get this one piece down and and then hopefully we can begin applying for grants and being a part of the whole east end east bookend development in a way that will [Music] fit with the whole larger historic district of the municipal center it's just seems to me a simple thing to do and i hope you'll make the right decision tonight thank you thank you susan i will end the public hearing with robert whole filter hi i'm bob holfender a resident folder

[139:02] for since 1969. but tonight i'm pinching for mr kim grant the director of the colorado most endangered places office of colorado preservation inc he is on the road carrying out his responsibility somewhere in the eastern plains and he asked if someone could uh read his testimony to the council and that someone is me so mr grant writes as the endangered places program coordinator for colorado preservation inc i have followed the developments around threats to the glenn huntington bandshell and the related effort to expand the boundaries of the landmark district with great interest as you know the banning shell was placed on colorado's most endangered places list in 2016. at that time the site was listed as being on quote alert unquote status but

[140:02] last year we moved it to that of quote progress unquote and reflection of the fact that the ban shell itself did not appear to be threatened and because the potential for expansion of the district seem to be gaining momentum the boundaries of the proposed expansion make sense both in meeting the purposes of the historic preservation ordinance but also to protect the overall integrity of the site and its complementary soccer to board designed landscape that completes what should be viewed as one contiguous historically significant setting for those reasons i support the expansion of the historic district bound of the boundary of the district boundary now i personally echo mr grant's sentiments it is hard to imagine our city without its central park which many people tonight have called the

[141:00] heart of boulder and i agree with that i urge the council to do everything possible to protect and enhance our parks historic integrity the prospect for boundary extension is before you now it seems very simple and very straightforward and i've heard no one speak against it so why delay it why go through this process again certainly the extension i think should have been done in 1995 and it certainly does not preclude the creation of the historic district if and when that ever occurs thank you thank you bob um i see uh councilmember yates has his hand up bob did you have a question for for bob no i was just ready to start the discussion when the public hearing is done great i'll get to you in a moment so i'll go ahead and close the public hearing thanks to everyone for their testimony i know in at this point in the hearing we would turn to the applicant for a response what does that look like in tonight's context does anybody from

[142:00] the city have any comments to offer well this is the opportunity for you know any of the uh city council members to respond to anything that was any of the public testimony that was what was that was made or if there are any questions well let me clear i mean james we're about to go into council discussion i'm sort of referring to the quasi-judicial bit where the formal applicant responds to public testimony i'm sorry so i don't know that's probably not relevant tonight so maybe we can just probably not sorry for my misunderstanding no worries okay so we'll say that's not relevant because the city is technically the applicant and we will move into council discussion uh so i've got bob and rachel mark teed up and maybe we can have the timer removed so we can see each other

[143:01] thanks aaron i i just want to maybe um correct a potential um misunderstanding about the chronology here um there was kind of an implication that this was landmark in 1995 or 1996 and then nothing happened until last august and and 25 for years past and people weren't doing anything and that's just not true um the locomotive number 30 was removed in the summer of 2012 and we cut the ribbon at the colorado train museum on august 4th 2012. i was there without bartlett and we cut the ribbon on the loan which may turn out to be a permanent loan of locomotive 30 in august of of 2012. and that really kind of triggered the point where consideration could be made for extending the landmarking uh uh beyond where the train and the caboose had had been into the rest of the the park to the south to the uh creek uh like uh mayor osborne uh who spoke a

[144:00] few few minutes ago um i was also a chair of the parks and recreation advisory board we talked about this uh in 2012 and 2013 uh no action was taken at that point in time and then aaron you and i both were elected to uh council in in november of 2015 and almost immediately after i was elected to council i'm sure you too i started receiving uh emails from friends of the band shell seeking this extension of the um of the landmarking and so this has been a discussion at least in my experience it's gone on for for 10 years this is not something that came up last august or last year or a couple years ago this is something that's going on and on it's come before the park sport upset it's been before the landmark sport it's been a discussion that we've had for a decade now and um i am fully supportive of work next year or whenever we can get to it of of a historic district i don't think that landmarking this parcel of land forecloses that as a matter of fact if anything enhances that and i don't think i heard anything tonight in the public hearing

[145:00] or in the presentation of staff to lead me to believe there's a reason not to landmark the rest of block 13. so i will be supporting the landmarking with enthusiasm and i will also be encouraging um our landmarks board and our uh whoever's on our staff going forward and in the parks board if they'd like to participate in uh in creating a historic district but that certainly is not foreclosed by the landmarking of this parcel tonight which has been talked about literally in my knowledge for at least 10 years thanks thanks mom rachel mark and lauren um thanks i you know i one point i want to make is it's been said a couple times that like there's been no explanation for delay and i think we we do have that in the record like i think we've heard from prabha and ally and the parks team that there's a benefit to waiting and giving more time for this area to be looked at sort of holistically from the the parks and

[146:01] new funding stream perspectives so i i don't think that there's no reason to to not landmark tonight um and and i guess my what it feels like a little bit is that um it's just it's an odd presentation that we have um staff saying it's not the right time and usually um things come to us like through staff and and so there's i have a little bit of sense of like a tail wagging the dog here where we're looking at something and not the right time it would be better to look at this a year from now so i would like us to consider are there process changes that would maybe allow us to stay ahead of a public hearing and two hours in um can we delay this for a number of months until other things happen because this process just feels very clunky and not best for the city of boulder nor for council nor for everyone's time so i just put that out there i think that i have heard evidence that this is a

[147:00] spot that should be landmarked and i don't like the timing of it so i think the only possible compromise that i'm aware of is maybe there's a way to get 45 more days if the landmark board agreed to delay i don't i guess that's a question for ali like does buying that little bit of time create any benefits for for the parks team if if there were agreement to do that it may be such a short amount of time that it's futile but i i guess i would like to to give that side the time to weigh in if it's helpful um more than anything though i am i'm not a fan of of wasting the community's time or our time we have so much on our plates i don't i don't want to see this again if we're going to landmark it i'd like to vote and landmark it tonight and not come back up so if we can delay the vote for 45 days if that's at all helpful then that's what i would advocate for but i and that's why the the tail wagging the dog situation doesn't make

[148:00] sense to me if it's not the right time i don't think it should have been brought to council i don't know how to like intercept that timely going forward so i guess question for ali if she's there listening is 45 days useful or like not not enough yeah it's really not and so i mean my input there would be if that if if there is interest in landmarking than than i would the investment has happened tonight there's been a public hearing tonight the request for time was in november and so that this could align with other processes in the work plan um that ship's kind of sailed at this point we've done this work to support the landmark board's conversation the council conversation the additional time would be to allow for the completion of the historic places plan the hip and to have these civic area conversations that won't happen in 45 days yeah okay i i figured not but just that was the only sort of time i was aware of so to me again it just it doesn't feel

[149:00] helpful to have a public hearing on something that we you know that i i lean towards landmarking and to spend more time on it so i i i don't like this process but that's that's where i'm leaning that's all i got thanks thanks rachel uh mark lauren tara uh rachel i thought the same thing as you did but i don't think it's going to be useful tonight first i i give great weight to james's comments that landmarking is not an obstacle to the formation of a historic district and has no impact on the formation of a historic district then i looked for good reasons um to delay this and i i looked at the staff memorandum where they kind of torturously advanced three arguments the first was a concern about the quote significance of the parcel in question unquote which is frankly absurd since the staff also acknowledges that the parcel meets every single test for designation

[150:00] then there was a concern over the reduced authority of parks to manage the parcel if it's landmarks and i have i must say i have every confidence that ali uh and her department can meet that challenge and properly maintain this piece of property and and lastly was that a concern that that landmarking would provide a precedent for a future call-up of parkland when actually it only sets a precedent for parkland that meets the very specific criteria for designation which staff acknowledges this does um in terms of delay and you know we can process this this matter to death but i believe the designation will be universally supported universally popular and is an action that will cost the city zero so in the absence of an actual substantive uh reason to put off this decision i'm going to support the designation tonight because it does not impact anything else we're going to do with the historic district so

[151:00] that's my two cents thanks mark lauren and tara thank you aaron so i love central park we all do um you know i can often be found eating my lunch there which maybe i should have disclosed but i just will not slay my decision um in terms of the criteria i i understand that this the argument staff is making um and how landscape preservation might look different and fit the criteria differently than architectural preservation but you know one of the first things to preserve protect and enhance um because of this site status as a park in our community this doesn't bring significant additional protection to it as ali said to dispose of this property would be a

[152:01] huge process that is not going to move forward through our community so this property is not at risk and in need of protection um i also question whether it truly the landscape is truly still in the style that it was originally designed in we talk a lot about the park area and i agree that that is an important part but where the trees are behind the band shell some of them somewhat centrally located in the lawn is not in alignment with what i see in terms of both the drawings and the historic photos and then so in my mind that along with some other things brings up this you know also the fence there are a number of things that would need to be modified in my mind to bring

[153:00] this back to the historic vision and maybe that's something we should be looking at and talking with with parks as we go through this process a historic district versus a landmark are two separate things and it is unquestionably true in my mind that this qualify that this would be qualified to be part of a historic district and through the historic district process we would discuss what elements of the area really need protection what's truly important um and special about this region and i would fully support us going through that process i think that we should look at not only this block but the block south of it as well because in my mind this not only is this part of a bigger park space in how i experience the heart of

[154:00] boulder but this was part of a bigger vision um by olmsted you know he did not design the you know this was not intended to be a piece alone it was intended to be part of a larger design element that wraps through our city so i would really like to see us go through that full process and um have the kind of public outreach and engagement that parks does so well and that that type of historic process that type of historic preservation involves there's been a long history on this site of city departments working together um we heard someone talk about how the combined inputs provide a better outcome enhancing while protecting and i fully agree in that vision i think that

