July 14, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[10:01] july 14th uh 2022 meeting with boulder city council the first thursday meeting in recorded history so thanks everyone for following along with us from tuesdays to thursdays we're going to start off uh with a couple of announcements before we get a roll call so let me if we can launch into those please all right code 19 testing and vaccinations so for information provider locations for free code 19 testing go to www.voco.org testing the boulder site is 2445 stazio drive it's open seven days a week 8 am to 6 pm and for vaccine information and provider locations go to www.voco.org covid vaccine next announcement this is about zero fare for better air so during the entire month of august rtd will offer zero fares across its system

[11:02] this collaborative statewide initiative was made possible by colorado senate bill 22180 in partnership with the colorado energy office and it's designed to reduce ground level ozone by increasing use of public transit so current rtt customers will also benefit is you will not have to use or purchase fair products for during the entire month of august during colorado's high ozone season so by taking advantage of free transit in august you can save money on gas and parking avoid the frustration of driving traffic help improve air quality by reducing single occupant vehicle traffic and use your commute to catch up on work listen to music or read a book so for more information please visit our tv site at www denver.com zerofair and then one more uh personal announcement here i'll say uh council member tara weiner uh her daughter is in labor tonight congratulations in advance tara to you and your family the tara will need to

[12:00] pop in and out uh so everyone can have um be aware of that and tara we're all sending you best wishes okay uh you should can we go to the roll call please call the order or i'll call the meeting i will call the meeting to order any leash i'll turn it to you for a roll call all right so getting back in the swing right good evening everyone we'll start this evening with councilmember benjamin mayor brockett president councilmember folkerds present mayor pro tem friend here council member joseph present spear present wallach here weiner here and yates i'm here mayor we have our quorum thanks so much

[13:00] so can we move to the consent agenda please yes sir the consent agenda is item two on tonight's agenda and it includes items a through j great and i'll just actually note before i do any further this is a special meeting tonight it's not one of our regular business meetings so we are not holding open comment anyone was wondering about that we will hold open comment at our regular business meeting next week uh now on the consent agenda any questions or comments from any council members yeah i don't have it in front of me which i'm i'm very disorganized but i will be um voting no on the uh library district aspect of the uh consent agenda just to be clear um i believe that's item 280 is that is that right

[14:00] three or three i'm not quite sure it's two e all right that is the one two e or not two e was the question but we got an answer so uh rachel do you still need a motion to pass the consent agenda if so so moved second all right we've got a motion and a second uh at least i believe this is a roll call yes sir thank you very much we will start the roll call with council member spear yes wallach yes with the exception of 2b 2e is it 2e or b it's 2e to e then all right thank you sir councilmember weiner yes with the exception of 2e that's the library district right yes ma'am okay councilmember yates

[15:00] yes with the exception of item 2e councilmember benjamin yes mayor brockett yes council member focus yes mayor pro tem friend yes council member joseph yes our consent agenda items a through j passed with the three noted exceptions of two e no votes unanimously all right thanks so much everyone now we have uh call-up check-in yes sir our call-up check-ins tonight are item three item three a is the vacation of a utility drainage and ditch easement at 3100 sterling drive that is referenced under adr 2021-00130

[16:00] any interest in calling this one up some shaking heads so it doesn't look okay all right our next item is item number four onto i'm sorry item number five on tonight's agenda matters from the city manager 5a is the community culture resilience and safety tech community non-profit grant structure are you good mary can we turn to you for this one sure and i know that we've got a lot of things to discuss today so i won't talk a lot except that i really wanted to highlight all the work our finance team has been phenomenal in really doing so much work this and the budget moving forward and i just appreciate all the all the insight they've provided um i'll ask cara i don't know if you want to kick that off or if we're just going straight to mark which happy to do as well mark looks like it's you

[17:01] see a car there giving her a chance i apologize i was i had a hard time getting my button to work but um i apologize that i'll do a quick handoff because i know time is up the essence but i just also want to thank mark and charlotte and their internal team that they put together to develop this recommendation for council so i'll hand it over to mark thanks carl nuria uh good evening council uh good to be with you tonight um we're excited to present this item we're uh lifting up a bunch of great uh work of an internal staff group that we'll talk a little bit more about we've been working on this for the last several months ever since the community entrusted us with the extension of the community culture resilience and safety tax if you give me a sec i will begin to share my screen uh in the meantime i'll hand it off to charlotte husky she's our principal budget analyst and has been doing awesome work and facilitating our staff group and she'll be doing the first part of the presentation

[18:07] as soon as i properly share my screen all right charlotte you can take it away great thanks mark hi everyone my name uh my name is charlotte husky i'm a principal budget analyst with a budget office here with the city of boulder and we're excited to be sharing the community culture resilience and safety tax grant framework with you tonight our agenda we'll be walking through a brief history of the ccs the community culture and safety tax as well as the 2021 renewal as well as sharing the development and implementation process that we've been through so far since the 2021 renewal including the steering committee and nonprofit stakeholder focus group sessions and then dive into details of the grant program framework that we'll

[19:01] share with you this evening and then finally post some questions for council at the end so to share a brief history of the community culture and safety tax the ccs tax this was first approved by voters in 2014 and it is the city's main funding mechanism to support efforts to address unfunded capital infrastructure needs for the city voters approved of this tax in 2014 for a three-year cycle going through 2017 this generated approximately 27 million in revenue over the three years and funded 13 projects with the first cycle of the attacks funding a mixture of both city and community non-profit projects and specifically with the ccs1 we funded two community nonprofit projects for ccs2 voters approved of an extension for four years this generated approximately 20 uh

[20:00] 42 million excuse me over the four years with 31 million allocated to city projects and 7.9 million for seven non-profit uh projects next slide last year voters approved of a renewal of the tax in november of 2021 and we renamed the tax community culture resilience and safety tax so ccrs after the uh renewal of the tax this was the renewal of the 0.3 dedicated sales and use tax extended for 15 years through 2036. voters also approved debt authorization for up to 110 million providing us more flexibility with our dollars and the revenue that comes in suggested projects city projects listed on the ballot included a list of projects this is an example here

[21:00] including transportation maintenance projects road and multi-modal path projects and completing fire station three and just a highlight on the ballot language relating to the non-profit portion of the tax there's language that stated using up to 10 percent of the tax revenue to fund a grant pool for non-profit organizations serving the people of boulder and so this is the framework that we'll be talking to you about tonight so really highlighting here and that we formed an internal steering committee to after the renewal of the tax last fall and built upon the work that had been done with the community and and stopped leading up to the renewal and so uh leading up to the tax tax extension renewal in november we

[22:01] performed several engagement sessions with the community and uh this included the bullets here highlights of what we the feedback that we heard from community and this included supporting capital planning grants and not only capital construction projects to fund transpo transformational investments as well as smaller capital projects for organizations with smaller needs supporting projects that have a broad reach to support the entire community enhancing flexibility in the grant administration process and then to ensure transparency and decision making within the decision-making process so the internal process since the renewal of the tax in uh last november we formed an internal staff

[23:00] team consisting of the equity office housing and human services arts and culture office community vitality and finance and really want to thank those members that participated and and helping us draft the grant structure tonight so i just want to thank the team ana sylvia joel wagner and theresa pinkel for their their time to helping us develop this grand structure we've formed a internal staff committee and um started looking at prior processes the feedback that we heard from our engagement sessions uh in mid-2021 leading up to the tax extension as well as performed additional outreach we facilitated non-profit focus group sessions earlier this year to hear from the nonprofit stakeholders this

[24:02] input was uh instrumental in helping us drop the grant structure that we developed and presented to the financial strategy committee a couple weeks ago and to counsel tonight after the review of this framework that we're presenting we will then go back and develop detailed program design and implementation of the criteria of the framework that we're presenting the internal steering committee our internal staff steering committee built upon the community and council uh criteria of goals that aligned for aligned with nonprofit funding these goals were developed leading up to the tax extension last year and so our committee built upon these goals specifically highlighting the second bullet here that we added in as an intended outcome of this funding

[25:02] with the intent to maintain a healthy stable and financially sustainable nonprofit base within boulder providing services to the community we hosted a handful of uh nonprofit focus group sessions and this really informed the framework that we developed that we'll be sharing again thanking the staff from our internal steering committee the equity hhs arts and culture and finance staff that helped to host these and invited our non-profit community members to participate in these focus group sessions we focused on small and medium nonprofit organizations that were not necessarily engaged in previous processes we hosted two sessions with over 15 representatives from 12 organizations across the community that participated to provide feedback and this feedback was very

[26:02] informative to help inform this structure that we're presenting to highlight some of the themes that we heard across the focus group sessions we can characterize them really in three themes so the first theme is grant accessibility and technical assistance the second is collaboration opportunities and the third is flexibility and value under grant accessibility and technical assistance really the highlight that we heard from non-profit stakeholders is that there are many barriers to obtaining obtaining grants and and being able to take advantage of grant opportunities and so um they shared with us these these barriers included um anything ranging from technology capacity resources and so this was something that was preventing them from being able to obtain those grants and funding opportunities to help them

[27:01] move their nonprofit forward we heard from many of the nonprofits and the focus groups that affordable commercial space they had affordable commercial space challenges and um as well as uh highlighting the the outreach and clarity that's needed for the goals of the program and again just stressing the technical assistance that we heard uh during those focus group sessions is a is a key factor for success within their nonprofit organization the second theme that we heard during these focus group sessions were collaboration opportunities so they shared with us that they are interested in problem solving with other organizations with looking potentially to partner with other organizations they also shared with us they are really supportive of working with city

[28:00] staff and really enjoy the partnership that partnership opportunities that current city staff provide and so we heard a lot of great feedback from the nonprofit community of the city staff particularly the grant managers and hhs and the arts and culture office in addition we heard for addressing gaps in community serving facilities so activity centers and really being able to partner together to be able to come together in a space and provide community services within the same facility the third theme is flexibility and value so the this was another theme that we heard of um the size of grants could be scaled to the organization's size size so it could be we heard a range of

[29:03] size of grants that would be meaningful it could be 10 of the operating budget it could be 50 000 to 250 000 were the range of uh dollar amounts that that might be meaningful to these non-profit organizations um there also we also heard that there should be different types of grants available and flexibility within the types of grants to invite participation across many different types of the organizations as well as the flexibility to explore partnerships and other funding sources as well to support the grants they're seeking so now i think i'll hand it off to uh mark to continue with the grant framework yeah thanks charlotte so uh i'm gonna shift gears a little bit and um walk through kind of slowly the different um grant structures and then um we'll pause at the end here

[30:01] um for for questions so um knowing that trying a little bit different approach here so i'm trying to go through this intentionally tonight so um just starting out on outlining the different types there's three different types of as we've mentioned the the first is related to capacity building planning and capital investments so this will be a more intentional approach in inviting organizations in and providing wraparound services that i'll explain in more detail the second is more of a direct capital investment so this would operate like your traditional grants that you think of like the previous ccs processes where there would be a specific project you'd apply for the grant and receive that funding directly it's a little bit more straightforward and then type three related to that last piece that charlotte was alluding to

[31:01] this this community facility need and how we might address that in a little bit a little bit unique type of way so those are the three types that we'll walk through again trying to design a program that recognizes the varied need across many different types of of organizations so i'll refer to this table a few times as financial strategy committee members that have heard this know but i think it's helpful in seeing um each of these three and in the same table and so i'll show this um at the beginning of uh the explanation here and at the end so starting with type one uh the capacity building planning and investments what we're attempting to do here is provide those wrap-around services around our non-profit organizations that need technical assistance to really identify their their space needs

[32:01] what we're envisioning for this is you'll hear me refer to to a cohort essentially we'll be inviting applications uh to apply to the program in this type one those accepted uh organizations would be provided that technical assistance and i'll kind of demonstrate what that process might look like but that that cycle will be once every five years or so and and you'll see these the cycle and the recommended maximum funding these are supposed to be thresholds we might be able to move a little faster in a grant cycle or slower depending on the scale of the grants i'm certainly inviting council feedback on kind of that recommended max level as well we can talk about whether or not that's a firm number or something that we can revisit as we get into the more detailed uh grant criteria development which we'll talk about a little bit later so type one is the

[33:01] cohort model inviting organizations in providing technical assistance and eventually connecting to uh capital funding type 2 is that more traditional direct capital investment so this would be for specific projects identified in a in an application process evaluated and then direct funds go out imagining that we're doing this every couple of years or so and setting aside again in the total 15 year time horizon of of ccrs uh about eight million dollars in that area and then lastly was community facilities which i'll explain in a little bit more detail this would be focused on the feasibility and the planning so that's why it's a much less dollar amount than we're envisioning out of the ccrs 10 percent nonprofit that if there is an identified project in this area we'd be connecting to potentially other other capital dollars so that's why you see a less less of a threshold there so that

[34:00] doesn't make a ton of sense that's okay because i'm going to go through these individually now with a bit more detail give a couple examples and then come back to this table and then we'll be done so back to back to type 1 capacity building planning capital investments so this is intended to be an open competitive process for program participation at the beginning so we would be doing uh some degree of outreach to make sure organizations were aware of this opportunity would be invited to apply there would be a competitive process to be entered into the program accepted organizations into this cohort would initially receive those wrap around services such as technical assistance or other capacity building services so some examples of that may be strategic planning business planning looking at organizational development board development some of those items that put organizations in a really good space to be able to identify their their

[35:00] long-term affordable commercial space needs um we're anticipating that that first phase would include some some dollars some capacity grants as we're envisioning again just recognizing that um it's really hard for some organizations to be able to invest a ton of time in a room without something of value and so certainly there's value in the technical assistance but we we also heard that feedback throughout the focus groups that grant dollars uh that cash the flexible cash is important even early in a process and then the idea is to with some uh technical assistance partners be able to assess each organization's individual needs and develop an approach for each and that might mean capital planning or eventually a capital investment so this would be really intentional that we're inviting organizations into this type 1 grant they're participating through this process they're gay they're gaining value from the process itself but then

[36:01] they're connected to the right plan for long-term capital investment that will keep them in boulder right from from a space perspective and so that might mean capital investment it might mean partnering with a group of of organizations on on a capital investment or there might be another solution it might be a solution through their their landlord on a on a long-term lease arrangement that is affordable and meets their needs and so a capital investment may not be necessary but but they've gained some value from this approach in the beginning this number is an estimate we don't know until we do that outreach and really engage with organizations that may be interested in this type of grant we're thinking somewhere in the ballpark of 10 to 15 some a number that's that's manageable that we can make sure that there's value in each for each organization but also cast as wide a net as possible

[37:02] and then again we'll we'll set a specific criteria after uh we hear council feedback this evening but we're imagining that this is generally for organizations who are in that in that area that need the technical or capacity assistance to define their needs some may not be in that space and that's why we have these these other other grant types so just to outline and process i know everybody's mind works different ways so this would be an example of how this process works after this meeting we would develop specific grant criteria council would approve that criteria we would then open up applications in a parallel way we would be conducting outreach to organizations making sure that's an open competitive process to be in that in the grant program in this type one grant program once you're in that cohort would be

[38:01] assessed of for technical assistance needs connected to those free services have access to those capacity grants through that process we would be identifying need with some some technical assistance third party party partners that would help identify the right plan for each organization which may involve some capital grants so again the importance of setting aside target number for what would be available in this type 1 is that we don't want organizations to come in invest their time and energy in in a plan for for long-term capital investment and then not be able to to provide dollars at the back end right so that's why some of the planning grants some of the capacity grants may be smaller at the beginning the idea is to get these organizations prepared for for a larger capital investment a little bit later into the process okay um shifting gears to type two a

[39:01] little bit more straightforward competitive grant process nonprofits would be invited to apply for specific projects at existing facilities so the idea is that and again this is something that we can further define through specific criteria so so certainly an area that we're inviting feedback on we're generally thinking that these would fall under capital maintenance or enhancement categories that are well defined so one example may be you're in an older building you need to replace your hvac system you don't have the the capital outlay to do that so you would apply for that specific project another thought is to prioritize projects that would help decrease overall operating costs so while these dollars aren't for operations per se they're really focused on kind of that long-term capital investment how could how could we support projects like reinstalling new

[40:01] enter energy efficient windows to lower energy bills or reduce existing data on capital projects things that that could help with long-term sustainability um for the organization and then this was specific feedback from the financial strategy committee is to really ensure that small nonprofits are not competing against large nonprofits in this area that they're really they typically will be looking at different size of grants and so we certainly could develop a different process based on the size of the organization and that matches some of the feedback that we've heard in our various different engagements and then again we're imagining that we don't do this every year but perhaps every other again i'll go quickly because i think this is pretty straightforward but we developed the grant criteria after this uh that will be approved by council then we'll open for applications

[41:01] evaluate those applications and the dollars will go out the door so a little bit more straightforward in this in this type all right and the last is i'll acknowledge is a bit more nebulous but i will do my best to explain what we mean by these type three community facility grants so we heard this um strongly in our most recent focus groups that um there are certain needs uh for community serving services or activities that organizations are interested in working together to to try um and move forward on so again any an example that came up was um a teen center could there be a space where we're providing space for teens at night or on the weekends to just have a safe place to go and hang out and maybe there's some related services some non-profit organizations that have space within the

[42:01] facility that's an interesting idea how would might we move forward on that another idea that came up was a specific center for non-profits and so um we were very interested in trying trying to address these ideas in a way through this through this ccrs so what we're imagining is that this would be an investment in a partnership with city staff acknowledging that some of these ideas may not be fully fleshed out but might be really good ideas and in need of some incubation and so with that we would provide some planning or feasibility dollars in partnership with non-profits for a particular idea and and begin to try and coalesce around an idea or ideas um in the community facility realm and depending on the type of facility or partnership there there may be different financing options right so it might not be ccrs non-profit dollars

[43:00] we could look at ccrs general capital if that's appropriate if it's a public serving facility we could look at other types of partnerships where we bring in foundational or other philanthropic support so it certainly depends on the concept but that's the type of thing that that we would like to work on with the community and as i mentioned ccrs capital could be appropriate depending on the type of project and so acknowledging a little bit more of the chaos and the type 3 approach here but essentially we know there's some really good ideas out there and there are true needs for these community serving facilities and so we would have some type of formal or informal process to to invite those ideas in to further develop with city staff so that we can coalesce them into um into ideas that that could be uh studied and so that's kind of that represented