[155:00] by looking at this as a historic district we can do that and our city is excellent at getting funding if we needed to landmark this now in in order to secure funding for the preservation i'm sure that that's something staff would have brought forward to us so i support staff's vision and would really like to see us um honor the recommendations of the landmark staff thanks lauren tara on the map calling myself as usual i see both sides and i'm torn it's kind of my motto i have so much respect for historic boulder and their knowledge and professionalism how much they know the many decades they've been here and they're just their overall uh understanding of things also i was on parks and you know if i could change it like like

[156:01] i'd say like rachel did i would agree with i would agree with that because who knows more about parks than parks right so i would ask even though i'm gonna vote for the um i'm gonna go vote um for this i would ask that you would involve parks i don't even know if it's possible i don't know enough about process that parks would be the parks department and uh the parks board would be an integral part of this going forward and i don't know if that's possible i hope it is that's that's all i really wanted to say thanks matt and then nicole and then i'll follow up thanks aaron um i appreciate the really thoughtful comments uh from certainly those that gave testimony but also my colleagues um one thing that that i think i'm i well let me sort of start start a little differently i i fully support in general the

[157:00] landmarking and expansion of the bandshell i mean it is a treasure of our community and it certainly meets those criteria but with that said if we were not sort of imminently discussing a uh historical district that would encompass these areas more holistically i would say yeah 100 let's go with it it just seems like if it doing this right before we embark on that larger process i i just i struggle with that from a governance perspective um from a process perspective so i'm very much wanting to see this end up where it needs to be i just think that waiting one year doesn't hurt it and lauren said it right this area isn't in threat this area isn't going anywhere this area isn't going to be changed and so i i don't see a need to have to sort of rush to do this now right right before we embark on that larger process again if that larger historical district wasn't on the table this would

[158:01] be a completely different discussion um and and but but it's not and here we are so so i i'm going to support uh staff's recommendation um to just wait till we have that more comprehensive conversation and parks and more of the community gets to weigh in on that holistic vision for this historical district and what it looks like now and certainly where it needs to look in the future thanks matt nicole yeah thanks to um everybody who who spoke to us tonight um i i do appreciate hearing um everybody's connections to the area and what a community center it is um i am going to be um i i feel very similarly to lauren in this regard that to me that area really is a part of a bigger hole right i don't i also don't see it it's not going to go anywhere um this you know it's an important part of our community um so you know i'll support the um staff looking into creating a bigger historic district and including the park

[159:01] in there um what i would appreciate in the process of uh doing that exploration is just giving some thought to the fact that this area has a really long history that um extends well beyond the early 1900s when this park was uh was sort of first conceptualized and developed and people have been on this land for many thousands of years and when we're um landmarking or making something historical we tend to think about one really narrow range of the history of a place when really it's it's much broader and often that narrow range that we're focused on is really centered in um a time of oppression so i would love for us to think about as we're memorializing as we're landmarking this area how we can sort of move forward recognizing the broader and sometimes much more complicated history that goes along with these spaces beyond what what they were conceptualized as 100 or 50

[160:00] years ago thank you for that nicole um i'll pop in now if i may and then a couple of people have raised to the hand again so i i'll say that i think um i really appreciate everyone's uh words and um passion and advocacy on this topic i'm going to turn my camera off to make sure i've come through i will say i think we are in absolutely good hands with all paths forward so i think we've got um you know this this area is owned by our parks department who behave impeccably and always keep in mind the larger health of our community and historical issues as well in their maintenance of it i think the landmarking of it wouldn't prevent you know most things that we might want to do from it so we've got a landmarks team and a parks team and a community that all cares very much about the future of this space um i think the chance of it being anything other than a beautifully um maintained uh park is zero so um i i think we're we're in good good

[161:00] hands all the way around i think i uh i thought lauren put it well in terms of the holistic look um so i'm sympathetic to the the landmarking of this area happy to do it at one point i do feel like the process got a little bit tangled up we everybody's trying to work together well here um i think i i would defer to staff's recommendation uh fully recognizing that we'll get through that uh get a historical district and then can come back to this question as necessary in a year or two where hopefully we can kind of have a really smooth process but i think like i say there there's no downside or bad outcome i think tonight so that's my two cents and i've got tara rachel and mark who want another uh speech but let's try to move forward to emotion pretty quick here no i don't i didn't i'm taking my hand down sorry uh rachel and then mark yep i'll be quick i just wanted to explain my vote with one additional

[162:00] piece of information which is that i think we assume that this district plan is going to come together in the next year or two and i i find that often the city moves at a pace of molasses and i don't know that that's on our no chris i saw you lift your head i'm not judging it's just like my experience that we're slow sometimes um so i don't want to presume that like we're going to kick this over to uh especially with the landmarks department and undergoing some change and there's just no guarantee of of um staff robustness i guess in any given department and we often hear about like you know adding to the work plan and taking things off and i think we're maybe almost adding something and an expectation and so i don't really think it's going to happen in the next year or two and so then i think um it's going to come back to another city council to vote on landmarking this plot again which has been looked at since 1996 and i just find that inefficient i think that it's it's okay by me to land market so that's all i wanted to add thanks rachel mark i support what rachel said but

[163:01] i want to offer a thought as a potential compromise if we're going to move this off for a year or so will staff commit that at the end of that process this parcel will be included as a landmark parcel uh as opposed to not landmarking that would that would make i think the landmarks community and myself as a member of council um much more comfortable that the ultimate disposition of this parcel will be what we think it ought to be but if you can't commit to that then i need to know why or i would like to know why well i i can i can respond that yeah definitely it would be um i mean i can't say in the end what the what the recommendation would be uh or what you would do but or what the landmarks board would do but i can say that block 13 at a minimum would be part of

[164:00] that design landscape that's associated with the band shell i i think some um references been made to the fact that it could even go further south to arapaho and i i do think that there there's an argument to be made there we just don't know enough about that now um but that would be part of the that would be part of the investigation that we do of it now under investigation i leave to you i'm simply asking about this parcel it's up for landmarking tonight it can you make a commitment that well despite the fact that you're leaving um can you make a commitment that at the ultimate upon the ultimate disposition of this historic district this parcel will be recommended as a landmark that that would be our recommendation yes okay because it meets it really does meet all the great criteria for designation we're going to save this and be discussing it with you in a year or so and i'll just note that that thanks for

[165:00] that mark the that the proposed motion from city staff um that includes some more it's not exactly to that effect but about you know a deep collaboration between parks and landmarks um to to get this to the best outcome possible aaron i i guess i'm asking can we go a little bit further than that language to get to a place where the landmark community has some assurance that at the end of all of this investigation and holistic uh analysis that this will end up as a landmark piece of property i'd suggest marcus i don't think since the landmarking itself is a quasi-judicial hearing you know i don't think we can necessarily guarantee the landmarking of it but someone could add into the motion to say that to request that the landmarking of block 13 be brought back for uh landmarks voting council consideration at the end of the historic district process

[166:03] how do we add that language in i don't have the uh emotion in front of well so i wonder could we get that um and not that we necessarily have to do this is we're just one of our options but um it might be helpful for the staff to bring up that um that language from the proposed potential motion and before we do that i don't presume that my colleagues will be supportive of that so we need to weigh in on that sure just uh i don't know if it's possible to come to that point in the presentation where that was posted there it is so if council were interested this motion could be made with an addition of a sentence at the end uh you know requiring the the landmarking of block 13 be brought back at the end of the process

[167:00] so we've had some good discussion here does anybody want to offer a motion in this direction or another one bomb yeah i'm going to make a motion um to landmark and i'll just we'll just see where the chips fall because i it sounds like council is pretty split in this i've lost plot and counting votes so it's i think it's five four one or the other so let me just go ahead and make the motion from page 16 of the memo i moved to approve ordinance 8521 amending the destiny boundary to include all of block 13 for the property at 1236 canyon boulevard city of boulder colorado a landmark under chapter uh 911 historic preservation brc 1981 and setting forth related details thanks alicia what kind of a vote do we take on this it is a roll call sir i think we're going in a second first confirmed we would need a second junior you have your hand raised yes i just have a comment or a thought that this motion that is on the floor is not the one that is recommended it is a

[168:03] an opposite motion to what is recommended right bob it's the it's the motion that well it depends on who you talk about recommended it's not the motion recommended by staff it's the motion recommended by the landmarks board the landmarks board and the landmark staff are separate here so i'm taking the i'm taking the side of the landmarks board on this one just wanted a clarification thanks juni so different from what's on the screen bob's motion i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt aaron was asking for a second so you're very timely okay we have a motion and a second i think we've had some good discussions so could we move to a vote there on this one all right sir we will start this vote with councilmember joseph no spear no wallach hi weiner

[169:01] um i yes yates yes benjamin no mayor brockett no councilmember falkards no and mayor pro tim friend yes mayor that that motion did not carry with a vote of five against and four four okay the yeah lauren i would like to propose the motion as written by staff in the packet can we bring that up do i have to read it or can i just is it sufficient to say the motion well it's actually not in the packet it's in the presentation it's a little different so maybe we get it on the screen so we

[170:01] can be clear i motioned to not approve ordinance 8521 amending the designated boundary to include all of block 13 for the property at 1236 canyon boulevard city of boulder colorado a landmark under chapter 9 11 historic preservation boulder revised code 1981 but to direct planning and development services staff to prioritize beginning an effort to explore designating a larger civic area historic district in 2023 furthermore council directs staff to ensure that the landmark board and parks and recreation advisory board are both appropriately engaged in the park design process and that the band shell is included in the design and continues to be a centerpiece in central park

[171:02] second okay very good we have a motion in a second i got a couple more hands up uh mark and rachel before we move to vote julie how do i propose an amendment to that um to incorporate the language i suggested earlier so i think you could move to amend that and you would need a second and then we would vote on the amendment and i will move to amend that to incorporate language to the effect that upon formation of a historic district uh this parcel will be brought back for uh landmarking at that time we have a second for that motion i'll go ahead and second that motion okay um let's see before before we may we got a couple comments before we vote on that motion if that's all right with you mark

[172:00] uh rachel nungini mine's a question for i think chris messcheck the motion is as prepared by staff direct's planning department to put time into this is that um something that is going to require us to take something off the work plan is that something that's already being planned by staff before i vote to say yes i want staff to do that i want to understand the staff ramifications that we often hear about sure thanks for the question rachel and i think what's what what staff has proposed is that we could start that work in 2023 so we would be able to build it into the work plan um so it would not require a trade-off i think what it would be then is an assumption as we go into 2023 uh there would be some staff time dedicated to that so we may not be able to add other things in 2023 but no no taking off the work plan uh is is anticipated okay um so i guess just as part of discussion i i may vote against this because i don't know if that's

[173:00] like for my final year on council what if we get to add one thing at the midterm retreat that this is the one thing i want added and i think we're looking at this out of context at a you know it was not considered i don't know what stack's up against so this feels uh uh a little bit knee-jerk to me so i will probably vote now if i can just call equally on on that chris like i had understood this to be predominantly historic preservation staff that would be involved in this from a planning perspective would there be a lot of non-historic staff involved in from the finding department i think the primary work effort would be uh from pnds as well as parks and recreation um and then because it includes our city facilities obviously our facility staff would be engaged um in terms of the work effort the bulk of the work would be uh pnds staff the the work i'm sorry but in the landmarking area or the rest of

[174:00] pnds staff in the landmarking area okay great and i just might correct me if i'm wrong i don't believe that the landmark staff is involved in most of our other planning efforts that are in our workplace is that correct obviously depends on the work plan item but uh um typically in a lot of the other policy projects or or code amendment projects um there's a less of a role or no role for our historic preservation staff thanks all right i got jeannie and bob and let's see if we can move to vote yeah i just had a question or at least a point of clarification from the motion and the discussion we're having because you mentioned the landmarking discussion itself or at least the process is quasi-judicial so if i understand that correctly and you said earlier instead of we would be bringing back um as part of the process we would just bring back the discussion for

[175:00] landmarking or we would just make the proposal for landmarking because these are two different things what are we doing are we making a proposal for the discussion are we making a proposal when we come back to take a vote online marketing my intent was to bring it back to a vote on landmark could i jump in here go ahead yes please teresa yeah so um just a just a point of clarification this would have to go back to the landmarks board and they would have to make a recommendation about whether to advance this to council or not that process would still be required and i i don't believe that council bind the landmarks board in advance with a with a with a directive but can we not um advance it to landmarks i believe you absolutely could say that it needs to go to the landmarks board for consideration

[176:01] and we will bring it back to landmarks for for their consideration at that time so you want to uh modify your amend motion to amend to my amendment very good uh bob yeah i want to go back to something rachel said um because i think it's right i mean the the motion that was just made i'm not disappointed that i mean you know it was a 5 4 vote and that's perfectly fine um the motion was just made is to not land market which i don't think we need that part of the motion because we just voted not to line market and to direct staff to do some stuff which is a work plan item we have hundreds and hundreds of items that we could probably assign to staff and i get the fact that this is the landmark staff but this needs to be part of a holistic work plan discussion we have a work plan discussion in january we'll have another one next january we'll probably have a midterm check in a few weeks but i'm not sure picking this out of isolation um compared to all the other things that we want staff to be working on and directing staff to work on this particular thing which sounds like they already kind of are it really makes a whole lot of sense for emotion at this time

[177:00] i'm kind of with rachel i'm not i'm not going to vote against the motion because i'm upset about the failure landmark i'm just going to vote against the motion because i'm not sure we should be making motions on work plan items in june to tell you the truth so i might i might ask um teresa here that so we had a motion to approve my marketing which was not successful so that wasn't necessarily contemplated in staff's recommendation given that motion's lack of success i mean do we do a motion to to not approve or or has that become superfluous uh i believe that bob is right that at this point it does become superfluous right the the the motion to approve was defeated so i would say the only required motion at this point would be if if you want to make clear that you're not approving but providing these specific instructions to staff about how to proceed

[178:03] lauren given that how are you feeling given that i could withdraw my motion so i'm i'm comfortable with that i just i just want to make sure that we come out of this with with some clear direction there's a lot of interest in securing the future of this area from a historic perspective and working between the landmarks board and the parks board to secure that right so i understand it sounds like the landmarks department is planning on working on that so that's great that we have going forward i'm fine with not making a formal motion i just want to make sure that the community understands that we're you know hearing their interest in continuing to move forward on this and that with intention into 2023. so you know uh james and maybe i'll look to chris messchuck as well do you feel like that that that

[179:00] direction is still near if we don't have a formal motion on the table um well this you know i just just speaking for myself we had a lengthy discussion internally to um talk about how we could fit this into our work program next year and make it a priority because frankly we do think it is a priority um it's an important thing to do it's the right thing to do and it is you know consistent with the um you know the boulder valley comprehensive plan you know that so i would say that um you know our our intention was not to just sort of let it go but to actually act upon um looking at this area as a historic district um yeah and that that

[180:01] uh get your get your confirmation that this would be something that you see as a priority understanding there are many there are many other priorities too thanks that i find that reassuring um okay mark and lauren and then maybe we can wrap up okay i'm just concerned that in the absence of any direction then there's no timetable whatsoever which in some respects is worse than simply not landmarking not only are we not landmarking we're telling the community we're not even providing direction to staff to get to the point where this holistic analysis is done and if if things don't work out it could be 2024 2025 or never so i thought that the the proposed resolution um obviously i would hope it would be modified but in any event uh provide some guidance and some

[181:00] comfort to the community that this this issue is being looked at um and uh this long overdue action is somehow going to be dealt with in this in the context of that analysis and let me just let me just be clear too that i that i i don't think it's inappropriate for the city council to direct us to do this which is why we put the language in there you know to make to make it up front and center um so well and i i've heard you know direction that there is council interest in pursuing that you know subject to work plan discussions i think you know we i don't think council is ready tonight to say take over the entire planning department's workload next year to do this but i've heard strong you know strong interest in this from i think pretty much everybody lauren yeah i was wondering if maybe we could like straw pull it or do a knot of five or something to give direction without being as strong as making an official motion maybe that would satisfy

[182:03] i saw a head nod from theresa theresa do you like that idea yes another five would be perfectly appropriate here so maybe i'll chris go ahead yeah if i can just jump in i i think actually the conversation that council has had here has been um pretty clear and um we also have uh brad muller director of planning and development services and christopher johnson who's the manager of our comprehensive planning division where the historic preservation program sits are in the meeting here as well um and so i i think if if council would like to make sure it's kind of definitively clear i think a nada 5 is helpful um but i think the conversation that we've had tonight is also really clear and in how to balance uh for 2023 and uh and we can make sure that there's a check-in in the 2023 work program just to make sure that this wouldn't be resulting in

[183:00] some trade-off that council may may want to talk about that's great chris i'll just go ahead and and put this out there just to try to finish this up to request another five to have a landmark staff you know investigate and explore the creation of a you know down downtown area historic district that would include this area um in in with saying that they would work with the landmarks in the parks board moving forward so so i'll just ask maybe for a virtual raising of hands if there's interest in that so like all in favor can we do a virtual hand right i i i'm seeing six i think five virtual one physical so uh looks like there's we do have another five to pursue that okay is that good enough on this topic

[184:00] uh matt you got a hands up still no all right okay well thanks everyone i just wanted uh this ended up being a kind of complicated uh challenging work through just want to thank everyone in the community for their attention to this and know that we share your interest in making sure that this stays a beloved and protected place is just the path that we're taking to get there as um you know we're just picking that but i think we're all safe and in good hands on this matter so before i fully wrap up this item though i think we need to give a huge thank you and goodbye to james hewitt james i know you wouldn't have wanted a dull hearing for your last landmarking here and so i i have an interesting one with topics to chew on but just here your contribution to this department has been unparalleled um you know i just appreciate all your presentations over the years and your deep knowledge and um we sure will miss you but congratulations and and good luck with your next chapter thank you mayor appreciate it

[185:02] and and if i uh uh mayor brockett can if you'll indulge just a few comments that this on behalf of the staff we also wanted to thank james for his service to the city and yes james is retiring at the end of this month after um quite an illustrious career in historic preservation and the last 18 years of which has been with the city of boulder um and to our belief actually james is by far the longest serving historic preservation planner that the city has ever had in the history of the program and um we couldn't help ourselves but look at a few numbers james um during your tenure you you processed over 5 000 applications including over 3 300 landmark alteration certificates you are involved in designating three of our 10 historic districts over 70 individual landmarks which is the third of all landmarks in the city you also championed the creation of the city's first historic preservation plan

[186:01] as well as a nationally recognized historic window and energy efficiency plan uh numerous state grants to historic to support historic preservation activities in the city as well james also served as a board member of the national alliance of preservation commissions representing the city of boulder um and i think as as we even saw tonight historic preservation is is a hard job um you're literally working side by side with property owners and applicants on details down to inches and colors and sometimes that doesn't come with controversy or doesn't come without it i should say but james has always approached the work with a clear understanding of the bigger picture of some good canadian humor in there as well which i've always appreciated and really a deep love for the city's character uh and sense of place and james was actually hired when i was the historic preservation intern um so he and i have had a long history of working together directly and also partnering