[44:00] by that one two and three as we get to the we get to the point where we have a handful of projects that uh could uh receive some uh dollars for feasibility or capital planning um that could be through the city depending on the nonprofits it could be to the nonprofits to do the feasibility on their own um that could be very flexible and then again we go through that process and maybe this type this project three has been determined to be not only feasible as a true community need it's something we can reasonably develop um they've completed some capital planning through the the ccrs nonprofit dollars and they're ripe for that capital investment and we would be working with them on what that capital investment strategy looks like so again a little bit it's uh not as straightforward but it does address a need that we we have heard and it invites that partnership opportunity that we think is really important for for long-term success to to identify and and fill some of

[45:01] these gaps all right and then the table again so you can see the three different types here type one that capacity building into capital planning that cohort model a little bit longer grant cycle to make sure that organizations are ready for that capital investment that we're picking the right approach based on the need type two direct capital investment again that more straightforward we have a need here it is here's the amount and there's the grant for it and then this more of a feasibility planning type of grant in the community facility realm and type three and so just a couple quick slides here we had a really good discussion with uh financial strategy committee about what we're really asking council to do in this grant process we know that you've played different roles in different grant processes at different times and so what we're asking council to do this evening uh as you did it originally is

[46:01] is renew the is recommend uh goals of the tax renewal that was informative to get us to this point now you're reviewing the potential grant structure here so feedback on that grant structure and confirming the goals of the program we'll then go design the specific approach and the criteria which you will review and approve we will then set up a process and hopefully some additional staff assistance to help us with evaluation through the different types make those grant determinations and notify council so you're not in the position of formally approving the the grants but you're heavily involved in this process of of creating uh of approving the structure and then approving of the of the specific grant criteria before the the program launches all right recommended next steps and

[47:00] then i'm done is first upon uh nod here this evening we need some help i know a couple of you have pointed out rightly so that how could staff do this at this moment given capacity that we've been talking about we would hire an additional staff resource that would be our first step is to develop a job description and recruit hopefully rather quickly to help with the development of the program we would move in a similar time frame to identify third-party technical assistance partners issue some type of request for qualifications or information so that we have potentially multiple um third-party non-profit third-party technical assistance partners ready to go when we are ready for that type one grant we would design um specific evaluation criteria so given that we have a little bit different cadence with the cycles our goal would be to do

[48:01] intentional evaluation of each type so that if something wasn't working as intended we could change and we could bring that data back to council and say hey we need to make some tweaks around this type 3 or this type 1 in these ways and so that would be really intentional and something we would bring back as a part of the criteria design as i've mentioned several times this is not where we're recommending specific criteria we'll hear a bit of feedback tonight develop that specific criteria and council of the chance to prove approve of that criteria for each grant type later this year and again as i mentioned we'll need to do some additional outreach to organizations that could help inform the criteria development it can also help gain awareness of the different options here given that we're trying many different approaches to to address many different needs it'll be really

[49:01] important to be clear about which type is available when and you know the why behind a little bit more complicated approach to providing these grant dollars all right that is the the end for us um we do have uh three questions for counsel um first on those uh different type of grants then on the framework for uh implementation and evaluation and then last on the timeline and that role of council and improving that that final criteria and i will stop sharing and yield to mayor brockett all right thanks so much for that mark appreciate the presentation all the information all the work that you all have done to get us to this point uh let's start with uh questions for city staff and then we can go on to answering the questions that they asked us so i've got two so far bob and mark

[50:00] thanks i will start with questions and i'll save my comments or or answering questions to later um two questions for first of all charlotte mark thanks so much for that great presentation that was really helpful um two questions for for you guys one is um it sounded to me mark like when you were describing uh type one um some of the um the grant recipients in that cohort could potentially in addition to receiving advice and counsel and planning assistance in the wraparound services you described could also potentially if that planning was successful receive some some capital investment from the city fund is that did i understand that correctly that could be part of of type one that's correct uh could could an alternative model be um that that planning and assistance and wraparound services and so on and so forth be type one but then that organization if if that planning um for fruit and it looked like it was going to be a project that was worthwhile to pursue that then could apply for a direct grant under type type

[51:00] 2 i get the efficiency of of having one application but but some i have to believe that among the 10 or 15 grant recipients per cycle that some are going to be successful and some are not going to be successful in other words you may take 10 on board and and six of them at the end of the planning cycle may look really really great and those then could move on to maybe potentially some some some direct capital investments and others you know you look at it and you say you know this just doesn't make any sense we're not going to go anywhere with this one so it seems like it's you're going to still have um a second application or a second process to to weed out those that are are worthy of of a capital investment direct capital investment those that are not and it seems to me since the the type twos are going to be much much more frequent than the type ones those that are successful in the planning process and type one could simply then apply for a type two uh grant it is that that's an alternative model from a process standpoint is that correct yeah i and i i think it's fair to say

[52:01] that let's say we have 10 organizations that are in that type one um i i think it's fair that three or four may may be um identified only three or four may be identified as appropriate for a larger capital grant i the only thing i would add is that we're not envisioning a supplemental at least as as recommended a supplemental application process once you're in that type one it'll kind of be an evaluation process right and then connection of those capital grants certainly an alternative is is to reapply essentially once that planning is is complete yeah i'd leave that i leave that internal process to you i'm just i'm leading up to what ultimately will be a comment that i'll offer later on in the allocation between type one and type two because um again i get the efficiency of of granting someone the entry into type one but you're not going to know at that point whether they're going to be going to qualify for a direct i might i think your ratio is about right you know maybe 3 out of 10 might ultimately qualify for that and whether they have to go through a whole process for type 2 or or automatically roll into that i'm i'm

[53:00] trying to separate the allocations as between planning and wraparound services from direct capital investments it in my mind it kind of doesn't matter whether they received some assistance before they were shovel ready or they just showed up shovel ready either way it's a direct capital investment so um i'll leave it to you guys to kind of figure out the transition from one to two but i kind of wanted to to draw that line as opposed to those were already and those who weren't ready but i'll save that for the allocation the second of the two questions i have and then i'll shut up and let others ask questions and i'll have comments later is i think i saw on your slides under type two mark uh something about these are capital investments but only for nonprofits with existing facilities and so if a if a non-profit wanted to build a new facility or a new organization showed up that didn't even exist before that wanted to create a new facility they would not qualify for type 2 did i understand that correct i'll caveat by saying that um we know

[54:00] we're not approving specific criteria tonight so we would we would go back and do that i think we were we were assuming that type 2 based on doing a cycle every couple years that the scale of grants wouldn't be significant enough for kind of a new facility right now that might be different if we're looking at small versus large organizations and um setting grant thresholds a bit higher than than we were imagining certainly that's part of um council's feedback this evening is should we invite kind of those larger new facility type of grants within that type two category i think with anything that um the larger the grant we give out the we might not be able to do a cycle as often so that's just a trade-off um i think there's pros and cons of both i think you're generally seeing our approach be let's figure out a way to try to spread as cast of wide as net as possible and so

[55:00] while we're imagining that it's not for for new facilities um it's for investments in existing um i i don't think we were trying to make that rule this evening okay well that's helpful let's not make that rule to see now i guess i'd suggest i mean it seems to me in the 2017 grant cycle um which were all capital grants we did have some grants that were in the range of of um five figures and six figures i think we had one grant with 75 000 and a couple others that were in the low hundreds of thousands so you know i i agree i get the fact that in the first cycle we had two four million dollar grants uh i get we don't have enough money to do those types of things for new facilities but it but it occurs to me that we we could have um uh six figure grants for new facilities and and yeah it might be only five percent of the cost of the new facility or ten percent of the cost but you know for some of these organizations that's that's uh an amount that makes a difference especially if it's on a matching basis because you know having been on the receiving end of one of these grants for an organization i will tell you the power of matching is huge um not only is it the dollars that you

[56:00] receive directly from the city it's the ability to go out to donors and say hey listen your your dollar donation turns into two dollars and that really accelerates uh fundraising so i wouldn't um underestimate the value of a direct grant even if it's even if it's a relatively small one it doesn't have to be millions it could be hundreds of thousands that's all i have on i guess that was kind of a comment and a question so i'll pause there and i'll save my comments on allocations for a little bit later okay vegan mark lauren matt nicole um yeah my first question mark is i'm i'm a little vague on the concept of capacity building can you can you give me a more concrete definition of what's entailed by capacity building as opposed to a capital investment yeah it's a good question i i'll give an example as what we heard from a few of the nonprofits within our focus groups is that

[57:00] um you know we're so busy providing direct services that we haven't even thought about what we do in a few years when our lease ends uh so um you know i need somebody at the front desk i can't participate in a grant planning process and so the capacity building in that case might be you know okay let's provide you a capacity grant at the beginning you could get some temporary help to bring on a staff person to help cover the hours that you were worried about you as the executive director can come into these technical assistance sessions which might be related to the the facility planning so what are your space needs in the long term what types of services do you provide are you public facing do you need office space do you need something larger and begin to envision how much that costs when the lease ends what's your financing structure and and so um you know over a period of time and working with um

[58:00] working with some partner they're able to develop a longer term strategy for for their space needs and so that that first part of planning out the capital needs um providing help to to be able to free up time for some of these organizations to be able to participate in that planning process that's what we mean by capacity building well it would actually that would seem to me to argue a little bit for bob's uh comment that you know from granting a bit of financial relief so that they can participate in the process that then they ought to be um competing for uh grants under stage two i would call it or category two um i assume we don't to spend 10 million dollars just on um sort of rent relief and and um and staffing you you are correct about that i

[59:00] what we were envisioning was that we would not want to make uh organizations that are going through that capacity building process developing those strategies to not have access to the capital that they need if it's deemed that they they really need that capital investment so you know whether it's in a different type or not i think our intention was just to not create an additional barrier my next question is um we're talking about hiring a program manager and hiring third-party consultants do we have a a sense of the total expenditure that we're likely to incur for those categories over 15 years my concern is i really don't want to take 3 million out of an 18 million revenue source and apply it specifically to our overhead um or third-party consultants that's money it seems to me we ought to be um providing to groups so do you have any sense of what that looks like

[60:00] yeah it's a fair question i i think bringing on a program manager um will help right it'll help get the dollars out faster to organizations i think we need that additional capacity um i also think we need the technical assistance partners um while city staff can do a lot to make sure that we're keeping those costs down we have expertise in housing and human services and arts and culture community community vitality as a whole our equity office and providing some of that um support there's just certain areas that we're not experts on and so i think we can do an intentional job of making sure we're limiting those those third-party costs and as a part of the specific grant criteria before we commit to any technical assistance structure we could certainly do some more sophisticated projections and capping certain third-party fees that we would we would

[61:00] be looking at so i hear the concern there in our intent is not to not to spend down the available dollars on overhead but it's really to invest in this type of technical assistance that that will be of value to organizations and okay and my last question is um we speak about the leveraging of public investment dollars how is that going to work and is it going to be a requirement of for applicants i'd like to see leveraging leveraging is good whether it's matching funds that sort of thing um we want to get the biggest bang for our buck so how do you incorporate or make a requirement for leveraging public investment yeah um a good point and something that we've talked about a little bit with the financial strategy committee um i would say that um the reason why we we don't have a specific recommendation in here is because we've heard um it on both

[62:00] sides in terms of of matching and leveraging dollars on one hand it's i think it is important to for for organizations to have some skin in the game and so and also they're they're as bob mentioned there's some power in having city dollars behind an effort to to raise additional dollars on the other hand we've also heard that it can be a barrier for either deciding to apply or even receiving a grant as as we have seen in the past and not being able to meet those matching requirements and so i do think there's probably um a sweet spot i don't i don't know what that is this evening but something we could contemplate with the specific criteria development okay and i'll i'll hold off on the rest for comments thank you thanks uh we got lauren matt nicole thanks aaron and thank you to the team for putting for taking a look at how we can um

[63:02] help offer a wider variety of organizations with the that are doing great work in our community to the with the chance to go after these grants i think that's um really important work that we're engaging in um as mentioned this is one of the main ways we can fund large transformational projects and so i wanted to check in and see have we done outreach to the larger organizations in town to kind of understand what their 15-year plans are just because 15 years is a long time to be you know talking about dividing up this money in a particular way and it would be good to know not just what the smaller and mid-sized non-profits in our community are looking at but um sort of the long-range plans for the whole variety of non-profits in our community yeah thanks lauren it's a good question so there were there were two

[64:01] different uh main engagement windows if you will um there was the first one which was in the lead-up to the renewal of the tax itself so that was back in in 2021 that focused on both organizations that didn't receive see previous ccs funding and those that did those were not um solely but predominantly some of those medium or larger organizations um within that engagement process um the some of the goals that charlotte outlined um some of the feedback that we heard through that process kind of informed where we where we started as we were developing or beginning to develop a process to eventually come back to you with a framework for the grant program we looked at the kind of the engagement that we've done today and realized that we hadn't reached those small and and those smaller nonprofits and so

[65:00] that's why we did some intentional outreach um in the march of this year window so that was kind of our second engagement window and so both of that both of those windows but the feedback received in those windows um were used to develop the framework this evening so we didn't get to everybody and we didn't get to everybody uh this year we got to some folks last year and so again not not perfect but we think it's a pretty good representation of um of where the nonprofit community as a whole is at thank you um i was also wondering how did we come up with the amount of money in each category and what was that um sort of suggestion that we see laid out here based on yeah i can tell you it's not a scientific uh formula behind those those numbers i the intent is that we have adequate capital dollars

[66:00] available for type one organizations that go through the whole process we felt it was really important um charlotte talked about the the value of their time the value that there's value of these grants at the end so we really didn't want to pull organizations through a planning process and have there not be capital dollars at the end if it's deemed appropriate i'm not sure 10 million 8 million 500 000 are the right thresholds we were more looking at that as giving some guidance as to over the 15-year time horizon how much dollars may be available in those areas we could certainly take an approach where we're not assigning dollars per se we're evaluating the merits of each project and each type and kind of doing some evaluation um as we go through the program um so i think in general there's just some some goals that we were trying to establish within those targets one being the availability for those type one

[67:00] two kind of establishing that we wouldn't be making those three four million dollar grants and type two that would be more of that 250 to a million dollar range in type two and that type three we're really not talking about capital investment we're talking about planning and identifying other other um [Music] other financing strategies so that's kind of the general approach and the numbers are less important when you think about it that way thank you amen nicole thanks aaron and mark and charlotte thanks for the thoughtfulness um to come up with this i mean this is this is hard it's hard work to come out with the money you have and come up with these criteria and find ways to meet the needs at a different levels for for nonprofits so i appreciate that a lot uh bob and lauren kind of touched on a few of my questions so uh thanks uh to them for saving me some oxygen um one question i have is about flexibility about beyond sort of the 10 million

[68:00] that's there in tier one just because we had a long runway of 15 years i'm curious about if we do identify something really transformative do we have the ability to pivot um and really make that change because i'd hate to see something come across the table and say no well we anchored that down you know 10 years ago so you know sorry so i i want to know do we have flexibility and really sort of as caveat to that at what point do we check in on maybe perhaps recalibrating this as as needs maybe change or as we see successes or failures of the program and so i was kind of wondering on what that cadence is and what chance we have to at least invite conversation about going beyond the 10 million in tier one should we find something that's just irresistible yeah it's a really good question uh we do plan to build in that intentional evaluation of each type uh and you know with trying something new uh trying to be innovative i think it's important uh to to know that not everything we're gonna get right 100 of the time and so

[69:00] um if we are in a situation and this would be our intent with with evaluation design is if we realize we've got 20 applications for type 2 and we're really not seeing a huge number of smaller non-profits take advantage of type 1 even after with outreach well it might be a reason to recalibrate um how you know the frequency of type 2 then the dollar amount of type 2 um that that would certainly be valid um other way around if we're seeing a ton of interest in in type 1 one we we could look at different thresholds or the frequency of those cohorts so i think you're right it's really important um i think we can bring that back more intentionally in the specific criteria in outlining what are those uh future touch points with council how would we bring you the the evaluation i also think establishing um you know some some consistent measurement on how we're meeting our overall goals would be important to that

[70:00] as well but appreciate the point and i think there would have to be those touch points that within the evaluation appreciate it thanks mark nicole also thank you for your thoughtfulness and all your work on this um and i'm gonna apologize in advance for not sending this question earlier because i think it is likely something you may need to look up and so it's okay if you don't have an answer um can you speak just even generally to the characteristics of nonprofits that received funding in previous cycles you know were they big are they small were they medium um and just you know speak a little bit to um how you see that changing at all in this next version in terms of which nonprofits are getting support yeah it's a good question um and i'll start and if um one of my colleagues wants to kick me virtually if i'm i'm wrong here i it was a mixture i think

[71:00] predominantly they they tended to be medium or larger organizations that received grants um because of the scale of the grants and and how we developed those in previous iterations there were only i believe nine organizations that received uh grant funding between the two cycles in in one and one and two and uh the sizes uh varied there were some as small they think as maybe 250 500 000 and then there were a number of larger grants in the million dollar range or or more um so i i believe there in the iterations there are a couple large grants in ccs1 um in the millions and then and two i think the intent was to spread that out a bit more so um i think that the number was um a bit higher um if i'm remembering that correctly so we we started to spread the net a bit but again they were typically larger larger awards thank you

[72:01] all right looks like that's all the questions i had all my questions answered by other people so thanks everybody thanks for all those answers mark and charlotte thank you for your role in the presentation as well it's very informative okay so we got three questions to answer i'm going to read them real quick and then we can go through them one by one so they are does counsel support the three different types of grants as proposed discounts will support the proposed framework for program implementation evaluation this council support the proposed process and timeline for council approval grant criteria so let's kick it off with the do we support the three different types of grants as proposed and we've bob with not about the different available in the allocation it's all good okay i want to give you all my comments i don't know which questions they answer uh first of all i would um when we get to criteria i would suggest staff not limit um these to existing facilities or maybe

[73:01] existing organizations that want to move into new facilities and there may be new organizations that don't exist today may want to create facilities so i would not limit it to things like elevators and hvac existing facilities i know that new facilities can be more expensive but i wouldn't foreclose those necessarily um i would as i foreshadowed in my question break up the planning and wrap around services in type one from the actual grants and type two and that could include both those people who are shovel ready right away versus those people who go through type ones i would really break that up and really make too limited to grant making um for for capital regardless of whether they went through the type one planning or they came to already planned and for that reason my final comment is i would actually shift the allocations a bit i think it's too heavy on type one and two light on type two um as lauren indicated you know there's there's a there's a chance that there could be some transformative or transformational

[74:01] um proposals make to us and and if all we have available to us is is eight million dollars over the next 15 years that's not very much money conversely i think if if we limit type one to capacity um planning and um and organization those wraparound services i don't think we need 10 million dollars and i get the fact that you can bring this back to future councils and rebalances but but let's try to get it right the first time or at least as right as we can get it now in 2022. so i'll just throw some numbers out there and people can agree or disagree i would actually um uh take the type one down from 10 million dollars to down in the in the range of four to six million dollars just picking numbers out there and i would actually do a range um rather than being precise on numbers i would give future councils and future staff a little bit more flexibility so i would take it from ten down to four to six and limit it to that planning and wrap around services and then i would transfer that money um and type two uh from eight million i'd i'd increase

[75:00] that to in the range of 12 to 14 million i think that adds up uh and then i would leave type three i finally typed three 500 000 is just fine so those are those are all my responses whether they're responsive to the questions or or otherwise those are all my comments thanks bob uh rachel then mark no calling myself um i will say i agree with bob that i would put all of the um tier two money in one pot and so i wouldn't have people who are um in that first category sort of separately applying for what i think of as the second category of funds that just seems like a mismatch and and maybe a little bit unfair that if you get into the program you also then have access to additional funds um that other people can't really vie for if i'm understanding it correctly and if i'm not please please do correct me so um i would agree with shifting it and i don't know you know i i don't know how much thought was given into or put into how to structure the program but

[76:01] um it seems like it might be more feasible for us to just have money set aside to pay a third party to help shepherd people through the process rather than us trying to take that on ourselves so i might take that amount way low and outsource it and i will just say that my um my 10 year on council has been basically only during pandemic so all i have seen is that we are you know we always hear we're short staff we can't add anything we're just so not nimble that it's i don't know that this is the right time although i totally appreciate the the creativity and and um and what we're trying to do here it it just seems like we're always kind of struggling um somebody complained to me this week that it was taking over a year to get a permit approved um you know we're we're way behind where we want to be on the hill and stuff so like us picking up a whole nother program

[77:00] and using this you know tax money to do that it just feels like a mismatch for where we are so i i i don't like saying it but i think i'm probably a no on on numbers one and two i don't think i would do that first grant i think i would just um say that we want to set aside some to hire i know that there are non-profits for example that do this work that help people write grants and and figure out what they need for strategic planning so um i think that's where i am thanks rachel uh mark myself jeannie lauren i want to start with the lauren's comment i think it is very important uh and i agree with her that we have some capability of entering into a transformative project somewhere during this 15 years and whether that's help for bmoca whether that's a performance facility that we we badly need but i think i think we're missing an opportunity if we don't

[78:01] leave some room for that sort of thing i know we want to be more aggressive in in funding uh smaller groups i think we can do that um but we still need to leave something out there for a special transformative project um and so yeah i very much agree with lauren's comment on that i agree with bob i might even take that category one down to three million dollars i just the concept of eating up too much of this tax money with overhead and consultants um troubles me um this is money that i want to see going to uh organizations more than consultants and um as rachel mentioned there are some groups in town that for little cost will help um non-profits strategize and make applications and i think we should be leaning on that and if we're not

[79:02] going to go in that direction i'd like to have a really precise budget as to how much we want to spend of this 18.5 million dollars on that sort of thing because to me it's not as productive as getting money in the hands of the groups i'm also a little concerned that that because i understand it and i only heard this this afternoon that in terms of the the focus groups we looked only at small and medium-sized uh arts organizations and the larger ones were not even in the room and i i don't know why that should be um they ought to have their say in their voice as well even if we don't look to them to dominate the allocation of money that there certainly should have been an opportunity for them to uh express their views and i think we kind of missed an opportunity there um and uh i think that's most of what i've got i

[80:01] would i would probably take tier one down to three million dollars and we can always adjust by the way if we have 50 groups applying and we need to put another 500 thousand dollars into that category we can make it right later but i would start with the assumption that 3 million is going to go for the planning and services and 15 million will be available for actual capital expenditures whether it's a new facility whether it's an existing facility whether it's replacing the hvac i would like to see the bulk of the money in that category because that's what people voted for this was an infrastructure tax um and people assumed it was an infrastructure tax and i think we ought to be focusing on the infrastructure needs of our not-for-profit sector and that's where i want to see that the bulk of the money go and that's it thank you very much thanks mark uh i'll go ahead and call on myself after which will be genie lauren nicole and tara and i'll say again thank

[81:01] you for all your hard work on this and also for getting maya and marx and matt's questions answered ahead of time i think what bob said i think agreed with all of it i think that was that was all on target in terms of his comments uh i will say though that maybe more with mark's numbers like maybe closer to that 3 million but although i wouldn't pick a number i think the idea of a range is is good like let's get this going and see how things are working out and and without you know making a firm commitment to exactly uh a precise number of millions and and also just to keep out there that like lauren said that possibility of uh transformative investments you know that they don't have to run into the seven figures to be transformative and even whether they're in existing or new facilities um and then you know rachel made a good point that i've been thinking about as well about staff capacity so i really like the idea of assisting non-profits you

[82:02] know in you know helping them figure out what their next steps are what their needs are and getting them some hand-holding to the point where they can apply for for a capital grant uh but agree with the comments that have been said about let's look for some third parties and um so be careful about over committing um staff time i know we're possibly hiring a new person but also from my uh earlier questions heard it might involve a number of other staff members across the organization in terms of this capacity building so i would be just add a real big caution about not over committing the workload of city staff given how we're struggling with that right now uh but looking forward to the next steps here and um and i think we're kind of grouping our comments i'll just say i think uh i really like how you're talking about the council setting up the criteria but not being involved in the awarding of the grant should be proven we grant so i thought that was fun all right that's it for me you got junie

[83:00] lauren nicole tara thank you very much erin i think i'm in the minority after everything that i've just heard from all of you um i think some good points were made but nonetheless um i believe type 1 is necessary it's important we've talked about this on council we've talked about this at the financial strategy committee or hope or at least what or values are is to empower small non-profit or grant seekers and i believe type one does that it builds the capacity planning and capital investment and it says instead of of application for a direct grant organizations would first be invited to apply in the program prior to distribution of the grant so and it would offer technical assistance to determine their specific approach to address this long-term affordable commercial space needs so i

[84:02] really think this is very important it brings players as part of the process that wouldn't be part of the process and also i just don't think that inclusion diversity that we talk about on council could be passed on or left to a third party that's that's just not the way i believe that we should you know do dual work council so i would just agree to the way that staff has planned it and presented to us and if council decide ultimately to make any change i don't think it should happen right now i think it should go back to the financial strategy committee for us to really look at the benefit and the drawback because three million dollars or four million dollars what does that really mean what is the impact what will be the

[85:00] impact on these smaller uh you know nonprofits that we want to help we want to bring them as players into that ecosystem as part of this process thank you for that ginny lauren nicole and tara thanks um so i think i really appreciate the three different kinds of grants that you've come up with i think those are really well thought out um and i think i just feel uncomfortable with committing right now to how those are going to play out over the next 15 years i would support that sort of the type of allocation that you have set up right now maybe for the first year or the first set of allocations so that you're kind of running that program one like a pilot program and then as that progresses we could

[86:01] evaluate and see if that's how we want to continue um if that's the kind of allocation spread that we want to continue seeing or if we might change it in the future because i think that we just don't know yet what kinds of projects will come you know what kinds of transformation we'll see out of type one um grant funding and so i think or at least i don't maybe maybe you guys are all very aware of that but um so i'd like to see maybe more of a pilot project style setup and then a value around another round of evaluation to determine sort of the long-term allocation and um then in terms of implementation and evaluation i really appreciated the points that you had in there you know i think we always need to look at balancing the cost of doing all of the evaluation

[87:00] everything like that as you know people have been hinting at so it might be nice to see what the overhead percentages are that we're looking at if there's any kind of ballpark numbers we could throw at that just so that we can you know or the financial committee or someone can look at whether or not those make sense or they're worth that cost compared to just giving that money to the nonprofits in our community that are doing the work and yeah and if we're gonna run a pilot round i would support trying to look at non-profits that we could use um to help provide kind of that incubator as opposed to hiring staff long term if we don't know exactly what the five-year layout is or that kind of thing for this program thank you thanks lauren nicole mintera thank you um i think i most closely

[88:00] align with juni on this topic um i just really appreciate all the thought and intention that staff have put into this engaging with groups that didn't participate in previous cycles um i really appreciate the focus on flexibility um in 2022 flexibility seems to be key for everything right now and i appreciate that there are some evaluation uh points put in to see whether or not this has happened uh having the effects that we expected to um and i really like the idea of giving more opportunities to groups that haven't been able to take advantage of previous cycles for whatever reason um i am in favor of the idea of uh having a city staff person in charge of this i think especially if we're looking at working with smaller nonprofits and engaging with them there is a component of relationship building that is really critical for some of these smaller nonprofits and having someone within the city feels like a

[89:01] really important role to me rather than a consultant who may change may just be there for a little while but to have a long lasting relationship that these groups can build um to me that's part of the kind of assistance and support that we're giving to the nonprofits that are applying so i think i may have touched on some of the other questions there but i am a yes to these mr nicole tara that matt coming back it's great to be almost last because then you get to hear all the great things people say i was i think i mentioned that i was on that 2017 community culture and safety tax working group and what was the most exciting thing about it was it was an opportunity to think big you guys know me i don't usually think big you know actually but this is our opportunity to do that and so i think in my opinion with the astronomical construction costs and

[90:01] building costs and materials costs that i would like to see most of this even for the smaller um non-profits to be used for capital projects and for bigger projects like even within the smaller if we could think big and if we think what do we remember about the 2017 i mean i would say scott carpenter department sure that was a city project but meals on wheels i believe that that's when the building was built and so it's an unusual opportunity and i believe that i'm going to agree with mark that the community is expecting something that is visionary and so i'm hoping that that all doesn't get lost and everybody said great things i don't really have much opinions on anything else besides that i hope that we don't um lose sight of the purpose of this particular tax

[91:02] and then i'll make a quick comment and sum up that's right thanks aaron and uh i really just actually great uh comments from from all my colleagues it uh actually kind of informed what i was gonna say so i appreciate all those those great words i i will start with um hearing hearing well what what what rachel said and you know i think we all kind of i think we all need to take some pause realizing we're we're adult we're you know we're a day late and a dollar short on a lot of things and how how do we get caught up and our ambition is kind of getting grounded by reality um and that's a hard thing but there's some truth to that so thank you rachel for bringing that up but where does that bring here i do like the three criteria or the the um i'm good with sort of where we're at i think more or less i would tend to want to lean towards mark's comments that that capital is really key

[92:00] in my experience with working a lot of nonprofits as much as it's good to do capacity building those tend to carry ongoing costs and so if they get a bump in some of that that's great for the short term but they tend to want it then they're sort of hung um on the burden of that perhaps long term so so there is some of that that occurs with some nonprofits so i'm a little concerned about putting too much weight in that without that long-term financial stability for a lot of non-profits being known and they not knowing it themselves a little bit so i do think capital is really really important because that's where i think a lot of our opportunity is in our community to um foster a lot of the goals that we have um so so that's i would like to see us recalibrate a little bit but i do want to just really acknowledge the great work that that mark and charlotte have done i think they got us a long ways to where we need to be on this um so that's what i would say thanks thanks nicole you have some dad yeah i just had um just a question for mark um building on matt's comment um that he just made

[93:00] um did the nonprofits that you engaged and talked with about how to do this funding know that this was one time funding that it wouldn't be long term so they were they were aware of that is that right that's right and and the the intent of the the capacity building assistance would be to get ready for capital investment so the goal of the program remains what what i agree with some of the comments is what was the goal of the voters right which is that long-term capital investment in nonprofits and so a little bit longer path to get there but but the intent is really that long-term investment yep okay cool and you know i think that capacity building right itself can be really transformational um it doesn't have to be something um specific to a new piece of the building or something like that right building that capacity within our community that starts to transform us to especially in these nonprofit environments that are building a lot of the social infrastructure that we have in our

[94:03] thanks city all right well um i just wanted to follow up um i thought uh junior made some great comments and just want to emphasize that i think an important goal of this program is to make sure that smaller non-profits and particularly you know those that might be you know minority-owned or female-owned who might not always have a crack at larger dollar amounts that they get the support that they need you know to move forward and move on to the next level so you know i think that's really important piece of this i think the the the different kinds of approaches we've talked here i think can potentially accommodate that i really appreciate that um judy raising that at that point so i'm afraid uh mark and charlotte we have given you feedback to this all over the map um so it's a it's a little hard uh to interpret exactly where to go from here uh except i think you know you're getting you know some some feedback that that may be some some

[95:01] adjustments to the approach you know might be desired we have some council members are like great just go for it and a number of others you're like yeah maybe if you can change around the way it works i i i'll leave it up to you to kind of say what you think might come next but if we might have another round uh another check in before you do go on full implementation i'll just mention that i hate to make more work for anybody or take more council time but uh what's what's your thinking here uh mark and charlotte and others from based on our feedback yeah i appreciate that mayor i appreciate all the feedback uh this evening uh it sounds like you like it but you want some changes so i i think we can um take the notes from uh tonight i agree i think a checkpoint before we're kind of full-blown implementation would be helpful um i'm not sure on timing of that quite yet we can do some work on that i think generally what i'm hearing is support for the the different types some

[96:01] flexibility perhaps some additional dollars that we're really locking in and making sure that it's available for larger capital without losing some of the intent of getting at um some of the smaller organizations that haven't had access previously so i think we can take that that feedback sharpen our pencils and and come back one more time before we um kind of finalize the implementation strategy does that does that sound like a good middle ground it does to me i i think you know that was very well said mark in terms of i think the variety of feedback that happened so is uh and council and maria is that okay to like maybe get another update a shorter update you know in a little bit of time with maybe proposed revisions and next steps i'm seeing some modern heads and thumbs from our perspective okay great uh mark did you want to come on yeah i i just wanted to support

[97:00] junie's um suggestion that it also passed through financial strategies i'm not sure we did a good enough job looking at this previously and i'm not sure our commentary was was sufficiently thoughtful and maybe we could do a better job at the next iteration um so that would be uh my suggestion i certainly would support uh junior's idea of having the financial strategies take another look at it before it comes back to council okay i'm i'm seeing faces looking generally okay about the next steps uh so speak up now if you feel like this isn't the right next step to take all right i've seen no hands raised okay well thanks thanks again for all of your very hard and creative and detailed work on this and for being open to scatter shot feedback and i have great

[98:02] confidence in your ability to to come up with the next step that will work for council in the community thanks mayor thanks council appreciate the time thanks so much all right um alicia what do we got next right so next under still under matters from the city manager we have item 5b which is the overview of housing and human services community services and investments you can go straight to elizabeth great thank you good evening council my name is elizabeth crowe it's good to see you again i'm serving as deputy director for housing human services so glad to be in that role i'm going to share with you as was asked a brief overview of program services and assistance through hhs that which we provide directly through our staff and also some critical services or examples of critical

[99:00] services that are provided through our investments or with support through our investments to our non-profit partner agencies let me stop there and start sharing powerpoint if you'll bear with me oh and elizabeth i don't know if the clerk's office has a copy of your powerpoint but if you are having a computer hopefully you can hear me it literally

[100:00] just went blank hang on just a moment yes emily has it yeah emily has it on standby yes i thank you i'll leave the rescue thank you yeah exactly can you hear me okay you can okay great i can see you again as well great thank you emily so let's go to the next slide so very briefly and i will try to be brief so we have plenty of time for discussion um we'll just very briefly go over the mission and strategy again touch on some of the direct services that our hhs department provides additional services through our investments and then there's a special request as well this evening given the supreme court decision on june 25th our 24th rather to just have a quick review of some reproductive health services for our boulder community so happy to do

[101:01] that as well and then we'll have some questions for discussion so i just want to start by reminding us all of our mission for the housing and human services department it is for us to strive for all people in our community to thrive and to help make sure that everyone in this community experiences boulder as a just inclusive and equitable community and of the um of those commitments one of the key commitments for our staff and oftentimes the most challenging is the third bullet point down which is addressing systemic inequities it's not enough for us to really respond to the urgent and critical and immediate needs but transform our community for the better in order to achieve that equitable community one of the things that we've been working on within our department the last couple of years has been to really focus on our goals

[102:02] and in in short you know what we're about is making sure that this community is affordable for everyone who needs and wants to live here and that it's also inclusive that anyone who lives here really can experience boulder in a welcoming manner next slide please so the housing human services department provides a lot of direct services and assistance from our community-facing program staff and case managers and these services are really aimed at people experiencing low income or who are experiencing other socioeconomic or health barriers based on income or other disparities included those that are rooted in discrimination due to people's identity or circumstance and within hhs our staff communicate really closely with each other about community members needs we have the

[103:00] ability to make referrals within our departments just looking at the list of services here they might include between our older adult services case management staff and our staff who are managing the food tax rebate program or between our human rights manager and our community mediation team or families who are experiencing financial challenges with rental assistance to those program areas to get them the help that they need a number of our staff are spanish bilingual and bicultural and we also communicate both freely and frequently with boulder county colleagues those in other municipalities and our non-profit partners just to note here that for any community members who are watching online who are interested in finding out more about these programs we are able to you you would be able to acquire the pdf version of this slideshow and click through they're all

[104:00] hyperlinked however the city website if you just go to housing and human services and do a search for any kind anything that you need you should be able to get there and again i'm happy to speak to any one of these programs when we get to the questions and discussion at the end next slide so in terms of our investments the majority of services available in our community are not really provided directly through hhs but our non-profit organizational partners and there are hundreds of community programs that are coordinated and managed by them each year among the investments that we make in housing and human services these three funding programs you see listed here are a primary vehicle for supporting human services so this does not include our housing affordable housing fund or those types