[187:00] with him for for both of our careers here at the city so um as was said james the world's not going to be the same without you here at the city of boulder um but super excited for your retirement in your next chapter so thank you thank you i appreciate it very well said all right well final round of applause and uh thanks thanks again james and don't be a stranger stay in touch okay i won't i'm not far thanks again everybody take care take care all right so um all right so i'm afraid we have blown way over our time estimation uh apologies uh about that i could really use a five minute break i don't know about others um so and let's call it like a uh say it's 906 let's how about we come back at 9 13 and i'm going to switch locations so i would probably need a couple extra minutes for rachel if you don't mind i'm getting the next item kicked over to

[188:01] staff to get started all right see in a few [Music] do [Music] do [Music]

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[194:02] do [Music] do [Music] yeah back baby okay um and we are now on number six matters from the city

[195:00] attorney on even year election ballot options um and i want to welcome molly fitzpatrick the boulder county clerk who's going to be president throughout this discussion to answer questions from council thanks so much for being here molly looks like you're let in um okay so with that i think i'm turning it over to kathy haddick at in the city attorney's office thank you thanks and i am kathy haddock in the city attorney's office hopefully this will be a little bit easier on you than last one but it also is confusing in some ways so i'm trying to lay it out very clear i think emily is going to run slides so we're ready for slide two emily please and to go back to where we are the the purpose of this discussion is for you to give us the um way in which you want to have the ballot question read to transition to even your elections when we last talked about this

[196:01] on may 10th there were two options presented to you the first option one um change of terms of council members that were elected in 2023 and 2025 to three-year terms and then that had um elections going to even years starting in 2026. and council elected not to move forward with that option option two was to the extend the terms of council members that expired in 2025 for one year so that's four council members um ex and the people that were elected in 2023 would get five-year terms so their terms would expire in 2028 the um people elected in 2023 their terms would expire in 2026 and those would be the even year for that you did want that option

[197:01] carried forward during the meeting there was a suggestion for a third option which was to extend the term of all nine council members for an additional year and change the year for direct election of mayor to 2024. keeping it at 2023 would have meant there was a year that you had 10 members on council rather than just nine that option is impossible since we can't do ranked choice voting for the first time during a presidential election year after the election i'm sorry after the may 10th study session option four was suggested which extended the terms of all nine existing council members for one year changed the direct election of mayor to 2026 and then that means that the people elected in 2024 and 2026 would have four-year terms

[198:01] so next slide please we have slides that explain each one of these visually and then have a comparison slide for you so that you can um make your decision this slide is option two the dark shading is the election year for each of the columns the light shading is the continuation of that person's term and the slashes are the skipped election year so this was option two kept direct election of mayor in 2023 that first elected mayor would get a third a three year term so that the mayor would be on an even year rotation starting in 2026. the four orange council members would be re-elected in 2020 2026 or their seats would be up for election in 2026 for four-year terms the um people elected to fill the green positions in 2023 would get five-year

[199:03] rather than four year terms so that they started even year rotations in 2028. next slide please this is option four and the direct collection i'm sorry i should back up same thing shaded darker shading is the when that color is elected um and then the lighter shading is their carryover terms this shows direct election of mayor not starting until 2026 all nine council members getting an extra year and then the the orange council members would start getting their four-year even terms for the people elected in 2026 the green council members would start the even year rotation in 2024 for four-year terms

[200:00] next slide please so this slide it compares the two the top part is the um council candidates so for the council candidates it um option two extends the terms of existing council members for one year for the four that terms expire in 2025 and option four extends the terms of existing council member for all nine years and then option and and i apologize these two blanks should be reversed that um this is extending the term of the newly elected council people um that the newly elected council people under option two would get five-year terms rather than four-year terms in 2023 an option for none of the newly elected people after this current board would get new terms there would be the 2025 candidate

[201:00] election would be skipped for option two in option for both 2023 and 2025 would not happen there would be a candidate election in 2024 and under these two scenarios the first even year council election for council candidates would be 2026 under option 2 2024 under option 4. the differences for direct election of mayor is direct election of mayor would start in 2023 for option two and 2026 for option four and the the term extension the only one needed would be that the mayor elected in 2023 and option two would need a three-year term to get to an even year so that's how the two options that are currently on the table fold out um as rachel said molly fitzpatrick is here to answer any questions that you may

[202:00] have from her for her she is the elected county clerk and recorder and is the one that runs elections for the county and does the coordinated elections for us and has been a wonderful partner and trying to work through all these options so she is here for questions and we need a decision which option you'd like to move forward with all right thanks so much for that presentation really appreciate thanks for everybody for bearing with me and my technical difficulties and challenges uh and molly allowed my welcome to thanks so much for being here tonight and uh just and so much appreciate the partnership between you and our our city clerk alicia and did you want to say a couple words before we get started are you just available for questions well i was going to be available for questions but uh with the platform i guess i will um thank you all for having me i'm here really to help support in whatever way i can fill any gaps that you might have that would help clarify

[203:01] your decision-making process and i also just want to recognize the incredible staff partnership that we have with the city of boulder staff we've been having these conversations since i think it was brought to their attention that this is an option that the city is this is the city council is interested in exploring and so i'm very grateful to have so many thoughtful conversations with them and like i said here to help support and fill any gaps that might um help you make this decision appreciate that very much molly thanks again all right so questions for city staff or uh clerk fitzpatrick uh we got matt and nicole all right thanks aaron um and first molly thank you for being here i know how busy you are and i mean it is primary season so thank you so much for for taking the time uh when when things are due here on the 28th i really appreciate that and uh thanks stafford for putting this presentation together i wanted to just maybe offer a little clarifying and that

[204:00] doesn't get to my question that um and i'd appreciate kathy getting the point where we really only have two options to consider um but i do want to make a point just because of how it was sort of written in the packet you know option three was the suggestion and i want to make sure that credit is where credit's due that nicole came up with and all i did was offer just a slight little revision to make it more to make it just a little bit more viable and not have that eight to ten uh term thing so i just want to make sure credit's due to nicole for for coming up with with that solution um to to the array that we had um so my question uh centered towards you molly has to do it sort of uh and i appreciate the letter you sent but just sort of for either my colleagues staff or in those listening um has to kind of do with some of the concerns around 2024 as as a year to kind of jump start things and and kind of giving you and and everybody else a runway to sort of make some of those changes and from what i gathered from the memo i just want to be clear the concern from your office is less

[205:02] about 20 moving to even year it's more about running the inaugural rcv direct election of the mayor in 2024 a presidential term which i think we all can assume is gonna be fraught with a bunch of insanity and chaos is is that is that the main thing that even here is fine adding that extra page or whatever but it's that rcv direct election that is that that's sort of a linchpin and big concern for you in your office thank you for that question and yes i mean the two the two questions are intertwined um for us we do not make changes or implement changes in a presidential election year because of the risk that in it that it invites into the environment starting in an odd year before presidential year we implement four back-to-back elections in 12 months what that means is that there is no runway to plan

[206:00] test and validate before a live election because it's the first election using ranked choice voting our preference is to continue with the path that voters directed us this the council and the city of boulder to do in 2020. um once we saw that in 2020 we immediately started leading the efforts on that ranked choice voting bill with an eye towards 2023 um so once we had that bill in 2021 that we worked very hard on we also started planning our time and resources um for 2023 so we've already done a lot of planning um and securing resources for 2023 um but that being said yes the the idea of running a ranked choice voting election for the city of boulder in 2023 which would also be the first rate choice voting in colorado in a presidential election year does not set our office up for success and it invites an incredible amount of risk into the environment that i do not think is

[207:01] appropriate given the kind of year it will be thank you molly can i ask maybe a follow-up that it's just the inaugural rcv because obviously with the way we have our mayor term said it's every two years so the subsequent 2028 president presidential election assuming we now have run one prior to that then you would perhaps then would you be then comfortable with that or is it i just sort of want to clarify is it presidential as a whole or is it just not doing the first one it's the first one yeah we we need that ramp um and that runway to you know work with our voting system equipment look at ballot design layouts for the voting system equipment and for voters um do public education um that runway does not exist in a presidential election year for the first time so it's that's correct it's it's about the first ranked choice voting election not happening in 2024. and i'll i'll pass over to nicole here in a second but my last question would be given the work that you've already done in preparation for 2023 do you have

[208:02] any preference of whether you wanted to stay that course or does moving to a 2026 inaugural rcv mayor election provide you other benefits or do you feel like the train has left the station and you guys are focused and wanted to sort of make that happen so i'm wondering would you have preference on those two thank you for asking about that preference um our preference is to stay the course you know when voters directed the um city to conduct rank choice voting in 2023 that's immediately when we got the ball rolling we've reached out to other jurisdictions we've collected feedback that went into the ring choice voting bill immediately after the rank choice voting bill um we started you know collaborating with other experts in other states to learn you know what kind of support could be offered to boulder county in the year like 2023 um given that we will be the first and also there's a lot of benefit to boulder county being the first county to conduct a rain choice voting election um we are committed to implementing elections that are secure and transparent and

[209:00] accessible and i think there's a lot of benefit to boulder county being the first county to lead the way for this because we can really help shape what it will look like for other jurisdictions moving forward as other cities might adopt this for themselves so we like the idea of leading but most of all we like the idea of continuing with the plans that we've already laid out for ourselves and the resources that we've already secured for ourselves um and just having that runway in an odd year is is really wonderful even if you know you know in an even year that is not a presidential year um it is possible but you're still running into a similar um situation in the presidential year in which resources are limited um the the one thing that's different about you know an even year that is not a presidential year is that you don't have that presidential primary which completely knocks us out um we still think that an odd year maximizes our opportunity to implement elections