[105:00] of sources and i will say i've been very fortunate to have worked really intimately with these programs in the last several years and the non-profit grantees that run them and council member spear mentioned in the earlier section how important it is for our city staff to have those trusted relationships and do that relationship building with our nonprofits um and it's really a great team of us in hhs that work to do that each day we're fortunate to have resources that we are able to purpose local dollars to support these organizations and do a lot of public good and to do it annually the note i have there at the bottom is just to say that these three funding programs are not the total again of what we provide in hhs we have separate funding contracts going out for homeless services for rental assistance and a

[106:00] smaller number but still significant good comes from some off cycle grants that we process next slide please the next several slides will offer a snapshot at the kind of programs that we do support through our investments and i've included in this some of the services that we know are most commonly and critically needed by community members but again happy to answer any questions council member has about about other services first i'll note you can see on the bottom there that the boulder county housing and human services has a resource guide that is available online it's very comprehensive it's a bit of an a to z list of resources available including for city of boulder residents if you don't mind clicking through emily you can click twice so for rental and financial assistance and food this really comprises a lot of the

[107:01] funding that we allocate out to organizations like emergency family assistance association the food organizations that you see here and to note even though boulder county runs the emergency rental assistance program we do make a lot of referrals to community members to that source and through the housing helpline the number for and the email address address for which are listed there and again while this is not an inclusive list it represents a lot of the organizations that have the doors open if you will to many of our community members and can frequently and freely make referrals among each other next slide please so in terms of homeless services and sheltering again the organizations listed here are those for which we have funding contracts for a wide range of

[108:00] services not an inclusive list so for example the lodge feet forward are just two of many other organizations that provide services in our community the note there about focus reentry this is actually true for a number of organizations who provide assistance to homeless community members even though that's not necessarily the core of what they do so if we look at it that way it's actually a much longer list of agencies that we have a relationship with and that are providing services in our community we go to the next one for mental behavioral health always in need and certainly a need that has been much more pronounced through the covid pandemic with the table mesa incident the wildfires all of the disasters that our community has been experiencing our primary mental health center of course is mental health partners listed

[109:00] there in the middle they are the largest agency locally for these services clinica boulder community health are obviously also very large agencies that we really rely upon to provide ongoing professional care at a number of different levels but we're also really fortunate to have organizations some of them smaller right that have nonetheless integrated mental health support into their work so organizations like el centro amistad out boulder county are are good examples of that and there are many others and the goal there you know our own support strategy is that we do want to provide support to as many diverse community groups as possible because they've already got the trust of the community members that they serve uh one note that the pillar program listed on top i didn't really want to take out the room to spell that out but it stands for prevention and intervention for lifelong

[110:02] alternatives and recovery and we actually support that program for both educational component as well as direct treatments for people experiencing substance use disorder lastly i'll just note that while we don't have a funding agreement or currently financially support the jewish family service boulder county crisis counseling program it's one that many community members are not aware of so just wanted to take the opportunity to highlight that and provide that resource so those are the three slides um i've shared with just an overview of some of these services that are available in our community if we want to go to the next slide i can just briefly thank you share a little update on how our what reproductive health services are available to boulder community members and how our organizations that are working in this field are doing

[111:02] we're really fortunate to have many compassionate reproductive health care providers and advocacy organizations in our community and the city has funding relationships with most of the organizations listed here none for abortion services um all for other means of support that they have requested and then and accordingly receive funding we regularly keep in touch with program staff from all of our funding agencies about our investments to hear how they're doing what challenges they're having and um have been able to check in with these organizations um since june 24 um because there are they're still doing the work um they're very committed to it even more so in a way given the additional anxiety and fear and a lot of stress that community members are having and providers as well and they're really working at this point to

[112:00] continue to meet the need of community members and to try to track trends and plan for ripple effects that might come upon them as a result of the supreme court decision on roe roe vs wade and we don't really know yet um what those impacts are going to be except that organizations like boulder valley women's healthcare center have been experiencing a double triple the amount of calls coming in from local community members as well as folks out of state we can assume that to some extent that's going to continue and there may then be other effects on organizations providing other reproductive services many of these agencies also provide or work to provide gender affirming care to our queer and trans community members and again it's i think it's safe to say that many in that community have been expressing additional anxiety and and fear lately

[113:02] due to political climate uh the one thing i did want to point out under boulder county public health there's mention there of a lark coalition lark is long-acting reversible contraception that's actually a coalition that had been going on of providers which was on i'm told a bit of a hiatus during covid but are now ramping up again because you know hopefully more capacity as we enter different phases of covid but also just given the june 24 supreme court decision and really wanting to stay more connected with each other for networking so if you want to don't mind to go to the last slide emily i'm i'm finished now the presentation i'm happy to ask emily to go back in the slideshow if you need to see some of those earlier slides um otherwise happy to take um questions and comments from council members thank

[114:00] you thanks so much elizabeth that was really informative and very well put together i really appreciate that so questions slash comments from council members uh nicole yeah thank you elizabeth i really just appreciate that overview especially knowing it came together on relatively short notice so really really appreciate your effort there um one of my questions is whether um you know over the last few months as kind of prices of everything are skyrocketing as rents are going up and things like that are you seeing upticks and service needs in specific areas and if so what are the areas where you're seeing the greatest need sure i i think it's i think it's safe to say and i'm kind of imagining some of our non-profit partners and what they might say or nod to or shake their head to really everything um you know some of the conversations we've been having among staff and with other partners just for programs like our rental

[115:01] assistance program and our eppers program have been wow we're not seeing any slowdown in needs for rental assistance and it could be a lot of things including that people are now having to pay more for groceries more for gas you know all of these inflation impacts um and that means that they're now not able to to you know to take care of rent as much either food is certainly an increasing expense i think folks might have seen some news coverage lately um from some of our non-profit partners who are putting the call out the need for more food um mental behavioral health continues to be a challenge and one of the challenges as i'm sure council is aware is that um the staff that we have in our nonprofit sector are working very very hard and that the trends are still really skyrocketing in terms of the need coming out of covet and other disasters

[116:01] and there really is a national shortage of providers it takes a while for people to go from i'm interested in getting into this field to being able to be certified and even more so be able to handle the kind of um increased level of need that's something that we hear pretty consistently um whereas before maybe there were a you know certain percentage of people really in crisis um and others who were really get what they need from more moderate therapies the number of people who are really at right at that crisis mode including including experiencing suicide ideation is really much greater than it was before um so it's not i'm i'm sorry that that's the answer but what we hear pretty much is that in every area of need um those needs are are still very much there thank you for thank you for that and um you made a comment that made me just wonder at this time of year you typically would would groups typically

[117:01] start seeing slow downs um in service need or that's a good question um not necessarily i'm gonna i'm gonna noodle on that maybe and get back to you but okay yeah maybe yeah let me make note okay so it sounds like need is going up pretty dramatically across every aspect of of services okay thank you um and then i just have one other question then i'll give it to somebody else to ask questions um you mentioned that the city has financial relationships with all the reproductive health organizations but that the money that the city is giving to these organizations is not used for abortion services did i hear that correctly and if so could you explain why is it a formal constraint or what is the what's the reason there sure and actually thank you for asking that i should clarify we actually don't have a funding relationship with planned parenthood um but all the other

[118:00] organizations we do um one way to actually answer the question is that we um our funding committees and um facilitated by staff consider applications that are for funding and programs that are requested and um so that's what we consider and at least that to this point uh we haven't received any requests for um for funding for abortion services um the ones that i did list there are really just even among them quite a range so for example boulder valley women's health you know we provide some funding for their clinical staff but also a lot of sexual health and reproductive health education um the genesis program and the generations program within boulder county health uh genesis is specifically for low-income teen mothers and the generations program is much more broad range of services but that include reproductive health education for siblings and other family members of

[119:01] those teen mothers and then thinking about clinica boulder community health we fund those programs for other sorts of health services but not necessarily for um pregnancy uh care or maternal care thank you um and i miss that i have one more question so last last one colleagues if anybody wants to jump in after this um so my question is around you know things that we know are predictors of increased homelessness right this is certainly an issue that we are all hearing about a lot in the community many people are concerned about this um you know is this is a sort of increase in rental um rental need and i think maybe i've asked this question before is it predictive right can we use this as an indicator that hey things are about to get a little bit worse um is there is there anything there that we can use as sort of a leading indicator of where we're

[120:00] headed because i worry about people you know who are already on the edge absolutely access to housing which then just increases the struggles that we're already experiencing with homelessness absolutely i think the answer to that is yes um a more detailed question i would love to be able to consult with our um our epress program team and some other colleagues but the answer is yes and whether or not the you know um you know kind of the the pressure point came from another bill or another crisis i think just that dynamic where so many families and individuals are really right on the edge and it only takes one more illness you know one more situation um to push them over um i will say again like just in terms of the eppers program the tenant advisory group that advises that program actually was having their meeting earlier this evening as well and to date

[121:01] we've been able to expend almost two hundred thousand dollars in rental assistance and the average request um has been uh around fifteen hundred dollars and so um that's just kind of telling right as to the degree in the number we're getting around an average of 21 requests per month and and so the need is there but i mentioned earlier that you know staff and our partners have been talking like gosh we're not seeing this slow down at all um so i think that factor is probably um another telling indicator as well thank you so much sure any others well seeing none elizabeth i'll just thank you again and just remark on what a great array of non-profit partners we have in the community right we're very fortunate to have so many good intention people working to keep people safe and healthy in our community

[122:00] it's inspiring agree thank you so much for having me absolutely all right uh so folks our next item is it's the last item but it's two two and a half hours do we want five minutes before we dive into that i yeah i'm getting more or less not so it's just five minutes okay 7 58 we'll come back eight eight o'clock even all right see [Music] [Music]

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[130:52] take us into our last item please yes sir that is item 7a under matters from the mayor and members of council it is the council process

[131:01] change proposals uh well thanks so much for that and mayor i think i'll kick it off before handing it off to taylor but as you know typically we put both work plan and council process improvements in uh the same retreat that we have in january and this year we knew we'd have a lot of interest in the work plan and we realized that perhaps it was unrealistic to ask incoming council members to weigh in on things that perhaps they'd like to see change in the council process haven't only gotten here uh recently um so we wanted to separate those out and add this merry mid-year sort of review versus the midterm review that we'll do in january to really focus on process changes now that this new council body has had more time to really experience the council process as a whole i know many of you know that the council process changes have traditionally focused on those administrative items like length of meetings and what are the working agreements you all want to have as a council body changes you may want to see to in-person meetings etc

[132:01] it's not necessarily intended to be a place where additional work plans are did and again just mention that we'll have that opportunity again um to do a check-in at our midterm check-in in january but um i know that we were running a little bit tight on time and um wanted to just mention that and before i hand this over to taylor to get us started on it uh since i did mention the work plan count the council work plan priorities um i want to just say that you'll be receiving a link tomorrow about a dashboard staff has been working on that really we hope will provide some more insight into where we are on each priority we know you often wonder like what's happening with the work you've asked us to prioritize during the term and while we know we're a bit delayed and we knew that going in and kicking all the work due to some staffing constraints we also want to work on better ways to provide you sort of more visible updates in between our staff presentations and as long as i'm talking about the subject of vacancies and i know the mayor knows us because i was super excited the other day as we were talking

[133:00] but happy to say that we're making progress right like we have more um progress to do um and despite the continued difficulties we're seeing across the nation and the region um since january when we've had and we were looking at about 160 vacancies we've been able to shave that down to about 112 in this amount of time so more to go but i'm just excited to see that despite just routine retirements and turnover that happen everywhere how quickly staff is being truly active and trying to fill those positions as quickly as we can and so i think that as we continue to do that we'll also be seeing how those additional resources will help us advance those priorities a little faster so with gratitude to your submissions and to taylor who kind of helped gather all these for our conversation today i will pass that on to her thanks so much noria good evening council uh taylor ryman city council administrator

[134:01] happy to be presenting to you tonight's presentation on council process changes as maria mentioned these changes are typically addressed at the retreat but in addition to having a desire for a really robust work plan discussion uh we also realize that council needs a little bit of time to get familiar with processes before and weigh in on how they'd like to change and so we're bringing you this conversation tonight um in your packet you will also notice that there is a brief update on those work plan priorities that nuria mentioned in concert with setting up those dashboards and trying to really provide some more information on the scope and how we foresee those those phases of those work plan items laying out um there's a brief update on the priorities whether or not they've started in your packet and we've also developed web pages so that the public can be aware of what those work plan

[135:01] priorities are and what their general timelines are and what what are desired outcomes for each one so with that i will move into our agenda quick overview of tonight's presentation there are many council proposals for process changes some from staff that we'll start with and we have various staff on the line to help provide any answers to your questions as we figure out whether or not to move forward with changes and how to do so there are a couple changes recommended from the council subcommittee on engagement and a welcome council welcoming council environment as of course proposals from you boards and commission proposals came from a variety of places and so we've teased those out and given them their own section at the end um some of them from subcommittee on board and commissions some of them from you council members and then even some from staff there will be a few next steps and then

[136:01] of course time for questions so with that taylor do you mind if i just for a second go for it so thanks very much for getting us started with that and i'll just note that uh this could take all night we could be here until three in the morning uh we have a lot of possible change requests so a couple things on that one is that hopefully we can be uh brisk and efficient with each one um and get to a you know a consensus yay or nay or modified pretty quickly on each one and the other is is that we may well put the board and commission ones to a future study session so uh we'll see how time goes tonight uh there are a couple maybe higher priority ones that have been suggested um by the council i'm sorry by the boards and commission subcommittee that maybe will tackle tonight but there's also a proposal to get to the bulk of them a little later on in the year in a study session so we'll check in once we get through the everything else about the boards and commissions and then check the council temperature at that point

[137:00] thanks taylor go ahead thank you aaron and so with that we will dive right in so to provide a little bit more background and area really touched on this process changes are pretty different from work plan items and they address the procedural administration of council business this can include things like how agenda items are scheduled counsel communication council decorum how council interacts with each other aspects of community engagement the administration of boards and commissions processes and changes that are pursued are often implemented through administrative adjustments the creation of new processes if we don't already have one existing revising council rules and working agreements so for the first couple here i will kick it off to pam davis assistant city manager i don't see her but i might just have

[138:01] limited vision here she's going to walk through coveted thresholds and hybrid mining participation guidelines great thank you taylor and good evening council members my name is pam davis my pronouns are she her i serve as assistant city manager and have been leading our covid response and recovery team throughout the last couple of years so our first item is to do another check in with you and provide a little bit of information about where the organization stands in relation to covid throughout the break i did provide through email two updates from boulder county public health one just before your summer break began and one uh just last friday in anticipation of this meeting that included just up-to-date cdc data as well as the current thinking of the county as it relates to continuing to monitor community spread but also adjust to the transition of this pandemic

[139:00] gradually becoming endemic to our society and really learning to live with it so what we wanted to bring forth to you today was really to first tee up that council had previously decided that while in red community translation level during the last spike in covid cases you all wanted to remain remain virtual for council meetings and we maintained board and commission meetings virtual as well unfortunately we do remain in red as of tonight the cdc updates their data weekly and just a few hours ago reported very similar numbers to the previous two weeks so it's indicating we're really at a plateau right now we're not seeing continued increase in cases but we're seeing a very slow decline so as of tonight we do remain in red that said we'd love to talk with you about sort of the long-term future of working through council meetings and the new environment knowing that covid will

[140:00] not probably ever go away but is gradually becoming more endemic in our community so with that what i will share with you is that our organization uh so all the staff work our facilities the services we offer while in red right now our buildings are still open business as usual so the public is able to access services during the day both online and in person from our staff we do have some staff still working remotely predominantly as a result of current cases but we also are seeing a lot more staff coming together for purposes of collaboration and getting certain programs and projects back on track as well as ensuring that our facilities remain open so with that the only real mitigation measure that is left in addition to you know facilities being great about working on hepa filters for our buildings uh regular cleanings that sort of thing

[141:00] we're also asking our employees to mask while indoors when we're in a level red community spread uh outside of that we are really trying to establish ourselves as i mentioned business as usual and providing the full capacity of resources to our community so with that in mind we wanted to check in with you about your feelings moving forward we intend once we are back out of red which we do anticipate will come before the end of this summer once we hit yellow and below we will permanently move to what we're calling the new normal which is really an enforced hybrid work policy for our staff meaning that those who are capable of working virtually have the option to establish that a balance of in-person work and work from home according to their duties we will have a minimum requirement for employees to work in person so that they can be present with their teams and provide

[142:00] services to the community but really once we drop back into yellow we're going to implement that full time and discontinue our practice internally of adapting constantly to the changing metrics of covid we will continue to again take some of these personal precautions as needed but we will no longer adjust our operations um periodically so with that we wanted to check in with all of you based on that information if you are interested in following suit with the organization and anticipating a return to sort of your new normal of hybrid meetings allowing the public to return to chambers and coming into person yourselves and i'm here for questions and anything you need while you discuss great thanks for that pam uh all right folks who want to weigh in i know people have opinions on this i'm confident uh mark and then nicole a question for pam do i understand correctly that if we hit yellow

[143:01] we will no longer adjust upwards if we hit red again that is our intention mark thank you and that was really a decision made we've consulted with boulder county i was on the phone again with the county administrator today it's really the intention to continue to do that because the fluctuation is has been become started to just become um sort of those interruptions of service for staff in the public have become challenging and we've we've seen that we can control through other mitigation measures adapt quickly to individualized spreads when they occur and one clarification is we won't adapt our working operational processes but we will adopt masking requirements okay thank you nicole rachel matt thank you um pam i wonder if you could talk a little bit and thank you for the presentation i wonder if you could talk

[144:01] a little bit about the changes that were made to hvac and air turnover rates and things like that um post pandemic yep thanks for that so i can't provide you with the most technical facilities background i don't know that we have um someone on staff i can certainly get some follow-ups i do know that facilities looked at um kind of ventilation in our busier facilities you know specifically council chambers we did install those hepa filters we do have those portable air circulators that we can bring in when we expect larger groups of people so we've really done what we can to kind of maximize circulation and filtration any more specific than that um i would defer to one of our facilities managers for following i can i can reach out on that thank you i think you know in general i love the idea of trying to get back to in person seeing everybody again going back in person i would really like

[145:01] to know a little bit more about the air turnover rates i would like to know that masks will be required while while we're in there especially when we're in red and i would love to think about potentially somewhat reduced capacity depending on the air turnover rate so those are all things you know that i would have on the front of my mind um in thinking about this but i love the idea of going back i just want to make sure we are taking precautions because even though um we have not been able to kind of get covet under control um it is still mutating it is still out there and the vaccines don't really seem to be affecting cases of long-term coven um that are incredibly disabling and it seems to be the case that looking at the research that's out there so far the more you have cases of cobit the more likely it is to leave lingering effects this has been a mass disabling event it will continue to be a mass disabling event and we have a lot of people in our

[146:00] community friends family members colleagues neighbors who are becoming disabled by covid so i would really love to see us continue precautions um even it because it's while cases you know hospitalizations they're not necessarily as high as they were at some points in the pandemic this is still affecting our community in a pretty um substantial way and we already don't really have all the services that we need to um care for our disabled community so that's just that's sort of what's on my mind so with with some precautions to try to reduce um spread i would i would be open to this thanks rachel matt tara we just done questions right now mayor brock feel free to mix questions and comments i'll think about it um one question i have is what are our na our peer cities in boulder county doing i just texted with uh somebody from superior and louisville and they both have been meeting uh in person all year

[147:00] but i don't know how the rest of boulder county is doing and you know we do have county health orders and so it seems like um maybe we'd be more in sync with with what other cities near us are doing so do we know that perchance yeah rachel's i can speak to that a little bit so um in speaking with the county they would actually be in person if not for technology challenges in their uh chamber so they have made that decision but they're dealing with supply chain issues for their hybrid technology so that is the the fundamental reason jana said that the commissioners are still meeting virtually um for the most part our counterparts are meeting in person um some have adapted masks depending on covet levels as we have um but we're really seeing in general we are one of the the slowest communities really in the country to kind of return it in person so that was my impression too so thank you for um hitting that nail right on

[148:00] the head and then second under what we previously decided and and opted into if the colors changed in the right direction this very night what's the first day that we could go back so because i think people may have planned like we know there's no way that we will be back by august 10th or whatever and i'm sure both staff and council members are sort of looking at that and maybe planning virtual attendance so you know if we play it forward from tonight what's the earliest date that we could go back i hope that makes sense so if that's is that directed at me rachel because i'm happy maria i don't know like whoever it doesn't matter i'm trying not to jump in but i'm happy wherever you yeah so as an organization rachel when again we don't want to make a change until we drop back into yellow we just think um having that sort of final trigger is is a good idea that said our our intention is when we get that first cdc sign that we're back in yellow we're

[149:01] going to give it a week to make sure that that yellow has been sustained and then we plan to begin kind of permanent return to business as usual and so uh how that applies to you you have some flexibility um that said what we would be looking at would be i think the earliest really we would be looking at august just because we have agreed that study sessions will remain virtual anyway so the last meeting of july is a study session anyway and certainly staff would appreciate you know a week or two to get back brush up council chambers you know do our sort of reset for folks to come back in so i think beyond that it's kind of up to you all if you want to give yourself a little more time like you mentioned to adjust schedules and things like that okay but sort of for for anybody planning for you know watching the color codes or whatever if we jumped into yellow tonight it would be just one week from then i'm not suggesting we do that and we just we

[150:00] remained in red as of tonight so the earliest we would get the signal that we were in yellow is a week from thursday great that helps thank you that's exactly what i needed thank you matt chairman thanks aaron and i appreciate the information pam and i think just for clarity the to rachel's last question she asked a couple of the ones i was gonna ask we were in that place where we had to be in green for 21 days in order to return to person right it's i think that may have been where rachel's question was going is the original anticipation of people's calculus was nothing's happened and until we even get to green before the clock starts for 21 days and so i just want to clarify that that was the original anticipation i know things are changing but i just want to clarify where where rachel's point was i think and so i just want to make that point out um question i have is with regards to in person um if council returns in person would it be just all at once because i think e

[151:01] regardless of where where we're at with the numbers there was some desire that we kind of let council get calibrated before we welcome uh the public is there still desire to transition or when we're back it's all for one um type type mentality so i was wondering if there was some intermediateness to that i would venture to say that that is up to your that's your call um we can do it either way and we will be rather ready we had initially wanted to transition because we were coming back all together um in the beginning just starting all with um council and staff coming back together but if you want to build in a transition we can certainly do that lauren not me tara yes go tara okay

[152:00] so [Music] i'm not blaming anybody i'm so don't take it personally when i asked when we had our main meeting and had what i would call a covet outbreak of sorts did we have the hepa air filters at that time or would they put in after that yes we did and we had put in those two portable air filtration devices as well in council chambers so i guess it didn't work right because we had an outbreak just throwing that out there so um good for us i'm gonna go with nicole on this i really don't want i haven't gotten kobe did i can't believe but i don't want one coveted and i think i would rather wait till green personally i know everybody's excited to get back but you know i'm not that comfortable we didn't even have the whole we did i don't know why that was we didn't have any of the public and we still had that rather large outbreak so i'm that's all i have to say i'm not comfortable but obviously with

[153:01] the world council rachel mark from a technology standpoint do we have any limitations on the number of people who can be virtual during a meeting so i welcome sarah huntley to correct me on that i stand in the meeting that said um we would not have any greater limitation than so um the zoom kind of the the zoom on the back end would run very similarly to as it does now and i see sarah popped on just in case there's a fact check there i believe that our current license allows us to have up to a thousand participants virtually in any one session we could also always upgrade that if we felt like we needed to for a particular topic so if some of us but not all of us felt comfortable returning to in person

[154:00] we could also potentially allow the number of people who felt comfortable meeting in person to meet in person and allow people who preferred not to not to is that but just to be clear when i said a thousand participants that includes panelists who are council members and staff as well as the public in from a technology perspective you absolutely could my understanding is that there could possibly be some code amendments and or charter changes that would need to happen teresa could talk about that for council members to be allowed to participate right now we're under a public health emergency provision that allows for this but as an ongoing basis there might be some policy making that needs to happen but there's no technological prohibition to it i don't mind if i call it clear on that follow-up on that lauren please so uh teresa do you mind speaking to that because i i know that like on day 10 of the pandemic we passed an

[155:01] ordinance that i thought allowed for uh remote participation from council members and maybe it was just emergency orders but i didn't think it was so can you clarify please uh sure good evening mayor teresa taylor tate city attorney um i do believe that this would require a code change to allow virtual participation currently um uh in chapter in title two of our code it contemplates in-person participation we are currently preparing an ordinance like that um and it could be put on the agenda and passed by emergency such that it could take effect immediately great but nothing in the charter then it was all all things we could change ourselves with an ordinance yes that's right okay thanks for clarifying thanks lauren did you have anything else i guess just to follow up that you know sort of what i'm feeling is i'm personally comfortable returning to in person um but i don't want to impose that on people who are

[156:02] not feeling comfortable with that very good rachel mark and i'll call him myself yeah um thanks pam for teeing this up so i've i've been an advocate for returning to in person for a while so i'm unlikely to surprise anyone with uh where i'm going with this but you know i think we all um ran for this office to serve the community i think that um most many of us have other jobs or go to restaurants and and live our lives and it's it's i i'm um i'm not clear why we are one of the last places in the country to think that it's important to get back to in person i think that um humans uh you know for millennia and centuries of you know not not uh conducted government you know strictly in writing like we get together and we are uh we you know psychologically i think there's value to us um

[157:00] debating and and being in the same place and and i think that some of that's been lost um having done it both ways so i understand that it is it's still a pandemic or possibly moving into endemic um but i don't i don't see this changing anytime soon like i think we are uh in a phase of covid where um we are trying to figure out how to live with it and through it and keep ourselves safe so i think we should focus on ways to have the room safe if that's masking if it's limiting people there but i think that that it's beyond time that we're we're doing the job that we signed up to do in in person and hopefully with the public there as well thanks and smart and me well i'd have to disagree a little bit with my colleague i don't think there's any question but that we're doing the job we signed up to do i i i recognize the benefits of being in person i think everyone on this council would

[158:01] prefer to be in person but um i have had coveted i didn't enjoy it very much and i would not really want to try it again and for those of us who have family members who are immune compromised uh i would be very very reluctant to um appear in person on the conditions other than green um i understand other people other cities may have a different view i'm simply expressing mine um it would not be uh very congenial to me to have to show up when i've got family members who are um more subject to infection and uh dire consequences that's just me thanks mark i'll call myself and say um i'm comfortable following the city organization's lead here i think what you've come up with is a reasonable approach of when we hit yellow then you know we go mostly back to in person and

[159:02] then you know take it from there um and i and a lot of that is motivated by the county public health guidance right like they have certain circumstances where they highly recommend um doing things virtual or requiring masking meetings such as this is not something that they're saying you should not do and i don't believe they require masks for this kind of gathering uh either not to say that we can't mask i'm not saying that but anyway that that is the current public health guidance and that that uh you know i know i'm trying to not have too many indoor commitments but i have to say for me personally i am occasionally going to meetings that are inside so um that is happening around the community and um i also find it somewhat persuasive that essentially all of our peers cities have been meeting in person for some time that said i don't want to force anybody to do anything that they're not comfortable with and so i am very willing to

[160:02] uh when whenever we decide to go back in person if some council members are not comfortable with that um i think it's perfectly fine you know if we do a hybrid model for council members and happy to pass an ordinance to enable that because i i don't want to force anybody to do something they're not they're not comfortable with for themselves or their family uh bob yeah i'm gonna agree with with um with aaron um along those lines i i think um well first of all it i think we'd all agree that it's sub-optimal to have some council members in person in some uh virtual so i wouldn't i wouldn't want that arrangement to exist for very long it sounds like there's some council members who are keen to get back to in person there's some council members who have some more concern about doing that um before they're ready or before they feel the health authorities feel that we're ready so i think what we're trying to do is kind of accommodate everybody uh do the best we can one of the things that i think we still

[161:00] have yet to talk about and maybe we'll start talking about in a few minutes is um what once this is over if it ever is over what are our rules going forward um because we've had some discussion about some things though i think we need to tie them down relating to study sessions i think we agreed that study sessions would all be remote um but we can reaffirm that i think we've talked about but we haven't really come to um definitive conclusion about the optionality of council members to occasionally participate remotely um again this has nothing to do with covet or illness this just has to do with just uh the imposition of life or sometimes council members might find themselves traveling or maybe they they do are feeling under the weather or or whatever for whatever reason tara would be a good example tonight if we were back to in person i think that we would want to accommodate tara to participate virtually uh because of what she's um managing tonight so i think a discussion either tonight or some point about um making that flexibility for council

[162:01] meetings you know maybe it's two or three meetings a month per council meet remember i i don't know what we'll come come to but that was a long way of leading up to agreeing with aaron that perhaps what we could do between now and the end of the year is to say hey listen let's um let's go back to in person in the next month or so or whenever you get hit yellow i guess but if there are still council members or staff members who feel uncomfortable with that they can participate virtually um and then hopefully we're before long we're all in green and then we just would roll into this kind of uh two times a year or three times a year virtual optionality um so so maybe it's there's a little bit of not no pun intended hybrid uh between um hybrid and and where we are right now and aaron i don't know how you feel about that idea where we go back to in person soon for those who feel comfortable uh keep the virtual option without limit without this two to three times a year limit at least for the rest of the year and then

[163:00] we could if um if we're dead in green zone um in the next three to six months move to some sort of like two or three times a year optionality i don't know how you feel about that well thanks for that bubble that others weigh in matt and nicole thanks aaron um well i i'm i'm i i hear bob's point but i'm struggling with sort of the ping-pong because um going back to full thing and then another variant comes and we're changing our rules again i i think we have to be at a state where we're providing maximum flexibility and i don't think it's appropriate for us to have quotas on people for their attendance based on circumstance uh be it for themselves travel or the fact that we're in a pandemic so i think we just need to make one i think we take one step and we let that be for a while before we start thinking about what the sort of expiration of that is um going forward um i i do think that if we allow the public

[164:00] back in i think we do need to consider especially if we are again moving we keep moving the goal posts and this has been a national issue but we're doing the same and i think we need to be careful doing that um with regards to how that's impre viewed upon by our community um and and and so i do think it's probably appropriate for us to consider that if we do allow the public back in and we're in a state of yellow that they got to have their masks on or and or reduced attendance i think we have to be pretty clear with that um going forward and and i don't i don't see why that would be too much of an impedance on on anybody other than we're just trying to keep people safe uh in that capacity so so my vote would be let's if we go you know i would i would i would be okay going with if we go yellow we can go in but i want to maintain maximum flexibility for hybrid uh working and meeting and those that want to at their leisure no quotas just let's just work on that and then see what that does for a while um we might go in and out of green or yellow and red but that's

[165:00] that's life that's going to be cove with life for the foreseeable future is going in and out of that um so in any event that that would be my suggestion of maximum flexibility and um we kind of move forward with that so appreciate it what's that nicole and tara thanks um i agree with bob and matt around the concept of kind of flexibility and allowing us to do whatever feels the most appropriate for us what i want to make sure of though is that we're being really inclusive of everybody who is not comfortable being here in person or being at our meetings in person um just making sure that we're welcoming everybody however we show up because um i think mark was spot on right we're all serving our community whether we're here we're in our homes or um in council chambers and and i think we just want to make sure that we're um that everybody is still feeling like they're a part of our team regardless of where they are so i would imagine that's something that could be brainstormed um with staff with some of us i'm just trying to figure out

[166:01] how we can make sure that we're still feeling cohesive even with some folks in different places thanks that nicole that's a great point um tara well a few things first of all our meetings are four to five hours often so i don't know if other cities in colorado have four to five hour meetings this probably was one of our problems i recently had friends go to a conference of 500 people 250 people got coped with something like that so i agree with matt we really don't know what the future is going to bring we actually have no idea i think we should maintain flexibility like he said i'm fine to do yellow with masses as long as i don't want to get my little granddaughter sick you know so i'm going to be pretty careful the next three months as long as we have the flexibility and like nicole said really good point nicole uh you know there's respect among us um you know me i visit community members and i'm comfortable to do that it's

[167:00] outside it's one-on-one but you know when i feel comfortable you know i'm dedicated to this community but it's just the uh it just has to do with our meetings and how long they are and how close we are to each other so and our alleged hvac upgrades no offense didn't mean that in a bad way hey thanks tara um okay well and one point i i do want to make two about uh if we're if and when when we come back to in person is that please don't attend a meeting in person if you're at all sick okay like if you have a little bit of the sniffles or cough or something like that please don't show up and you we might consider you know doing a morning of tests you know just to if you're feeling even remotely under the weather uh you know because to try to minimize the chance that anybody's getting it's not perfect but just i just want to get that out there um and just to bob i had a question earlier you know i think it in

[168:00] some future point where we really feel like we're past covet let's just imagine such a place um then i think maybe having some kind i think having some kind of quota on you know being remote for meetings uh could can make sense um but i wouldn't do it in the near term right so i'd wanna preserve that flexibility for folks to to continue uh attending remotely for a good long time while while safety was at all a question would be my thought on that um rachel has her hand up and then i'll try to wrap this up just real quick on the point of um possibly testing on now thursdays i wanted to make sure that everyone's aware that your insurance companies have to uh reimburse you or send you eight free cova tests a month per person per family member so you know if you've got two kids you're getting you know 30 32 tests i've got there's five in my family like it's uh 40 tests that you

[169:00] know everybody can test eight times so just want to encourage people that there are free ways to do that and um hopefully i think that actually if you're on the the federal medicare maybe you don't get it but a lot of people do get free tests and i don't know nuri if there's a way to offer you know if the city can acquire tests and that doesn't cover the public although to members of public you also everybody the whole country gets eight free tests per person per month use them you get a free test and you've been a free test okay um okay well well uh once again we're a little bit all over the place pam had a clarifying thing mayor i'm sorry i appreciate because i think you were just headed to sort of uh establish the consensus but i just want to ask one um clarifier with with the lack of quota which i appreciate that flexibility do you want some sort of mechanism to identify like the monday of that week folks intention

[170:00] to come in person the reason i ask is i can imagine a scenario where it ends up being like staff come to present in person to one council member who's sitting at the diocese by themselves and so on so i i don't want to over complicate your discussion here but i am curious if there's an opportunity to um maybe set sort of uh uh like an in-person quorum is the wrong word because that means something different but sort of a concept of at least three people are gonna show up if we're if anyone's gonna show up that sort of thing can i ask one thing if there's only one person can it be like a game of thrones throne just for that one person you get the you get the mayor's seat whoever the one person is um but a big one yeah i mean we can stay in touch and communicate on on you know we might have uh you know folks that say you know what i'm just not coming in person for a while and let us know and then other people say yeah i'm going to come in person but then if you get sick you're not going to come

[171:00] so maybe we can just have some informal communication um or not informal but stay in touch as we figure this out because i hear you like maybe there's a threshold if you need at least three uh to come but i i doubt that that's going to be an issue i'll just i'll just say that um so yeah so then what i'm hearing is you know there's a fair number of us who are comfortable following the city's approach there are a fair number who are uh cautious about that and then you know some other folks are like are not ready to come back in person and so maybe what this means is we could say all right let's let's generally follow the city's lead but not with a like super quick you know like oh it's yellow we're coming back next you know in three days um you know so so we get some buffer zone to check in with people you know and confirm that that's where we're headed not necessarily a council may not just be with an email out to folks and then get an ordinance passed to

[172:00] ensure that um people can attend remotely as as they desire and to nicole's point uh make sure that we we don't privilege you know points of view that are in person or remote um you know that that we're we all have um equal participation does that work for folks uh mary i see a finger yeah just uh a couple things that i heard too and i think um in addition to what you just said mayor i just want to make sure that i've heard correctly that there is we as a city will be requiring mass when we get to red because that is what cdc recommends we will not be doing that for staff in yellow and what i heard in the conversation here is that perhaps there is a desire from council to require masking at least from the public if it is in yellow and if it's from the public i think we have to be consistent and that will apply to staff and the council members as well so i think there's some