[210:00] um the way boulder county voters have been accustomed to receiving those elections thank you for that molly i appreciate that coleman tara thanks again molly for being here and thanks for um sticking with us so late at night um so my my questions are around the um trying to understand sort of the cost to the city of doing the ranked choice voting um before uh i think the state is moving toward um providing some support in 2025 if i understand it so could you talk a little bit about the difference in the cost to um to us going for the state has provided the support sure so in the rank choice voting bill there are some timeline considerations that have already been laid out um including proposed rules and we've already seen a draft of that um

[211:00] and then also when the software for the risk limiting audit will become available from the state so right now um we do not have a way to audit a ranked choice voting contest in the way that is um we audit our other contest so what the bill laid out and what we supported is that um you know the state needs time to develop that that software for ranked choice voting contest and that timeline is not in 2023. what the bill says is that in 2023 the county can audit the ranked choice voting contest using procedures that they develop i think in coordination with statistical experts and other folks that have worked on ranked choice voting before so that's some of the resources that we've already reached out to we've reached out to national experts who have conducted audits on ranked choice voting contest in other states and they have already offered and and committed to being available to

[212:01] boulder county so we will have a way to audit this election next year it will not be the way that we audit other elections um so we're fig we would figure that out um and we would you know ensure that it um reaches the same level of auditing standards that you know other or similar auditing standards that we have for other contests but um we would need to be figure that out um and the state would not have that available yet so we're not sure what the cost of that will look like in 2023 yet because we haven't developed the procedures um but the state has committed to i think 2025 having that software available okay so basically we we would take on the costs of that audit in 2023 the city would but um after 2025 the state will be providing that support am i understanding that correctly i um yeah so all direct costs for a ranked choice voting election would be

[213:02] the city would be accountable for paying um uh for the rank choice i you know without knowing what the development looks like for the state on ranked choice voting contest i can't say what that cost is going to be and how that cost would be um attributed to the city okay got it but am i correct and um thinking that after 2025 that cost would not be present for the city or is that not right i i would want to go back and um validate because my concern is that there's still going to be licensing costs for that tool that the state develops um and that those would be billable to the city so it's really just next year you know the city we're going to build the city for the way that we conduct that audit and it's not going to be the same way that the state does it in two years or 2025. in 2025 i anticipate that there could be some cost um because the state's

[214:00] developing the tool for rcv and that would be billable to the city okay on that just for a second nicole and molly um that point about where that cost from what i've gathered from um secretary of state's office and and some other folks is that it would be amortized out over the number of jurisdictions utilizing that software so it would be a base cost and from that that's what i've gathered just as a i don't know if that's gonna end up but that seems to be that's where i've sort of heard it's leaning i don't know if that changes your calculus at all but maybe that you can corroborate to molly but that's what i've been hearing yeah so the tabulation uh there's a license for the tabulation we do not have the license in colorado right now but what the bill stipulated is that um the secretary's office would do the purchase of the state or i'm sorry of the um of the license to tabulate a rank choice voting ballot um that cost would be allocated to cities based on the number of voters in those jurisdictions the second

[215:00] issue is the cost of the risk limiting audit software which is very different than the tabulation software and that's the distinction there thank you did that get matt are you good on that colloquy okay great um so my other question is just around you know i know that there's a lot of um education that is needed for ranked choice voting right um and one of the reasons that we are interested in seeing a voters would like to move to even years is because there's 15 to 20 000 more voters who turn up in even years and would potentially be voting in um our local council member elections and so you know for having to um do a lot of education work around ranked choice voting for 2023 do we then have to do it again for um the even year mayoral election because it seems like there's a different group

[216:01] of voters right the even-year voters who are not necessarily voting in odd years who would have to be educated so basically do we need to double educate if voters would decide to move to even your elections and we held the first mayoral rank choice voting election in 2023 um i think any time there's a change especially a major change to the way that people vote uh because we've been pretty consistent with our model and our messaging here in colorado i would recommend doubling down on education efforts um if there's any sort of change yeah okay i don't know if that answers your question yeah no i mean i think so i think it just it just that we would want to do some additional education um if we for different groups of voters um and then so my other question is actually around one of the options that we kind of dismissed um last time which was to hold three elections in four years and i'm wondering as the county clerk if you have any thoughts on that you know do

[217:01] you think that was sort of the right you know decision that three local elections in four years is a lot for a city to um take on or do you think that that is something that we ought to consider running three city elections in city council elections in four years yeah which which was one of the the options for trying to you know move us to um even yours mm-hmm to us that it seemed like that was a lot for the community and i just i just i'm curious about your thoughts on that i haven't contemplated that uh in this discussion um it's mostly been about the timing of ranked choice voting and we can support it um i it's hard for me to say which which option is that is that option it was absolutely option one that that that we we rejected because it sounded

[218:00] really exhausting for staff candidates and everybody that's actually why i didn't look at it or prepare for that that's okay yeah no i was i was curious if you had any thoughts on it um that differed from ours okay thank you all right thanks nicole tara um molly i really appreciate this memo it was really great especially i'm new to election laws and rules so i have a few questions about your memo um one of the places you say the clerk's office encourages any city that is interested in transitioning their coordinated elections so even your elections to engage in a robust stakeholder process to understand the impact on voters do you feel we've are you saying you feel like we haven't done that or were you just stating a random point what are you trying to say in that section yeah i um i i actually don't know what type of engagement has been done so i wasn't

[219:00] making um a statement um either way on that um what we wanted to do was you know for we really wanted to create this is kind of something that could be used for any jurisdiction that is contemplating even years even your elections um so that's really why that's in there is just for any decision maker for a process like this stakeholder engagement is important so it wasn't a judgment or accusation that the city of boulder has or hasn't done that i would never take it as a judgment or accusation i just was wondering your opinion on that the second uh area that i was looking at was other entities exploring even your consolidation to reach out to other cities that have made this shift so i guess we're just asking ourselves have we done that enough is that what you're saying you're not you're not saying we have or haven't same thing okay so the last thing i want to ask you is the heavier ballot issue so

[220:00] if we change to an even year we would most certainly have two pages of ballots and i think what you were saying is there is a possibility people just won't finish the ballot but it's two pages is that what you were saying or were you saying something else i genuinely don't know um i have not conducted i have not um done academic research into you know drop off but i just you know for us we try to think of every single thing possible um so that decision makers can have um every bit of information possible to help make an informed decision um i have personally not done that research on my own this was really a great i know i said that but i can't thank you enough for this memo thank you i'm glad it was helpful okay yeah i'll let go that thanks that was an extremely helpful memo molly um uh so i i just i'll call on myself i want to raise one thing which was uh rachel's hotline post rachel just popped up on the screen so

[221:00] that was uh i think uh a slightly different well it's a kind of a combo of the other two options rachel i wonder if you might explain that to councilman what you're thinking with that proposal i will give it my best shot um i guess the notion is just can we ask voters a two-part question which is number one do you want to move to ranked or to even your elections and if the answer is yes then can we ask voters to decide between the two viable options so um i'm not sure that i'm the best to articulate which those two options are probably um just refer back to mats but basically do we want to have option a where we are doing um i think it's a mayoral election in 2023 versus option b where it's the mayoral election in 2026 and then the attendant council moves so i think under option b we would be asking voters do they want to extend all nine members terms by one year versus option a is

[222:00] four members get an extended term from doing my math right there um so it's just essentially is that is that a viable path do people want to look at that i think that there are some reasons that it doesn't make great sense for us to be the people you know there are nine of us and um obviously the the goal here is to for those who supported i think um increased participation in the democratic process by moving to even years but in terms of who's going to be impacted by it uh at a job it's the nine of us and so i don't know that we are the are the most unbiased people to choose which option to give to voters does that make sense you're on mute aaron sorry um so then my i would just turn to theresa and say um is there any issue with doing something like that

[223:00] yeah so we certainly can do a multi-tier question um and kathy has prepared um and thought about this and so i'll i'll defer to kathy on this thank you theresa and and thank you uh tara for giving the i'm sorry rachel for giving the question ahead of time so we had a chance to think about it um we can ask the question about whether or not they want to move to ranked choice voting and then have some kind of instructions in the ballot or in the education or something that your votes about the options won't count unless um the vote to change passes however our charter does require that the question that the ballots be written in a way that the question is are you for or against this so we really can't do options um we can't say option a or option b we'd have to put option a on and option b on and have some kind of

[224:00] instructions to say the one that gets the most votes will win if the first question passes so um it it adds a whole different layer of education to what we'd have to do for voters because we have to have the yes no on each issue rather than choose a or b thanks kathy that makes sense molly do you want to speak to that not that mine's actually a different um question for council in just a second then uh so just that does just rachel's proposal make sense to you buddy everybody does anybody have any questions to her staff on that you can just i know you can find that meet button man of course my computer just popped an update right in the middle of trying to unmute um

[225:01] yeah so no it's really kind of a clarifier to rachel's point about um you know council um [Music] you know lifting this sort of thing up and and when you look at um other communities that have done this and you know there's like you know 23 of them in recent years that have done it and keep in mind you know 21 of them chose to lengthen terms but um many of them you know about half did it by just straight ordinance and others did it by ballot and that was referenced by council and they referred the whole thing to ballot to lengthen their own terms and in those you know you had um you know winning percentages of 56 70 72 81 and that's throughout california arizona texas michigan so you know you see us a general spectrum there that i think is um rather interesting uh when it comes to just sort of does council you know do that on

[226:01] its own accord and do voters seem okay when they're recommending for sort of extending terms there seems to be good precedent voters don't have too much of an issue with that and that there's fair amount of commonplace um we look at sort of communities across the country that have done that so just for context i just want to lay that out there okay thanks um nicole i just wanted to make sure that um i understood i think what i'm hearing is that um what rachel proposed is not possible that we can't we can't do that because we have to have yes no responses is that right no not quite and and um so instead what it is we do have to have yes no responses but what it means is that we would have to think about what the highest vote getter is yeah um which do you favor do you do you favor

[227:02] a yes or no do you favor b yes or no i guess okay okay i okay thank you that's that that's helpful yeah i think you know i'm i'm wondering too if there's a let me just back up so rachel what i hear your concern is and i um is really just around this idea of sort of transparency right that it's weird it seems like it may be weird especially in this era that we are living through right now on the federal level where we are putting something toward voters that would allow them to extend our terms right and so is there a way that we can be um really transparent in a single ballot item like other cities have done when they've made this transition that like i'm looking at some example from ballot language from pasadena for example where they say shall the pasadena city charter be amended consistent with state law to one

[228:01] change the city's primary and general election dates to coincide with statewide primary and general election dates beginning with in their case it was the november 2018 general election and two extend the current terms for the mayor and council members by they did 19 months on a one-time basis in order to transition to the statewide election cycle so they were really crystal clear that it was a one-time thing wasn't gonna happen you know on a regular basis then it was really just in in the service of getting to um these even year elections because i think the majority of those these cities that have made this transition um to increase the number of people who are voting in local elections um they've done it within a year or two i mean it's sort of like it's on the ballot and then the next um the next election is the one that isn't in the even year it hasn't taken a really long time so i'm wondering if there's a way we can include some transparency uh in the

[229:00] language around um making this transition in in the ballot measure just so we don't have to kind of confuse potentially confuse voters with a lot of different options i mean yeah i think we should be as transparent as possible i don't know that it's um it quite gets it what my concern is transparency is great i think that part of my concern is bias and it doesn't get at that and i would just say that in in some conversations that i've had it seems that um it's hard to separate out how will extending this term by a year impact voters and how will it impact me and so there are only nine of us impacted and so i think it makes little sense for us to be the nine to decide between the two options which is best i think it's better for voters who are not impacted in their livelihood and their emotional health frankly from serving on council to be the ones making that choice i i will speak for myself like um you know i i've got strong feelings on personally whether i

[230:00] would want to serve another year or not and that's hard to separate out so that's part of it and i don't think clarifying the ballot language gets at that all right thanks for that rachel all right i think we we've gotten through that so uh molly did you want to pose your other question yes one thing that i have not been clear on um is is council's intention to with this discussion to only move the candidate elections to even years or is council's intention to ensure that alongside that there's also ballot questions that are moved to even years because what would happen to ballot questions um if only what would happen about questions if only the council elections were moved to even years is that there would still be uh potentially valid questions in an odd year unless you're already addressing that somehow so what's council's intention there

[231:02] well maybe i'll just speak uh to answer maybe for council if people don't mind so i don't think that ballot questions would be affected at all by this so uh ballot questions could still be citizen initiated or council initiated in even or odd years there might be a stronger preference for even years since they'll be more attention paid but they would still be legally allowed to be in either even or odd years okay did i get that wrong anybody i just had a question for molly on that um i don't think you got it wrong aaron but i know that there are like there are local elections that happen during even years i think that all you know the the county electeds i think that superior and and some other nearby cities do it do they not have any odd year ballots i guess it just seems like this would be um this would happen in other places as well does the county never run odd year even though they're even year electeds um

[232:00] i for the most part if a county or if a city is coordinating with us in a that's a good question i as far as i know um i you know i'm sorry i just can't speak to that superior question exactly but um i know that i think for the most part if a city is trying you know a lot of their questions and their candidate races would be on this on the same ballot um at least that's my understanding from what i've seen um is that most of that is questions and candidates are on the same ballot whether it's even or odd i see kathy yes i i represented superior for 18 years before i came to the city of boulder and they like boulder had ballot issues um on most elections not just on the years that they did candidate elections so it ended up that there was coordination every year it's just that

[233:00] it's only every other year that they did candidates and i think that's common for most municipalities that actively submit things to the voters that they do it on an annual basis in november yeah and we take what you all give us um and so you know if if it does happen that you know you all decide just to make it the council elections that are moved to even years but there is you know a citizen initiated ballot measure or um a council referred ballot question um we would still put that on we we will we will do what you give us basically and same with other jurisdictions we appreciate that matt yeah thanks thanks that you know so and i appreciate bringing up the the ballot question there molly because it does and i think for clarity it does flip how i believe we would be defined as a regular municipal election versus a special election in the eye of the state charter

[234:00] and because we've run into those issues we just recently had one where we had an issue based on guidance regarding the number of signatures required for a petition to reach the ballot and it was calculated based on whether it was a special election special general election or regular municipal so when we choose to hold our council meetings i believe we'll flip that in the eye of the state charter so just for reference as to what years then get uh referenced as being the one governed by our charter rules versus the one governed by um the colorado revised statute that will be flipped now so that's not going to matter too much but just for reference that that will be a switch great okay thanks for the all the questions everybody so i'd like to move this into a decision space i could so um i will note that a few weeks ago people gave eloquent speeches on the benefits or the drawbacks of even-year elections so my hope is not to relitigate that tonight people can throw in a few words if they want to uh but

[235:00] instead to focus on um the three options at hand and so folks who i'll start with maybe a straw poll on whether to advance ebook elections just to check in so folks can register that they'd rather not if they would prefer to but i want to focus on these three on the options in front of us tonight so um and so in my um and to frame that my my thought is to we've got and while i'll get to you in a second is that we've got option two which keeps the um ranked choice mayoral election in 2023 and starts even year elections in 2026. we have option four which starts even your elections in 2024 and ranked choice mayor in 2026 and then i'm going to also put rachel's proposal on the table which would give the voters the choice of which of those two they would prefer so with that in mind uh i'll go to people want to make some comments and then we'll move to some some straw polls uh bob

[236:01] so um i i respect aaron i will not uh reiterate my opposition to even your elections i'll save that uh for august when we uh we vote um but i i am going to make an uh another advocacy for option one i'd like i'd ask you as mayor to put that in the straw poll as well um it's been my practice for going on seven years now when i know that i'm going to be the minority on a vote to still try to provide advice to the majority so they can make the best decision um possible i'm going to do that now because i i would suggest to those of you who want to move to even your elections that you really take another look at option number one um if um the the the advantage of option number one is it does not it neither shortens nor lengthens the current term of anyone on council now what it does is it shortens the length of the term of those yet to be elected or re-elected so it directly addresses the concern that the legitimate concern that the racial

[237:00] raised about us as city council members asking voters to give some or all of us another year it doesn't do that it doesn't shorten anybody's term it doesn't lengthen anyone's term it simply says those who choose to run for election or re-election 2023 will stand for a three-year term um and they know that going into it and the voters will know that going to it i think the problem you have with options two three or four is they each involve extending the terms of council members now sitting and i think there's um two challenges with this first this may cause some community members who would otherwise be interested in even your elections to vote against um your ballot package um because it does extend people's terms it does two things and i think that will decrease your chances of getting this thing passed if that's what your objective is and then i believe and i'm not asking anyone to disclose now but i believe that there are people on this call right now who are not interested in having their terms extended so we're kind of having a hypothetical discussion where there's a real life impact and and we may have

[238:00] people who resign and so option one doesn't put anybody in that difficult and awkward position of either asking voters for more time or asking people to um to agree to serve longer than they originally planned to i do realize and nicole i thought you did a very good job of identifying that the downside the big downside of option one is that we would have two city council elections close to each other one in 2025 and one in 2026 um and so really three elections in four years as you said nicole um and we would combine with with that is the potential that we have a lot of new council members coming in a very short period of time so i know that there's certainly risk of that um but i think the downsides of that are less than the downsides and the bad optics quite frankly of asking voters to give some or all of those sitting on council today an extra year of term especially when some council members may not even want an extra year term and i think option one is also consistent with what

[239:01] molly has requested to start ranked choice voting in 2023. that's just my political assessment i'm going to be voting against um putting even your elections on the ballot and we vote on this in august i'll be on the losing end of that i suspect so you don't have to pay attention to me i'm just trying to provide you with some practical tactical political advice um to help you get past what it is that you want to get past that bob i'll just know i mean the council did by majority vote you know put option one aside in previous previous meetings i don't know that we want to have a long argument about it but point taken and i'm perfectly fine including it in the matrix of struggles and we'll see if it gets more support this time if people don't mind um okay nicole yeah thanks thanks bob um i you know i i hear some concerns and um you know i still three elections in four years is so much um for for everyone um and you know

[240:01] ultimately the voters are gonna decide right if they like the options that we've come up with they'll vote for it if they don't then they won't right um so you know i i see this as um some of the things we're talking about here are kind of consistent with what other cities have done where they've seen this overwhelming support because there are many people who are in favor of of the increased turnout that comes with um even your elections and addressing some of the disparities and who votes in um off-cycle elections so i i think i'm gonna have a hard time going back to that one that we rejected um because i still have the same concerns there i i really don't like the second option where only some of us are um getting an extended year um i feel like you know we're all in this together a bit um but you know mostly it just it just doesn't that that doesn't feel fair to me as one of those people who would

[241:02] have their term extended so just just want to name that i don't i don't see that as being an option i would support um and i i i really um i do like rachel's idea of kind of giving the voters some options and in terms of how to do it and i feel like that starts to get um more complicated and i i think if we could just put it into one ballot measure that's really transparent that we're switching to even your this is a vote to switch to even your elections and that um that that would mean a one-time um extension of the current council's terms i feel like that's a really transparent and clear um ballot measure that we can offer to voters and rachel i'm i'm with you the idea of of another year is frankly quite exhausting um so i think that's that's another kind of thing to think about and i feel like this is this is really