[173:00] um legal research about limiting there was also a conversation about limiting capacity and what that may do so i think we have staff and teresa looking at you to say let's do a little bit more work and come back but i just wanted to make sure that i heard the limitation and enforcement of that of capacity uh when we're in i heard yellow but certainly you all can correct me if that's yellow and i mean red certainly we will do but i heard yellow and if it is the desire that i heard correctly that um the public and that would mean the staff and council members would also be masking up in yellow um are there objections to masking up in yellow i guess to nervous point i'm not seeing any i i certainly get less enthusiastic about being in person but uh with the mask but i also want to minimize transmission so

[174:01] matt and lauren yeah i mean i'll comment just because i had sort of i think i had alluded that that was a place of um interest for me i i do understand consistency um but i also want to recognize proximity that is different for the abundance of people packed in shoulder to shoulder in that abundance in the audience versus a handful of us having to then also have dialogue with mask on and off and that the cumbersome nature of that and i don't know if that matters in the eye of the law but from a functional perspective it does make make a bit of a difference in terms of how functionally useful being in person is with that for those of us um having to speak a lot so so that i don't know if that difference matters in the idol law but for me it does make some difference when you're packing a bunch of people out in the public together um it's less so that that's where a differentiator

[175:00] for me makes a lot of sense but i do understand uh consistency to some extent well and to be fair i'm not passing judgment obviously on any of these it was more if cdc guidelines how they speak of proximity is six feet and we don't have that on the council dice and so um if we're going to enforce something that is a requirement to enter then i think we we have to and again this is why we need some more legal consideration that we have to figure out what does that look like when if we don't have the ability to separate um out in distance and so i just wanted to take that back and make sure that i heard um that there was some ass to maybe consider that for yellow as well before we move forward because it's easy with the cdc guidance to know that that's the case for red lauren yeah i i mean personally i support following the county guidelines sort of as they're laid out for various

[176:01] types of events to me that just feels like the clearest and most consistent way of dealing with it i worry a little bit by requiring something that's not um in line with what the rest of the county is doing by we would catch people off guard and just cause a little bit more confusion and chaos and if we are allowing people to participate remotely both council members and public to me it seems like there's opportunity for people to participate at their comfort level um and that is really important to me and and that would already be there so um i would support just following the county guidelines yeah thanks chet lauren lauren so maybe mary this is something to be looked into and come back to us with i tend to go towards lauren's direction about following county guidelines but we want

[177:01] to be both legal and safe um you know we also if we are masking you know there could be a like if you're speaking you might have the option of taking your mask off and you can make yourself heard it's another possibility so maybe you all can think about that a little bit more and come back to us absolutely okay good enough on that one all right we just sped through the first one those are well i i knew i know that was a challenging one but i think we can we can be a little quicker and possibly the second one actually fam the second one was actually the question that bob had raised about establishing council rules of procedure for um allowances for sort of how much you can participate virtually so based on your conversation you just had it sounds like we should table number two and bring it back to you at your retreat in january that sounds good okay perfect then we're on number three and i'll turn it back to taylor thanks so

[178:01] much all right thank you and emily's bringing those slides back up thanks so much emily um so we've knocked out the first two and just to give us all an idea of what the rest of the night looks like we do have around 21 proposals to address um tara thanks for laughing um now a big chunk of those do fall in the board and commission category and as aaron mentioned there is a staff proposal to perhaps defer those conversations for later um so we'll see how this all shakes out but i'm happy to lead into number three and all three of these here on this slide um kind of revolve around the uh the reality that we have around covid council training and travel budget certainly isn't directly related to kovid but kovid has unfortunately brought about some new realities when it comes to travel just the safety of doing so and the cost of doing so so we wanted to talk a

[179:00] little bit about the training and travel budgets especially as in-person opportunities are ramping up and becoming more available some of you have actually pursued those and our recommendation is beginning in 2023 to restructure the council travel budgets currently travel budgets a lot twenty thousand dollars annually for group travel uh now that doesn't necessarily mean you all go places as a group uh what that is actually referring to is the council committee assignments that we did last winter so assignments on organizations such as the national league of cities the metro mayor's caucus the colorado municipal league things like that to the extent that there are opportunities that you would like to pursue as a representative of a committee you may use the group travel budget to fulfill those hotel costs any airfare food conference registration things of that nature and then an

[180:01] additional travel budget is allotted for each individual council member and that currently stands um at 1 500 we did reduce it in 2021 because of some cost saving measures and also just frankly there wasn't as much uh as many opportunities available because of the pandemic we restored that budget this year but our recommendation would be to eliminate the group travel fund and redistribute the money to the your individual funds with the mayor receiving just a little bit more to carry out their additional and unique duties as mayor and budgets were slightly increased to account for the inflation that we've been noticing and council members this this would be helpful because council members could have greater flexibility in perhaps sharing funds if if council members aren't using their own funds they could transfer it to others so the the new proposal would be for the mayor to have an annual travel budget of

[181:01] five thousand dollars and individual council members to have an annual travel budget of four thousand dollars just as a reminder council members are held to the same standards as employees when it comes to the use of their travel funds those requirements are outlined in one of the attachments to the memo on travel policy so with that i will leave it to counsel for discussion just also um as we move through this presentation we'll be continuing to bring up the powerpoint to talk through what the proposals are but bringing them down for your discussion so it's going to kind of be an up-down situation but we hope that that helps support your robust conversations thanks taylor i appreciate the program so let me just say uh it's well articulated any objections to staff's proposal for the revisions of travel budgets can't see everybody's face but nobody's raising their hand so are we comfortable with this

[182:01] right okay seeing generally thumbs up great i think this is an excellent revision of the program taylor thanks for the thoughtfulness with which you and other folks put that together absolutely we can move on to the next slide so the next two proposals come from the council subcommittee on engagement and a welcoming environment though that the council members that currently represent that are bob yates and rachel friend so i will go ahead and pass it to council member yates to walk through these two proposals uh thanks taylor i'll just walk through the proposals very quickly and and if i get any of it wrong rachel or or taylor or sarah or ryan can correct me really two proposals one um is kind of a back to the future um those have been have been on council for a while remember that before covet um uh occasionally uh council members uh particularly during open comment wood when a speaker finished their two-minute

[183:01] presentation would could if they wanted to raise their hand and be recognized by the mayor and ask a community member who was speaking in open comment a question or two it didn't happen real often but maybe once a night or so once or twice a night there may be a follow-up question and clarifying it was not it's not intended to be to give the speaker an extra minute or two to speak it was simply a genuine question and so what the committee is is recommending is that um if a council member has a question of a community member who's just spoken at open comment they raised their hand uh the mayor would call on them they could ask a question of that community member and let the community member have a reasonable time to answer that question or follow up on that um this would obviously always be at the discretion of the of the mayor we wouldn't want it to be abused to extend people's times but sometimes we have legitimate questions and we're desperate to ask them and also i think there's a sense that this is a bit of a

[184:00] one-way communication we kind of sit here and smile and listen to 20 people give two-minute presentations and and i think to the extent that there could be a little back and forth interaction i think that would make community members feel good and my educate council members so that's recommendation number one and i'll pause there and see if there's any questions or clarifications great thanks for that bob um i'll just ask this is something we used to do on relatively regularly does anybody object to bringing this option back in today's damage not seeing any thumbs downs so very good and then i would just uh add the caveat of please do keep it to questions you would really like the answer to or that you think it's really important for the community to hear and not be too discriminate with it but i trust that people wouldn't do that anyway so thanks the next slide the uh the second of the two recommendations of the the the committee the rachel ion are are

[185:00] thrown out they're really nothing immediate but um council members have been very generous with their time in uh signing up for uh chats with council and some walks with council you see there on the the the slide uh several that are coming up here in the next couple of months one thought that that the committee had is is perhaps um also making council members available at some of the community um festivals um uh you know there's a lot of festivals strictly downtown there's arts festival that just on this this month there's a tulip festival in the spring there's a fall fest coming up in september of course the bold creek festival in may um our open space department and sometimes our parks department often have booths or tents at those things so this is not unusual to have the city um participate um if you went to the jewish festival a few weeks ago you saw the rabbis got together and had a tent and they called it the rabbi's living room and anybody could just come in and sit down in an easy chair and have a conversation with rabbi so the thought we had is is that you know maybe at one of these festivals

[186:01] probably not this year um because the time is is a short but maybe uh planning for the spring uh we could get a tent uh at one of these downtown festivals and council members could sign up for maybe two hour three hour stints and just a very casual environment uh in chairs uh not a table um a lot of community members to sit down and chat with us we'd probably want some staffing um just to make sure there was a good flow of of uh community members coming in and out that no one dominated the time and and sometimes as as you all know from participating in chats there's a follow-up um uh necessary and staff is very very helpful in in uh uh recording that and tracking that that follow up so we just wanted to see if there was an interest by council members to uh pilot this maybe starting in the spring um uh in addition to or perhaps in lieu of a chat or walk with council to actually have uh maybe a council attend at one of these um community festivals this fog chair has got our hand up

[187:02] i would like to do that right now bob i would do it at the next festival that's right up my alley so you can sign me up immediately thanks for uh raising that and your enthusiasm tara actually i was enthusiastic too and there was a fall festival coming up the weekend of september 17th um and rachel and i had originally suggested we'd do that then um but then a reality kind of came crashing in and staff suggested that maybe that was a little bit too quick that's of course that nothing prevents a council member from walking around at any of these festivals with your badge on and identifying yourself and having whatever conversations you want with community members but um but the staff recommended maybe uh waiting until the spring to actually have a a formal uh uh a tent and a chat place and i'm gonna walk around by myself with my badge [Music] thanks for that suggestion bob any uh objections to this idea of going to festivals um i'm not seeing any i love this idea

[188:00] too i think it sounds like lots of fun great way to thank you yes i could just jump in here real quick i did want to just daylight over the last few months i have been working with various partners throughout the community to plan some of our upcoming walks with and chats with council for the remainder of 2022. i plan to send out an email shortly after this meeting perhaps tomorrow but if not early next week soliciting participation for each of these i just have dates and times listed here and not more of the sort of partner and event information what organization what if if it's going to be topic driven what would it be um and things like that and that's just because we haven't quite finalized everything i consider things finalized when we get you guys to sign up for them and so just you be looking out for an email from me to get your participation in these planned chats and walks for the rest of 2022. sounds good all right well bob and rachel thanks so

[189:01] much for bringing these forward for consideration as you can see they're smash hits so appreciate your efforts move on to the next slide so for this portion aaron i will leave it to you okay very good so um folks the the order here is a little different from in the memo i just i tried to organize it with some of the easier ones up front so we'll see that we can get through them and then they're probably some closer to the end that will merit a little bit more discussion but um our first suggestion and i these do not have people assigned to them so if i say something wrong or anybody wants to add color like oh no that was my idea and you totally botched it uh please do just raise your hand and we'll get you the opportunity to speak so the first one was about ensuring that new council members learned about process changes that had been agreed to

[190:01] by previous councils or their own council and so the change that was uh requested was when council members are on boarded during orientation to add a specific review of the past two years of process changes to that onboarding process this seems like a non-controversial one so one just want to see anybody have objections to this one not not seeing any shaking yet so great thanks good suggestion uh next one was a legal refresher on open meetings so this is just a suggestion uh for staff to review with council members uh maybe uh with a memo or uh offline or possibly at a meeting the uh the open meetings rules exactly how the open meetings rules works because that's they're they're a little tricky and so we want to make sure that we get them right because of course we can be subjected to legal liability if we don't

[191:00] do it right uh matt um well yes i appreciate that erin i i would just be curious because we the the new the new ones on council we had this as part of our orientation and it was really helpful and so i'm curious were you specifically setting that out more of an annual basis and not necessarily part of orientation or do you think once you know it you know it because i'm just wondering how that's really different from the 4.1 where you have it part of onboarding and orientation but maybe these separated from that so i'm not sure who this suggestion came from but i think it was to to make sure that uh the knowledge was fresh in everybody's minds because it is so important and um you know maybe once or twice we've seen people just a little bit off on them teresa do you want to speak to this sure mayor i'm happy to you know now that um certainly we do cover this in orientation and we would intend to continue to do that

[192:01] but once you've had a chance to sort of work with the rules a while and and had some interactions with your other council members sometimes a refresher can be helpful because you have more context and i would say the same thing about the quasi-judicial process rules which is the next item that that's helpful for me i but uh but for maybe the uh tenured council members this was part of orientation which was great but just you know that there is there some of this is already getting distributed out and if it's a more regular cadence of reminders i'm cool with that too but just just for clarity because i thought that was great stuff when we got on board and so theresa would you envision this being like a memo with a refresher or a conversation at the end of the meeting or you know i'm envisioning these as um as a short conversation during matters from the city attorney at an upcoming meeting very good all right well does

[193:01] anyone have any objection to a refresher on uh open meetings and quasi-additional process rules for the city attorney at some upcoming meeting okay i'm not seeing any objections so teresa you will accept your offer thank you so much this next slide please all right so this is about encouraging the council agenda committee to be more active in rearranging schedules when there's a large number of sign ups for public hearings so this is about rewriting a bit of the cac mission in the council procedures section three so it currently reads representing cec's mission is to representing the views of the entire city council the agenda committee number one sets the agenda and then add the text and balances anticipated time

[194:01] for council meetings and study sessions two comments on written agenda materials etc etc and and i will just say that um that cec does its best at this already so i think there's a great suggestion to write it in here because it's a really important part of its role so i'll just add that but i think it's it's already something that we strive for but it's really good to make it explicit i'll just add that commentary uh tara i have a question to add on to the cac portion and that is does caca ever say no to requests to add things onto the meetings i'm just bringing that up because we have an awful lot of alleged i'm not saying things are in emergencies but we have a really tight schedule and to just keep adding things with the cac not saying no and that includes anything i ask i'm not putting myself on a pedestal here i just wanted to bring that up and ask what is protocol very good um well tara i will say that

[195:00] um for small suggestions like an item under matters for 10 or 15 minutes that i think cc generally tries to be responsive to council requests if it's a if it's a larger suggestion like if somebody asks for an entire meeting um on one topic that might be something that we say well not that or how about a smaller version of that or if a council member was really insistent on that larger ask that might be something that we might bring to the council to check in on because i think the way we've been approaching it has been to say you know for a request that is a reasonable request to not just generally say no outright but like there was one recently to have an item addressed meeting that seemed like it was better addressed with a memo from the city attorney so that was one where we did not add it to the meeting but instead we got a memo from from theresa so

[196:00] it does happen uh matt do you want to add yeah only just that i think the goal on this is actually made easier because now we're on thursday right i think there's a lot more grace with regards to maybe what we do for the next meeting where it was maybe taboo to rearrange the upcoming meeting on the monday of so to speak of that meeting but now that we have monday and a meeting not till thursday i think there's some grace added that i think we can do more of this rearranging just naturally just for that impending meeting without feeling like we can't give notice or we're putting staff in a bind so maybe this sort of naturally takes care of itself a little bit just based on our moving to thursdays yeah i was just saying it in regards to shaving off i know we're all trying to shave off a little time from some of these meetings so that was just a thought very good well and certainly if if anyone feels like the balance is off i would welcome feedback you know so feel free to drop me an email if you feel like um things aren't quite going the way you

[197:00] think is appropriate or best um okay that that being said does anyone object to adding um these four words to this part of the procedures i'm not seeing any yeses that you object so it sounds like we're good on this one next slide please okay so this was about during council meetings no vote taken or new matter commenced after 10 30 p.m and here's our existing process i'm not going to read the whole thing um but um well i will just say i will make a culprit here i do not always do these check-ins perfectly um as we move through the meeting so um i i need to you know follow this more closely uh so i can i can promise that to reread this a few times and do a little better at this

[198:00] um but i i was not sure about the specific suggestion for changes so would would anyone like to to pop up and and see something in this language that they would like to be different or a different change to this process not seeing anybody raising their hand so are are we are we good enough if i just say i'll i'll do better that's uh mark i i don't think it's that we require different language we require better discipline among ourselves uh in terms of following these guidelines and it's not just you aaron it's all of us collectively and uh you know no language will will prevent us from exceeding these limits if we don't have that kind of uh self-discipline i just urge us to have it fair point nicole

[199:00] i just wanted to um echo mark you know i think it's also within um cac right as we get to know each other better like there were a lot of new ones new council members who came on this term as we get to know each other better we likely have some ideas around the things that we're going to have more fewer questions around and hopefully we can on those of us as we're rotating through cac and aaron you and rachel um can just kind of be mindful of that as well um i do feel like we're getting a little bit better um in managing um not just managing time but scheduling time right planning for for how we're going to be talking as well so um maybe it's something we can just continue to remind ourselves about some point i will i will say like the nine o'clock agenda check is something i almost never do like if i see if i'm pretty confident we're gonna wrap up by ten o'clock i don't do a formal nine o'clock agenda check but that's one i can do a little bit more of in particular rachel can you demonstrate right now at 9 10

[200:01] what that would look like yeah so this this one isn't is an easy one okay so it's 9 10. we're in our last agenda item so let's try to get through this before 10 30. so that we can meet our end our meeting uh by the 10 30 time that we've agreed that we will end all our meetings by if at all possible so that there we have good time check we got an hour and 20 minutes so let's see if we can get through the rest of these process changes how was that rachel i loved it and i think it was uh it was important to note thank you right on okay good enough here uh why don't we move on to the next slide okay running list of questions raised during meetings so the change being considered is a more formal tracking of follow-up items from council meetings and uh rachel did this one come from you

[201:00] i think so you want to talk a little bit more about your vision here sure well sometimes in meetings you're very busy and you're not taking good notes and if you do you're not going back to them like we're i don't think that as a body we do a great job of tracking what was agreed to during a meeting what maybe staff promised that they would follow up and get back to us on what was what actually got back to us like where did that information come back i did um take a stab at it like early on as pro tem some of you may recall me reaching out and saying i'm gonna try and track that uh and i failed so i um i i just think that it is sometimes it'll occur to me shoot we never heard we just never heard back on that and it's not until the agenda item comes back up and then we're wasting time and meeting being like well what happened last year when we looked at it so it would just be great if there was a way for you know if there was some kind of a running list of like here's here's what we are um here's what you know we agreed to follow up on here's where that