[242:00] consistent option um sorry three is really consistent with what other municipalities have done i think it's four now oh i'm sorry yes yes sorry option four thank you and i'll just note it feels particularly exhausting at 10 o'clock at night while we're having a complicated discussion um mark and i'll call myself um i am also speaking from that minority perspective that that bob dated um but i think he's correct and again you you may take this advice or not that there is an appearance of impropriety if we are even with the vote of of the community if we are extending our own uh terms um and i happen to think that rachel's proposal provides a little bit of clarity uh and additional decision-making for the community and and it might be uh again as bob points

[243:00] out a better way of proceeding um in terms of electoral success and as bob mentioned i am one of those who does not want to have a term extended um and i can tell you now that i i will not um have my term extended um a because i i don't think this is a good way of proceeding but more significantly i was elected for term through 2025 and i have no intention of serving until 2026. um and i don't think uh i i am obligated to do so so um at the very least you should build into your process a a good process for um finding uh replacement members of council uh if somebody does not want to participate in this because i do not

[244:01] whether that's the next one down in the in the vote or however you want to do it but it would not be my intention to serve beyond 2025. thanks for that mark we would miss you if you resign before the end of return there's no question uh i'll just go through about that i'm gonna call myself and then and then matt and then tara and bob we'll get back to you if you don't mind other people getting our first shot um so um oh with you okay thanks so i i think i really like the idea of moving to even your elections because of the turnout advantages and we'll go through all that again i do feel like you know whether we start in 2024 or 2026 we get to the the right goal so i'm comfortable with either one of those i think if we start in 2024 we start earlier which is great um but the rent choice voting for mayors waits until longer until 2026 a bit of a downside starting 2026 that puts off even years longer

[245:00] but does get us the the rcb for mayor in 2023 which which would be positive we heard from molly there's an interest in moving forward with that on on the existing timetable i will agree with rachel here that um i'm not comfortable being the final decision maker on this because it does involve myself and my council's uh colleagues futures so i i even though it added some complexity i would i would go with rachel's um proposal to ask the voters whether to get it started in 2024 or 2026 if they are in fact interested in leaving your elections uh there we go so uh thanks erin um so with regards to where the preference lies um i i do think it's important to sort of when when you know we need to focus on not on minimizing the exhaustion to um electorate by compounding too many elections in the same cadence and so i think because we set aside option one it

[246:01] was probably for that most obvious reason um i i do want to pay a special deference to molly's suggestions as our county clerk um as a sort of the leading election administrator for for what we're doing working alongside alicia and her team and so i do think that that you know given that you know she wants to stay the course to meet the needs of the ballot measure of 2020 to elect our mayor with rcv that puts us at 2023 and her team is moving in that in that direction um i i want to make sure given all of the work all of the stress and all of everything that comes with running some of the best elections we got in the state right here in boulder county um that we pay sort of special deference to molly's suggestion on that and so for me i think looking at option two um allows us to get mostly pretty much mostly where we want um it gets us even year it allows us to facilitate the voters will for electing our mayor with with instant runoff ranked choice voting in

[247:01] 2023 um and so i do think that that path does get us where we need to be in that capacity i'd love to start sooner but but in doing so i think if we're if we're pushing off against molly's suggestion to get things done in 2023 for ranked choice voting i i have a hard time going against that um so i think that's where i'm gonna land on this uh but i also don't mind seeing this on the ballot either so if we're gonna pick one i'm okay picking one and that's the one i prefer but if we are picking two i'm okay with that thanks i mean tara and then lauren and then nicole will come back to you i have a simple question can you put somewhere on the screen so i can stare at it the now new four options or the updated options especially you can call the last one rachel's option you don't have to even explain it we all know what it is but i'm just want to make sure that i know what i'm voting for thanks i need katie porter's whiteboard so one of us could really quickly write

[248:00] them all down and we'll be like here here did we have that in the presentation cathy we didn't and and i don't think of of rachel's suggestion as a separate option because um what we'll have to say is do you want to go forward with like option two or option four or option one and option four or option however you wanna do it um so we need you to to pick the options that you want the voters to choose from so i think of hers as an added layer rather than a different option and i'm sorry we don't have a slide for option one um i can find the but i'm not sure if that's what you want to put on so right now the only different options i think we have are option two and option four which we can put up either or both of those um and then rachel's proposal as i understand rachel what

[249:01] you're saying is that um that the voters would decide rather so that we would be putting both options on the um ballot not just one correct yeah with the wrinkle of i i think it would be great if there was a a gating or threshold question that was simple for voters do you want to move to even your elections right that's one and then the next two are if if the answer to you know ballot number whatever is yes you want to do it this way right it's just that we that will be three separate questions on the ballot and then depending on how much instruction you want to give them of we won't even count the votes for two and three unless the question one wins a majority i think that's right i think it's

[250:00] somewhat similar to what we did for the muni ballot measure to go back into franchise yes then do you want to re-up the tax i think there was a second like if yes then can i jump in with a just a practical question what if the voters say yes they want even your elections but they turn down both of rachel's options they say no and no on extended terms then what happens we don't have a charter change okay so you'd have to go back to the voters with different options at a different time either november of 2023 or a special election before november of 2023. so would you hardwire that into the first question which is which is we will go to even your elections but only if you answer one of the following two questions yes i like my suggestion yes less now if that's the case like everyone gets more votes but one of them has to get over 50 and a lot of people just aren't voting on it that's maybe overly complicated and i possibly

[251:01] withdraw okay so i have a real quick question before you go into the next person so make believe not make believe but i'm going to vote against changing it to even years but let's say here's my ballot i vote against changing it to even years and then the next part of the question is if you if there were even years would you do a or would you do b would i know would i who voted no to change it then no to vote yes i should vote for the next or would i think because i have to tell you when i do when i read ballot measures i don't know if i'm alone but i have to read them 10 times before i even understand what is being said that's just the nature of my brain so explain to me kathy would i then be allowed to or told to either if you voted yes or no it doesn't matter you definitely should answer the next question or will i be confused and then leave it out um well it's hard to it because that will depend on the um the education whether you'll be confused

[252:01] or not because our charter requires you each question has to be yes or no i do think it is more confusing than saying if you vote yes on even your election do you want a or b because that's not a way our charter lets us write the question so the question would be do you want to vote even your election if that passes then we would vote do you prefer option a over option b or option b over option a and whichever one gets the most votes wins but there's a circumstance where neither one of them could get a majority but it sounds to me like i'll know that even if i said no to changing it to even years i'll know that i should then answer the next question um yeah yes you can do it that way so kathy just kind of just get totally explicit that if even years passed and but um neither of the two options that we

[253:00] put on got 50 like if they got 48 then the even year question would get nullified because they hadn't selected an option correct okay well i yeah rachel i think i'm with you i think that this now gets much less interesting that if the whole thing could go down because you know one of them one option got 49 and one got 30 and there was a clear choice but it wasn't 50 and the whole thing dies that's a bad outcome so and the only way you could avoid that is put into the first question do you want even your elections happening this way um or do you want a second one do you want even your elections happening this way so rather than three questions you only have two but still that might be confusing to the voters and people could vote yes on both or no on both or yes and one and no on the other okay okay thanks i i'd like to give everybody a chance to talk at least once um before we go back to folks so um

[254:00] i've got uh lauren up thanks erin um so to me it seems like each one of the like none of these options are perfect we have the issue of extending our own terms we have voter fatigue some of these are difficult or complicated to implement um or waiting on ranked choice voting for mayor and i just still feel like you know occam's razor's a really good thing to use in this situation the simplest solution often the best so um i would put a plug-in for option four because for me it's the simplest to understand and to explain okay thanks all right and juni did you yeah i saw your hand up before if you don't you could go ahead since you haven't spoken thank you i don't think i was part of the earlier discussion even though i thought well i

[255:01] might as well just add my two cents on this one i do support moving to even year and i would support number four and extending terms of all existing council members by one year actually i love being on council and i would accept the one year so so mark i understand you said you might not be with us any further but um i just think this is a great opportunity again i just hear some of the benefits that was mentioned by nicole earlier again i just think this option will definitely impact community in a more positive way so giving people more opportunities to know what's going on in their own community so i will definitely support option four thanks okay so nicole you've been waiting yeah thank you um i was just gonna say i mean it sounds like the multi-part option is something

[256:01] that that folks are kind of pulling back from um which i think is good that was it was getting really in into the weeds for me i'm kind of with lauren that you know this is simple um it's just the simpler we can make the ballot the the better we are going to get an understanding of what the community wants and um somebody mentioned earlier that you know we we shouldn't be the final decision makers in this but we're not right ultimately the voters will be the decision makers and they will either decide that you know they want even your elections and they're okay with doing a one-time extension of all the terms by one year in order to get there or no right and then um we can think about whether there's another uh thing that we could do in the future if that were something another council wanted to do a community group could decide they wanted to try it a different way but ultimately it's really the voters

[257:00] who will decide and i think to give them the best possibility of making a decision that they're going to be happy with we need to be really clear and transparent and just have the simplest ballot measure we can which to me is option four still call i've still got hints from tara and lauren did you want to chime back in no okay well i'll i'll call on myself again then because i um because i had gone for the multi-choice but now that i don't think that's a great option so i guess i'll just say i do think either of them will work perfectly well um i i guess i'm going to go for option four by by small margin just to just to keep from the simplest simplicity argument and if the the voters don't like extending the terms then they don't like extending the terms and that's totally fine um but just keep it simple and i guess subjects all of us equally to the pain of an additional year if the measure is successful

[258:01] um so but like i said i think it could work out either way all right um can we move to some some straw polls here is that all right with folks okay so um so we have option so bob put option one back on the table and then we have option two and option four let's do this how about we can do it like the um boards and commissions appointments we'll take we'll go from the top down uh if a majority doesn't get uh uh if none of them get a majority the first round we'll drop the lowest vote getting one and then try again if that's okay with folks um all right so let and i'm gonna ask for um can i see everybody okay i can see everybody so i'm gonna ask for physical hands uh for the different options and i'm gonna record you as we go so option one all in favor of option one i'm seeing two two hands for option one uh tara and bob uh all in favor of option two

[259:01] i am seeing one hand from rachel friend uh all in favor of option four we're getting five six tara okay so that's everybody else so that looks like option four is what we've landed on um so thanks for that discussion that's what we will work on putting on the ballot appreciate that now we had the um i didn't see it in the in the presentation but there was the question in the memo about maybe i missed it because i was gone for a couple minutes about whether people could run for mayor while still serving out a council term is that right do we need to weigh in on that tonight yes that's slide five emily if um you can do that yes i just want to confirm the two things that one um you can only run for one office during um an election and one more one more slide and um it causes all sorts of issues if you if

[260:00] somebody was running for mayor and council member in the same election there's all sorts of issues with matching funds and the way that we do campaign disclosures and all that kind of stuff that make it very difficult so just confirming that that cannot happen but a council member who is not up for election in a certain year and just serving on council and has another two years on their term that they can run for mayor without resigning their seat if they win mayor then the fifth highest vote getter gets the unexpired term of the council member that was elected mayor and that second part was already in the charter from when ranked choice voting was put in but we just wanted to make it clear that to run for mayor it can either be somebody new from the city or somebody a council member whose term is not expired

[261:02] very good clarifying questions uh bob well i'll just make a clarifying statement um oh this was what was intended matt will remember this that that this first point was exactly what we wanted those of us who put this on the ballot back in 2020 and through a scrivener's error quite frankly is a mistake in drafting by somebody that's not what ended up on the ballot and so i think this actually i mean what council believed in 2020 and what this council believes might be two different things but i fully support what kathy said because this is what we were supposed to be asking the voters in 2020 and through literally a drafting error it didn't end up in the ballot matt do you remember that correctly too i do a little bit but i i don't remember the explicit details of where that all transpired in the handing off from voter approved initiative to a council one and things getting lost in translation i think but yes i think i think i recall you being correct bob again uh mark

[262:00] and you know i would actually go a little further with respect to the second point um one of the things that's most unseemly in our national politics when people run from safe seats for higher office and i i am happy to have anybody whatsoever run for mayor but frankly i think we that individual ought to elect up front as to whether or not they're running for mayor or or remaining as a member of council again it's an optics issue for me when somebody runs with the assurance that they remain on council if they lose i think people who want to run for mayor should commit to running for mayor and and not have a council seat to fall back on i just you know to me it's bad optics and and looks unseemly um and so i would i would actually prefer that that people elect one or the other and if you want to run for mayor go for it

[263:00] but but elect to do so and in in lieu of remaining on council okay we'll have a little discussion on this i got nicole and jeannie and i'll call myself yeah i really hear that mark and i'm just i'm glad you raised that for us to sort of discuss around it um and i just want to lay out my concern um with that and it's really you know that the mayor as it exists in our city is um not kind of the all-powerful person that it is in some other cities that have um elected mayors but it you know i i can absolutely see how it really benefits to have somebody who has some council experience so that's that's sort of the one thing that i would um i would hate for somebody to kind of cut their term short before deciding to run for mayor and then sort of lose them anyway sorry it's late and i'm not articulating things well but uh

[264:00] basically i it seems to me that if we ask people to step down from their council seat before running for mayor um we we might lose some really well qualified mayor candidates thanks and you know i just realized uh because elisha mentioned to me molly i don't know that we need to keep you here any later because i think we're past the point where we need your expertise so you're welcome and with our great thanks uh for assisting us tonight and for of course all the work that you do for our community our county thank you have a good night uh okay so uh jenny i'm calling myself rachel thank you aaron um i heard you clearly mark um i think your points are valid but i'm just wondering i just don't know

[265:01] i just don't know what difference it makes and i wonder if maybe theresa or maybe someone else at the city has looked into this and know that it really makes a difference whether a council member still get to keep the seat or whether you vacate the seat i just don't know what really difference it makes and i think again nicole made an important point that if someone has to step down there is that vacuum and you're losing someone with experience so i just don't know um yeah i just i just don't know what would be um what would be the benefit and some of the drawback of going that way do you see what i mean mark so maybe someone my intent was was simply to it just to me it just doesn't look good when you have that guaranteed seat um a win lose or draw

[266:01] i know we would be losing someone who doesn't succeed in running for mayor but that's the nature of electoral politics i just think the appearance aspect of it is you know it's a free election you get to run you win you lose it doesn't matter you stay on council and yeah i understand that you lose some experience but we lose experience every election cycle and amazingly we still continue to move forward and prosper we we have many new members this council and and everybody is performing as expected um so i i you know for me it's just the optics of uh of doing so just as i get aggravated when i see people who are governors or senators running for president because they know it's there's no cost to them if it works out fine if it doesn't work out they get to go back and and pontificate some more um

[267:00] and that's all i'm saying i don't expect there to be a majority for that position but to me it is um uh the optics of it are quite poor and i expect i want people to step up and run for mayor but i want them to commit to doing so and now we've got a new procedure for electing the mayor through ranked choice voting um and i'd like to see them commit to that as opposed to you know simply taking the safe way out and again i don't expect that to be a majority position here i'm just raising it because uh it's something that that disturbs me i hear your concern marks i'll call on myself the next i'll um i mean i think i think the community can benefit from having uh some experienced council members stay in office if they're unsuccessful and they run the mayor and i'll just look to our neighbor to the north here for a recent example in longmont the most recent mayor election is two sitting council members who are to the contenders joan peck and tim waters both exemplary public servants

[268:01] you know joan won tim lost by a little bit tim stayed on council he's continuing to serve his community ably well while jonas is the mayor so um i just point to that simple we gotta we got four more hands up but we might move to straw poll here pretty quick on this on this topic rachel matt lauren tara um i i feel like i missed something and this conversation has brought my fever back i think but um why are we like why are the nine of us deciding this isn't this something that should have been decided by the voters and um if this was a scrivener's error and it didn't get in there is this a charter committee question that that should go back to the voters because i don't know why the nine of us should decide this for the city we are not the smartest and like best people in the city to decide this like this impacts the whole city not just the nine of us so i kind of hate it when we as a council think that we should have the answers i think this is for the voters so i don't know how to vote in your straw poll for that erin but this conversation

[269:00] i just don't think it's ours mayor can i clarify please do this is um this is the question of how you want us to write the ballot question the ultimate decision is the voters not yours um like bob said you know it was thought that this was going to be included in the question when this was written before it wasn't and so now there's an interpretation there's a hole and we're trying to fill that hole in the way we write the ballot question the voters will decide whether the hole gets filled or not great i misunderstood the the whole question there because we're weighing in with our opinions on which way is the better outcome so if it's just like uh i don't know how we need to weigh in on the phraseology yes this should go to the voters yeah definitely going to the voters all right matt lauren chair and we'll see we can wrap this up yep sounds good thanks i'll be brief um yes there's a hole in the drafting of 2020 this will clean it up i support the way

[270:00] it is um to do so um to mark's point if if it seems like it's bad taste for someone to want to sit there then then that'll be in the eye of the elector to not support them from here or the next time they run for council furthermore there's i don't see anybody going sort of half cooked if they're already an existing council person into running from where it's like all or nothing um when you kind of run for those races so so i think that's going to be a fair shot so i think this is a good way to clean it up and i hope the voters support this cleanup attached to whatever else goes in there um in that sense but i think this is a good way to clean up what was left hanging very good lauren tara i think it also avoids the possibility that a majority of council could run for mayor and then it you could end up with a very very green council so good point because right lots and lots of people i hadn't even thought about that could run for council okay sarah

[271:01] real quick as i'm going to go with nicole and judy on this one and here's the reason mark is because mark if you ran for mayor i would not want to lose you for city council i would not want to so then my this is true so then my thought would be well should i take a chance and vote for him for may or should i not take it i feel for me it it it would just make it better for me to pick the person who i like the best and so i'm gonna go with uh what juni and nichols harry you don't have to worry okay uh bob i just want to clarify my earlier comment i was when i was speaking earlier i was only speaking to point number one i also disagree with mark with all due respect mark on your proposition on number two but number one is the whole that i think we need to fill okay very good so maybe it sounds like we've got a strong majority here to take uh um staff's recommendations on these two these two points and move them forward um and again mark all respects

[272:02] um two points but looks like we got a majority on that any um any last comments there just to clarify just to clarify just for everyone that these would be separate this would be a separate charter cleanup not attached to the even year ballot language is that correct kathy i was planning on writing them all in the ballot one um so i'm sorry in the even year one so if you want them separate let me know well the only reason is if the even year goes down we still have this sort of hole of interpretation that's sort of hanging there for something that's already built into the charter which is electing our mayor with ranked choice voting so so that first point has to get cleaned up regardless of whether we pass even year or not so just i i i just and if there's and and to be frank if there's other cleanup so to speak then maybe it's a cleanup package that gets tossed in there um but but either way i think it's important for this to be separated out really good point thank you

[273:01] does anyone object to matt's approach i think that's very reasonable i can't see any okay i'm saying not in heads and such that you're not objecting okay so i think um i think tara's had an old hand yes i mean none of your hands are old but you know um i think that brings us to the end of our item um kathy or truce is there anything else we need to address here i haven't thought of anything thank you yup i don't believe so okay great well thanks everyone um i apologize that we went uh way over the time of our meeting but boy that landmarking one turned out to be a complicated issue so appreciate another productive meeting and another set of great discussions any last thoughts before we wrap up everybody looks too tired for another thought okay well i will go ahead and gable is closed at 10 32 pm have a good night

[274:11] [Music] do [Music] foreign