[202:01] happened here was the outcome and like here's the staff contact or something that that'll be one person's vision uh thanks for that rachel so if i just make a comment on this to start um i like i think this concept is really a good one and then i think maybe the challenge you might need to address is what constitutes a follow-up that requires an item that requires being tracked and so i i wonder is this something where account we could have a category where council members like i'd like to to add this to the formal follow-up list something like that so then staff's not trying to comb through a four-hour tape it'd be like wait which which were the things that we said that we would come back yeah i i would hope that that somebody's just um tracking it in real time and that it's it's vested with someone who's not speaking at the meeting and trying to you know sort of track it like that but um so i'll go

[203:00] back to like an early maybe when i did try and track it for one meeting the the types of things i wrote down where i think matt had asked on we were looking at um severe weather shelter i think and matt had asked something about like can wind be a trigger um you know high wind advisory be a triggering event and i think lauren had asked about you know do we look at um something equivalent in the building industry um lauren you like where you you watch for chopped off fingers before you count deaths and that maybe can anticipate you know that there's uh you know danger in the way that something's happening so were we tracking that and um i don't know that we got and again those are i think just sleeping in mine because i happen to have written them down at the time but those are the sorts of things that i you know where where it was said like we'll get back to you on that and i don't know that that that was gotten back to you maybe it was um and and i would say it would also be helpful to go to olive council not just matt and lauren who asked the questions so i don't know for me it's any time staff would say like we'll get back to you on that i think that that would trigger it

[204:01] mary do you want to offer thoughts on how this might work yeah and i think and we have been talking about that internally and i appreciate the very last point you made rachel that um i think we've been thinking and will continue to bring something to you we've been thinking of a system where we can do that live and perhaps compile that for the meeting because it is true that sometimes we we can all have different interpretations of what that is i think it also would be a benefit to make sure that we're responding to all of council because sometimes we have gotten back to people but it's to the individual person who had a question and we've said oh you know what we'll take that offline and we we spoke so sometimes it's a actual ask and sometimes it's can we have an offline conversation and that happens as well so we've been giving it a little bit of thought and allow us to continue to do that but we hear it and we're going to be responsive to that as we move forward the other thing i may note too is that we may have to come back as we're looking at those and

[205:00] um determine with you all if that is actually just a question that we're following up on or is that like a request for staff action that may require a different kind of action it may require a not it may require something else but i think actually tracking it will help us do that and so i i we think it's it can be a useful consideration or useful tool for ourselves as well and um have been thinking in cmo about how best to do that so we will we will get back to you on that track great so i hear a commitment to track this item and follow up on it did i get that right that is right i'm gonna write that one down okay is everybody comfortable with that approach okay i'm seeing general agreement very good thanks for that mary that's very helpful okay next uh consider balancing the impact of landmarking discussions on council agenda capacity and discuss whether changes the process should be

[206:00] made and rachel is this yours as well could have been but um let's give other people an opportunity to see if it was theirs as well it's something sorry i don't i don't have my list right in front of me i've just got the compiled list here because i think i think it'd be helpful to offer a little bit more context to this request and details so uh matt i i may have put this down too and so there may have been a few culprits um certainly one i was thinking of um yeah so i'll just i mean i'll say a little bit about it um a couple pieces one is we a lot of this a lot of landmarks come across our our table and i think one thing that would be helpful is um you know this is where we kind of rely somewhat on our boards and commissions a bit that if something is unanimously supported by a board and staff agrees i don't know if it needs to come across

[207:00] our desk i mean i think we can sort of these are things where we can streamline where we put faith you know somewhat downstream a little bit or say upstream because it actually is starting up there before it ends up on our table and so i think this is one of those instances where we could do that and if there's like uh you know one descent on a landmark oh yeah sure we'll hear it because i think that's fair but if it's unanimity across staff in the border i think it's maybe a fair thing to kind of say hey you know what we don't need to see it necessarily and we can just move it on through i think that's something we could consider on a lot of different fronts but landmarking is one that has shown up a lot um and so anyway that that was at least my impetus for why i thought this would be something for us to consider because this is a follow-up question then i'll go to the other hands that are raised are you mad are you talking about like putting a landmarking on the consent agenda rather than a public hearing or something different um that's that's sort of where where i was starting um was at least

[208:00] with something like that um and and um so that that that's that was a start um i think there might be other discussions about landmarking criteria but that's a different beast unto itself but certainly as it regards to our agenda um that was where i was starting it but i can't speak to others that may have also been recommending a similar thing if in fact there were others that put that out there on their list very good uh tara rachel martin i agree with matt on this one and i don't know if it's appropriate or not and if it's not just don't even bring it up i think the same thing for me would go with when we called things up that were approved 100 by the planning council is there something in our charter or code that says that we have to then talk about that as well or but that's neither here nor there i agree with matt very good and well you know and before rachel lauren i go to you brad i i see uh that you popped up brad muller our new uh planning director did you want to

[209:01] offer a thought before i go to the other council comments uh thank you your honor and we appreciate this uh question and the deliberation around it and actually it does lead to a much larger question of um having decision making at the lowest level possible to free up time for council so this really could be considered one of any type of land use types of decisions as a technical matter it would require code change but those are the types of code changes we you know can readily bring forward we do know in the case of landmark decisions that historically they've been fairly not to minimize them but fairly feel good kinds of things where there's a willing applicant and willing consensus around it it's been a little unusual the number of uh more involved ones uh maybe under this council's tenure

[210:01] but that all being said uh there certainly is a philosophical idea which a staff is happy to support um that would have some of that decision making on this and potentially even other types of land use decisions at a lower level of course always with a call up or um a call of kind of option as well thanks fred that's very helpful and by the way i don't answer to to your honor just just to be clear but i'll take aaron if you don't mind okay thank you we're kind of informal around here uh rachel and lauren well welcome to brad good to meet you looking forward to meeting you in real life um i guess if if i had if i was the one who raised this or if i were raising it um one thing i would want to look at is how the last um kind of difficult landmarking decision came up for us and it felt not ripe like

[211:01] we wanted to to really delay looking at the um fan shell you know the the green space around it and nothing was due to happen on it and it was internally conflict and my personal thing was like i don't want to look at it again we've already spent you know the hours now and it like where the process triggered that would sort of require us to look at a non-ripe landmark application if we can fix that or amend that i would be in favor i don't know i don't know if that's a charter change i don't know how hard that is but um that just seemed kind of silly to me yeah we'll be able to look into that thanks lauren i was also thinking about um you know we could use public comment too as somewhat of a gauge like if there isn't anyone signed up for public comment on a landmark when it comes up and we could ask you know do we need a presentation on this are we comfortable like

[212:00] essentially going forward with what's been decided so that that might help yeah sure i appreciate that uh councilmember polkerts i do think that um we need to check with the city attorney's office about whether we can kind of do those on the fly given legal noticing and some things like that but understand the spirit of your suggestion thanks lauren uh ginny thank you i just have a question um i really don't know how i feel about this i know the last time uh the landmarking issue that came before council it seemed if i remember correctly city staff had one proposal and the landmark board had another proposal so are we essentially saying here if only

[213:00] if they are in agreement but if there are not an agreement then they come before council i i would characterize what happened in terms of those competing ideas if you will um as being a real outlier so i really don't um believe that we would need to necessarily look at trying to accommodate those kind of exceptions but i'll talk with staff to see if that's maybe more of a situation that i'm aware of but coming in new i was i found that as an unusual dynamic that he had evolved i think kind of organically out of the interplay of the different recommending bodies and such but but i understand the question and we can certainly look into that better to understand that thank you so much and i think right about now rachel's rule come into place so hopefully you will follow up thank

[214:01] you so much thank you rachel's rules of order um tara just real quick i wonder if we can at this time can i comment on how long a landmarking presentation even needs to be maybe half of they've been is throwing that out there trying to save time i appreciate that and hopefully we are tailoring the presentation to kind of the magnitude of the issue but we we can certainly do some coaching and checking on that great uh nuria and then i'll maybe add one thing thanks mayor and i just wanted to get some clarification what i think we heard was and and so just wanted to be clear on it um not perhaps at this time uh although i appreciate you brad uh and your willingness to rethink some of this in the future um but at this point at time what i'm hearing is uh a desire everything comes to counsel

[215:02] it's whether or not if there is agreement between staff and the landmark board then it can be placed on consent um versus being in the call up section and i just wanted to make sure i was hearing that correctly and that would require certainly a code change so we'd bring that to council um is that what i'm is that what i heard correctly well i would say that that i definitely heard that and that there seems to be some consensus on that so that that would be great to get i think uh to get a code change for that but also just to think about if there are maybe other ways to streamline how we consider you know landmark things in general absolutely i think there's two one is the immediate change and then if there are other ways that we can bring to you and consider whether or not that has to come to council at all depending on the criteria is sort of the second phase of that very good is that accurate

[216:01] i think so is that is that good for folks in terms of understanding the next steps okay i'm i would say so yeah i think with regards to criteria that may be pushed back down to the landmarks board is what is the criteria in which we used to even evaluate landmarking to begin with that that was maybe where i was going a little bit with that but that we might be saying the same thing so so pardon if it's redundant thanks for that and then uh so that sounds good and then tara i just wanted to address something else that you brought up about um planning board decisions you know we uh it's always up to council's discretion whether we want to call something up or not that's you entirely up to counsel each time we do have a a bit of a habit of having a short presentation about development projects that are of a certain scope so even if it seems like planning board passed it unanimously and it's maybe unlikely that council would call it up um if it's you know

[217:01] nine acres or something that we might have a short presentation just so there's some visibility on something of that sense and we'll always take feedback we feel like the balance isn't quite right on that good um all right so moving on to number eight brad thanks so much for that that was very helpful it was great to have you at the meeting tonight look forward to working together more thank you uh council member expectations for engaging on council-related issues outside of regular meetings are there courtesies council members owe each other and how they represent each other their views as individuals and a working body outside of regular meetings so uh nicole this was yours so maybe i'll let you speak to this about you know exactly what you want to talk about here and look for if you don't mind thanks yeah i'm happy to do that um and i'm wondering for this for this conversation is it okay to take down the slides so we can see each other

[218:00] thank you um this one is just it's a little personal for me it's um it just kind of gets gets into some places where i'm gonna be a little vulnerable so appreciate seeing all of you um since we can't have this conversation in person um so this request arose out of some statements that one of us made in a newsletter last week that misrepresented the decisions that i and others here on council have made i really want us as a governing body to operate with accountability and transparency so i'd like us to discuss here how we represent each other's motives and intentions in a way that's accurate and that conveys the trust we show for each other as colleagues when we're here in these meetings as a queer woman who's never quite fit the mold for how a woman is expected to act this type of behavior really exacerbates the mistrust that i and others in our community experience every day those of us who are different from the majority struggle to find acceptance and inclusion even here in progressive boulder

[219:01] for example no matter how many degrees or responsibilities or accomplishments i have it takes extra work for me to be seen as someone the community can trust to put thought and attention into my decisions my views are often seen as weird radical or uninformed when they're simply coming from a different perspective that's not represented here people of color trans folks disabled folks and others in marginalized groups experience this bias even more than i do and i share my experience to make the point that how we represent each other to the public not only affects our ability to trust each other and to work together effectively but it also affects our ability to be inclusive to people who are underrepresented in our government so it's really critical for us to be able to disagree without mischaracterizing or misinforming the public and without stoking fear confusion and mistrust in the public process in my request i asked us to think about

[220:00] the obligations we have to each other as stewards of the city because i think we owe it to each other and our community to be accurate and transparent even when we disagree with each other so what i'd like us to do is to consider a new commitment or a rule that will help us be able to express our own opinions and dissent publicly while respecting a commitment to accuracy and transparency in that public dialogue and i want to be really really really clear that i'm not saying we shouldn't disagree or have different views disagreement is good and healthy and when it's done with a commitment to mutual understanding and accurate representation it can help us make better decisions so if we can disagree about our words and our actions from an agreed-upon understanding of the facts surrounding an issue we can show the community how we can work together despite differences of opinion and this is how we can start to create the inclusive and welcoming community that we all want to see ideally i would hope that we would agree to avoid speaking to another person's

[221:00] motives and intentions in a way that can inject confusion or misinformation into the discourse but if not i'm wondering if we can at least agree that we'll empower the people we're talking about to share their own perspective with our audience and i don't know what we call this role maybe discourse not division as one of my more word-friendly colleagues suggested but i think it's important to help all of us myself included be able to advocate for things that we care about in a way that lifts up our own ideas without stoking unfounded fear mistrust and confusion this will help us create the trust and share purpose we need to help our city effectively address all the challenges we're facing so i'd really recom welcome a conversation along these lines and thank you for listening thanks dad nicole i appreciate you sharing that um and so do we have uh questions or responses to nicole's um statement with that mark and then matt

[222:00] yeah i i appreciate your concerns nicole but i'm not really sure where you want us to go with that um in a context where we do have disagreements um they have to be articulated um i think courtesy is a value i appreciate it at all times i certainly would wouldn't want somebody to characterize me as a you know the running dog of capitalism or something um but people have a right to to vigorously um promote their beliefs and i don't want that to cause you pain but i think it is important that people be able to advocate uh in that fashion if you may disagree with the nature of those comments or how you believe you're being characterized and you're always free to do so and and

[223:00] to respond accordingly but to the extent that that you're asking council members to uh restrain their speech i'm i'm just not sure that that's a value i would um want to accept for the council again i think courtesy at all times is important i would not like a lack of courtesy directed at me i don't think i would ever want to direct my comments in a way that that are discourteous to others but that doesn't mean it won't happen it'll happen to me and it'll happen by me that's the nature of robust debate in a democratic society so i'm just not sure where you want to take this in terms of moving from a statement of principle to something that is actionable by this council and not only actionable but enforceable by this council i i think you know this may be a little bit

[224:01] of a step too far in terms of um restraints on the way which with which we communicate outside of this meeting thanks thanks mark we've got a few other people lined up i mean nicole did you um did you want i think there's kind of a question to you there from mark did you want to provide responsibility no i'm happy to and and mark i apologize if i was not um clear i really welcome disagreement i think that is a key component of our work together we have to disagree what i would like us to think about is when we are getting at our each other's motives and intentions and representing them in ways that maybe aren't quite representing our actual motives and intentions how are we speaking to each other's motives and intentions right i think if you look in

[225:00] a healthy kind of team functioning within an organization right generally they will welcome disagreement when the disagreement is around ideas facts right a sort of shared pool of knowledge where it gets really hard for people to be willing to speak up and disagree and the things that can shut down those very healthy discussions where we're disagreeing is when people are making judgments about people's motives and intentions and and that is the point where it starts to become um hurtful right where everybody here i see you all as very intelligent thoughtful people but if i'm going out into the community and speaking of you as if you're not intelligent and thoughtful people that's not a healthy thing for your trust in me for my trust in you and for our communities trust and us as a body that is is making decisions for the city so i don't know if that clarifies it it's not at all to stop us from

[226:01] talking about the things that we are interested in it's asking us to focus not on each other not on our our intentions and motivations but rather on the things that we're discussing the issues our policy proposals those are the things that we can stay i think and have really good disagreements on if i can just colloquy for a second it's just my view that the remedy for bad speech is more and better speech and i i don't know if there's a a way you can regulate yeah so i mean i guess maybe this this is a question then around how we're engaging with the public right and when when we have venues that not all of us have access to how are we representing each other in those spaces because i don't necessarily have access to the same groups that you all have access to and if i'm being misrepresented what do i do about that so it's just like this is a question

[227:00] right i mean i think this is an example of the healthy disagreement that that i think is wonderful for us to have and you know the conversation and what i want to think about is how do we take this that we this atmosphere we create here right where we're deeply listening to each other and trying to understand each other's points of views and not questioning our motives or intentions and extend that out to when we are in the community working with others that's that's all i'm trying to do is carry forward this environment i've had so many people tell me what an amazing council we are and how well you know we're communicating and working on things in meetings and i would like to carry that out okay we got matt and then rachel thanks aaron um i applaud you nicole for for uh two things one uh bringing up this subject but also speaking your truth i think that's really important and i think it's an incredible first step for the growth of our council as individuals as a

[228:01] as a unit but also a good example for our community and so thank you for that i will only just speak to what is important for the discourse that we want in our community how do we set the example based on what we see nationally at the state level how are we the change we embody for the world for this country for the state for the city that we're fortunate enough to be elected to be stewards of and if we can't do it here where else can it happen and i think assuming with intentions is assuming the best intentions of an individual and then maybe just disagreeing on outcome or process but i do think that we have an obligation to reduce the polarization in this community and how we speak to the public and to our own constituents about those that we disagree with is the first step of whether or not we add fuel to the fire of polarization or we go the other direction and we find

[229:02] ways to create unity around that disagreement and i think that that this is a really important discussion to have and and i'm hopeful that we can use this to foster some opportunity to have a dialogue further about are we going to make some changes do we hold each other to some commitment is it it doesn't have to be enforceable but but to mark's point i actually see this as opposite i don't see this as an infringement or a restriction of speech i see this is actually an empowerment of better speech um and and a more enlightened society when we can operate in in a intention where we see the best intentions of others even though we disagree so thank you nicole for bringing this up i appreciate that thanks rachel and tara yeah um thanks nicole i very much appreciate the vulnerability and bringing something up that was not comfortable that's um brave and i thank you for it and i agree with you that um it's very unfortunate we're not operating on shared facts and we should

[230:01] all be trying to do that and i personally um try very hard not to say especially publicly disparaging things about colleagues i don't think it helps our effort like i don't i don't really think we're a team because we're i think individually we are trying to advocate for what we think is best for the community and you know i'm not my job i do not believe is to um get along with colleagues as much as it is to um you know speak the truth about what i think is best for community members say so i i i think we accomplish more though if we are um cordial and you know sort of you can you can be on opposite teams like i you know i grew up playing sports and an athlete and you can play hard and still shake hands and you know you you don't want to kneecap the other person you want to you know have a legal slide tackle say and you know uh play within and you know play your

[231:00] hardest but within um the rules of of fair gamesmanship i guess so that's what i i think um you're asking for i have though um a couple times on a previous council um there were a couple times where things were said where i did feel like it was important for me to uh maybe call out some statements uh that were were not comfortable that a colleague had had made and i did that for i felt the benefit of the community to know that they were supported and i didn't agree with um with that and and i think that person may have disagreed with my interpretation so i would be leery of um signing on you know and and you know there was talk during the last campaign about a civility pledge and i i am leery of signing on to things that um i feel would would um you know uh infringe on my ability to use my voice

[232:01] in a way that i think is um earnest and honest and advocating for the community that i'm trying to help so i i believe that our best angels should be where we're operating from and that we should be um that we should be civil and yet i don't want to sign you know or go as far as to say um i'm not going to say something because i don't know what people are going to say that i might want to respond to and so i'm just not sure exactly where to go with it but those are the things that are kind of rolling around for me thanks tara and i might call myself after that and come back to mark i find this the most interesting part of the discussion tonight it's a hard one because i mean what would be the best is instead of somebody saying i can't believe you believe in even or odd you're voting for instance rather i don't agree with even our idea of

[233:01] voting and not um like attaching moral high ground or putting somebody else down because they don't agree with you the problem right we all want to do that we all just want to say i don't agree with this not i can't believe you would ever do this but we all do that because we're all human we all do it so i think for all of us i know for me is i after a council meeting i'll just text myself i'll say what did i do that could have been wrong or somebody will tell me thank you whoever that is and then i'll apologize so i think for me the most important thing is to just keep trying to do the best that i can and to not impugn anyone but just speak about subjects versus people but also to realize i'm gonna make a mistake maybe i said something neat about aaron and i didn't want to just kidding here and i didn't and then i just for i asked forgiveness or i say to myself don't do that again and i just try again and we give each other you know um forgive each other and give each

[234:01] other benefit of the doubt so i think this is a great discussion to have because it reminds us what we'd like to be like and each one of us is i love this council each one of us wants to be like that and we just keep uh pushing forward and trying to do the best that we can in that way thanks for that tara although i don't know why you're always so mean to me it really it's terrible so yeah so nicole i'll echo the thanks of my colleagues for bringing this up and for for being brave here and it's i appreciate it it's it's hard to have the hard discussions right but they need to be had sometimes and you know i want to say that i feel like this this council generally does a really good job of working together well and of modeling kind of productive discussions and disagreements you know at a time when you know of course our

[235:01] national scene is riven by deep divisions and and i'm proud to serve with this group of individuals you know this is it's a great group of people that's working hard for the benefit of our community and i think we want to continue to try to model good behavior that works against that deep level of division that we're seeing so much in our society and across the world and so then you know the and of course those deep divisions if we do stoke them that that means that our community is more divided and it means that there are risks for for vulnerable people and i'll just call out um something that i in it here in this meeting that i've seen over the years that's always troubled me which is that i see that our my female colleagues will get emails with uh such criticisms and such a negative belittling tone in ways that that i just don't get those same kinds of emails you know the the

[236:01] and i've seen this over and over again with multiple female colleagues so not that i'm calling any individual out about this but i just want to call this out as a reality that there is misogyny at work in our our society and um it's appalling sometimes the way that some of our female colleagues are treated and um so you know we want to be careful with how we use our words and and how we you know work together so i i wonder if you know we we can't police each other you know out of out of out of council you know they're we all have free speech rights but i wonder if and i hear rachel's point about civility pledges and things and i wonder if maybe we could agree that that we will always strive to speak truthfully about each other in public you know the the the we would always say things that to our the best of our understanding about our

[237:00] colleagues is accurate and true about what they've said and the things um how they've approached things you know and obviously you know we can't enforce exactly what people say we um free speech is a thing i i'm not i look at teresa like well i don't know what we could codify that we wouldn't get in deep trouble about but i just wonder if that's an intention that we could have individually for ourselves um is something that we strive for because you know i think i think we would all appreciate it if each of us when each other spoke about ourselves did so in in truthful and accurate ways so i'll just i'll just put that out there um okay we got uh mark and then lauren yeah i i i kind of agree with with rachel on this um as always i prefer uh civility i prefer obviously accuracy is important in in

[238:00] how we speak um but there also has to be room for strong advocacy and um that's simply the nature of the democratic process uh you know compared to the the national debates that we see um and the divisions that we see um we are nothing like that and and i don't want us to uh believe that that's the path that we're heading down because we're not um we are generally extremely respectful of each other um and we we don't call each other names and we you know we don't abuse each other but there has to be room for strong advocacy um even if it leaves some people um uncomfortable and if you think that that something has been said about you that is wrong there is a way to combat that that is to you know articulate the other position and why you think it's wrong and and make that public i i just don't

[239:01] um i just don't know where this goes as a matter of policy uh as a as a matter of intent i think we're all probably in agreement um but as a matter of policy i think trying to regulate our speeches is for me simply a bridge too far thank you thanks mark uh lauren and genie thank you again nicole thank you for bringing this up and you know i i do agree that in these meetings in particular we do this very well um but i think that we can i think that we can do better i'm in areas where we disagree we're usually split in finding this disagreement because reasonable people can look at an issue and come to it from different angles

[240:00] and see different solutions to it the and if we're having conversations and we can't accurately articulate why our colleagues are voting differently than us or feeling differently about an issue i think it's a failure on us personally because that's a failure to listen and it's a failure to understand part of you know probably a significant portion of our community and so i think that um while i believe in strong advocacy i think that again sticking to the factual and sort of representing the ideas and the arguments that are happening in our community with sort of the most grace and the most support for a variety of

[241:00] points of view is beneficial and brings credibility to all of us as individuals and as a group and i and i think that you know on the opposite side of that that as has been touched on we don't all criticism lands on different people differently there are ideas that stick to some of us more than others being young and female when people imply that i am not as smart or not as diligent or something like that that has a tendency to stick to me more than it does some of my male colleagues um and i think that we should be careful with that and careful that we aren't um putting each other in situations where we're forced to spend extra time defending ourselves for

[242:01] things that aren't helping bring the community forward move move issues forward and um you know are more about these personal attacks rather than heightening the level of conversation that we're having around these really important issues um you know just like we have the no surprises rule which is not a rule that we can like hold each other too hard and fast it seems like we could i liked your suggestion aaron around um just having an idea that we are working towards um in terms of a general understanding for what our goals are when we are communicating around each other and the ideas that we're discussing here thanks lauren um junie and then maybe we can come back to the call thank you um this is a very difficult conversation and i appreciate nicole bringing this forward

[243:01] it's not easy and i do agree with matt um it's about accountability and i understand you know um mark's point about having opened this course allowing people to express themselves but i think even as community leaders there's a level of accountability that is needed um i i like the idea of a commitment to accuracy and transparency and how we express ourselves i've not always been accurate and but i seek transparency i have since i've been on council and i can say that have i always been accurate probably not um and i like the idea of the discourse and not division i like that um but also too the thing is what i hear from some of us is a lack of um how do i put it acknowledgement we have to acknowledge that you know

[244:01] i've been on council almost two and a half years and i understand what nicole is saying i have experienced that and some more and i've experienced it in the community i've experienced it even from some of you here but i've kept that to myself because i remember when it gets really hard in the work that we do here in the work that i do here whether it's in the way that i engage with community or and even my engagement and it sometimes is just plain ignorance in in what happened you know um but i always remember something i heard from michelle obama because you know she she's of our time and she said something along the line that it is not about you when you're a public servant it's about the people you serve so a lot of times i just kept quiet kept pushing you know whether it's sexism or all the other ism i kept pushing knowing that i don't want

[245:02] it to be about me i want it to be about the service and the people who put me here but that is an issue that we're dealing with as a council and as a community how do we better engage each other in a way that is constructive that is helpful that also brings about that equity inclusion and diversity that we talk about because we can't talk about these things in silos or as theories you know people of color is not a theory in somebody's mind lgbtq ai is not just a theory in your mind it has to be something that you live and how do you live that by the way you communicate and engage in the way you engage each other so if you're using dehumanizing language in the way you communicate with me what do you expect me to believe how do you expect me to feel so to me i really appreciate you bringing this forward nicole thank you for doing that um it will

[246:03] bring a bigger conversation in our community because we are a very educated community we're very smart community and we we say all the right stuff we do all the time so it's a matter of ensuring that our actions and our words match so thank you for bringing that forward it's very powerfully spoken juni thank you thank you very much for that so nicole um we we've had a a conversation here amongst ourselves so i'd like to turn back to you to see how you're feeling about what you put out here and what you feel where we are and what next steps might be yeah um you know i really appreciate everybody's comments and thoughts here right i think this this right here is an example of how we can have a hard conversation through disagreement um trying to understand each other and and figure out how we can move forward from here so thank you all this i think was a beautiful model of how we can do this

[247:01] for the community um i think you know i heard a couple of folks said things that just really stuck out to me as little phrases tara you said speak about subjects rather than people um aaron you said speaking truthfully about our colleagues um you know juni i think and lauren both noted accuracy and transparency of information so it does feel like there are some things that some of us are converging on i do not mean to go down a civility pledge route or anything like that what i'm trying to do is not not constrain us but rather invite us to a higher level of conversation where we can stay focused on issues um where we can demonstrate the respect that we have here in our meetings when we leave these meetings i was going to say spaces but we're not all in the same spaces right now because i i think what what maybe folks who are not part of these marginalized groups and and i consider myself a very privileged person

[248:01] um despite identifying as queer i don't know that it's possible to see the level of anger and vitriol that is rising against marginalized groups even here in our own community unless you're a part of that group and so when we are putting things out there that are stoking that that division and anger um at each other and calling into question who we are as people and misrepresenting us as not being intelligent and thoughtful it is adding fuel to that fire and and i think oftentimes we as a city think about ourselves as being exceptional that we're somehow different from the rest of the country and and truthfully when it comes to inclusion and diversity and equity we're not and and i would really love for people just to hear that as well from somebody who is part of the lgbt community we are not we put up pride

[249:00] flags but you know you are you are very you're you may get yelled at when you're walking down the street here right it's it's it's not that different so i think to the degree that we we could commit to um trying as tara said right it's a work in progress constantly um to speak truthfully about each other to stick to issues and subjects rather than people i think we're going to get a lot farther in elevating this dialogue thanks nicole so what what where does that put us as a next step like um thinking about trying to put together uh like a note in our procedures something that we would strive to always speak truthfully and accurately about each other in all forums something like i mean that was kind of my idea so i'm not trying to put words in your mouth but no no i mean i think that's right right and i'm still relatively new i'm not sure where

[250:01] where the best spots are for this kind of thing here and so you know i would defer to your judgment and stops um around where something like this might be included right it's not a hard and fast rule it's going to be hard to enforce but but something something that just reflects our commitment to each other teresa i'll turn to you do you feel like that's something that is a feasible reasonable legal thing for us to put in our procedures um certainly you know it's aspiration aspirational in nature for sure um but we could look at putting something in the procedures um what i've what i have heard is speak about subjects rather than people a commitment to speak about subjects rather than people and to speak about colleagues and issues with accuracy and truthfulness in all forums are people comfortable with us considering that as a an in addition to our our procedures at some point in the future uh yeah i'm worried about one thing i'm

[251:02] sorry let me raise my hand yeah raise your hand please tara uh we've got a lot of comments here all right and it's getting late folks but i know this is an important topic mark rachel matt tara first of all speaking truthfully is a little bit in the eye of the beholder we should speak truthfully but each of us sees that truth in a different way as an aspirational statement i have no problem with it as an enforceable statement i have a great deal of problem um there's a difference between what we ask of each other um as a matter of principle and what we try to enforce against each other the latter to me is is out of bounds the former is is fine um you know i i have no problem with our desiring to speak well of each other and uh to treat each other well uh even as we disagree but

[252:01] you know the concept that we will speak truthfully is a little bit subjective and we need to understand that um and i don't think it it translates into an enforceable standard that we should be applying against one another it's not the same thing as saying you know i say the earth is flat that's a fact it's false it's a false fact it's not true um but other things are more of a subject of opinion a subject of perspective and [Music] that's simply the way it is so i think that mark and if folks will indulge me to just respond real quick i i wonder if the language could be something like we will strive for you know truthfulness and accuracy and such to junie's point we've all made statements that were inaccurate right you know and i think generally i consider you all people of

[253:00] goodwill so i don't think you do it on purpose i don't do it on purpose but we all get things wrong sometimes right so that's it's inevitable that we will not always be accurate but it is something we could strive for potentially so um sorry to interject there but rachel matt and tara yeah i mean i guess to you and mark's point there on on facts like i think mark and i were were charged with writing a a council statement responding to what several of us felt was a pretty flagrantly anti-semitic statement um a year or two ago and i would just say like that draft was not um easy to to get sailed through like a lot of people saw you know a comment that was on film very differently you know and it seemed concrete in ways so i i do think it's it is tricky to nail down um what what is factual or what a person's intent was

[254:00] i guess um and and i and i'm i guess as someone who has advocated that i think civility pledges can be um especially as a woman who who as has been described in today or tonight uh you know gets gets experiences a lot of misogyny and some of the worst of what we're talking about i would not want to sign on to something that further demotes my ability to use my voice i'm just not interested in doing that i'm not interested in you know cutting down or limiting anyone's voices so i'm a little leery of like we're not doing a civility pledge but we want to put something in writing so i just want to be i'm probably in the minority anyways and it doesn't really matter but i i would be opposed to anything that is seen as you know i'm i'm i've committed to not speak in a way that i think i should be speaking to uphold community values so i just want to say like i don't want to go anywhere near that personally and i understand

[255:02] that i may well be in the majority minority on that thanks smith um i i i'm sort of just sitting in the personal and professional growth that this conversation has um provided me and i feel i'm benefited from so i thank you all for this um i i appreciate what rachel had just said and and i i would generally agree that i i don't want to see us make commitments anything that are in any way restrictive um i i think what is important is that they are empowering and so things like assuming the best intentions of your colleague it's not a restrictive statement it's actually an empowering one that opens up more dialogue and so i i think you know i i think the spirit of what rachel was setting is spot on um and i certainly come from a place

[256:01] um being a white man that i don't know that i don't know that hurt and that restriction that misogyny places on women especially those i work with i don't know that i don't have it's not it's not something that i've experienced so i don't want to embark on that in any way but i do think we can be empowering with what we say as a way to further and better our dialogue without restricting thanks tara as far as truthfully and accurately you know me i try to be accurate but i'm not saying that i'm often accurate so i would be under a lot of pressure about accuracy but um and also i agree with mark that truth can sometimes be subjective fortunately or unfortunately but i also agree with matt and what he said that we can just strive to do the best that we can i don't know that we need to use words like truthfully and accurately but to strive to do the best

[257:02] we can i feel good about that i i feel the other ones might be subjective um maybe pressure and maybe we could maybe we would like say you're not being accurate i mean to me personally it's not my best accuracy i try hard you know what i'm saying but i do like to tell a good story so i just um i think appreciating each other's nuances and the nuances in humankind as well as far as that goes um that would be more of what i'm looking for i guess am i making myself probably not even making myself clear but did the best again i think we got it um nicole and rachel let's see if we can wrap up here i just um aaron i think you know the way that you kind of characterized it earlier really hit the markets it's really about i mean facts do exist right two plus two is four the earth is a planet in

[258:00] our solar system right these are facts right that exist where we run into trouble is when we start stating as fact or implying things about things that we can't see right people's intentions and motives that only really exist in our heads until we put them out into the world um so it's really that that that i'm looking for right in meetings if somebody says something that mischaracterizes me i can correct that when we're out in the public i can't do that and as lauren said those mischaracterizations stick to some of us more than others so as we're moving toward inclusion um how how can we commit to each other that we understand this right that we see i i can't judge your your motives and intentions but we can certainly agree that facts exist right and and those are the things we can speak to um pretty easily i think without um causing harm to each other and i i feel like maybe teresa's kind of got the gist

[259:01] can help us think about whether there are some things we could we could um try rachel i'll just be real quick i wanted to highlight one thing nicole said which was um getting it that that these comments can can put people in harm's way like actual physical harm's way and so i would hope that if for no other reason um colleagues uh staff members community members you know who care about each other's safety none of us should be should be doing that but especially certain demographics are gonna are going to receive um the threats and potential violence worse than others and so i i just wanted to lift that up one more time that it's no matter what we do with this it's still important and if the words we use matter and and can matter in physical ways that some of us are at greater risk than others here and in the community thanks um all right well so i think

[260:00] i think we have a probably majority interest in considering uh something to this effect teresa um you know there's a process for changing our procedure so this is not the end of this discussion just so everybody's aware um you know we get actual words and we have to adopt them so if you think uh this is the best thing ever the worst thing ever you'll have your chance to talk amongst yourselves and receive emails and things like that um okay are there violent objections to moving this forward or can we ask teresa to take this up and then we'll consider it more okay all right um thank you uh colleagues uh for a challenging uh but i thought i'm very mature and healthy discussion so i appreciate each and every one of you and your willingness to come to the table and represent yourself and our community very very well

[261:01] okay it's 10 10 we have one council change left so if we could bring that back up and this is not the simplest one either but hopefully we can be fairly constrained in our discussion so this is checking in on guidelines for council weighing in on national and world affairs during council meetings so a question about what level is appropriate for us as council to to weigh in on not our local issues but national and world affairs and rachel did you want to speak to this yeah this came for me and i i think it's um largely just observing and i imagine it's because there's more happening right now you know with supreme court decisions and wars and things than in in my first two years but we um are scheduling more time to sort of discuss things that are not on the work plan and i wondered if there was if we could have some guidelines around like you know how we do that and when we do it

[262:02] one thought i have is can we at least put it under matters for council so it's not at the beginning of meetings so people are waiting to speak we're not holding up um the individuals who are there or staff members if we have a last-minute declaration or want to speak to something i think it's totally appropriate to do it under matters but we we are i would love for us to get through this work plan i think we have a bomber work plan and i i want us to do it and we're struggling to to schedule and meetings are going late and um so i just wanted to just put a spotlight on that and say how can we tear i got a thumbs up for tara uh how can we do that in a more manageable way and put some guardrails guidelines time around it thanks great and we we actually thanks for that rachel we do actually have something in our rules and procedures about whether to take up i'm teresa i'm putting you on the spot here do you have access to that language it doesn't address all of this but it's a starting point i certainly do mayor

[263:00] and it comes under declarations and resolutions and council procedure and so it it does refer to official action rather than discussions but that language is foreign policy and national policy questions council shall not act on a foreign policy or national policy issue on which no prior official city policy has been established by the council or the people unless sufficient time and resources can be allocated to assure a full presentation of the issue thanks for that trick so that's specifically about declarations and resolutions right so that we do have a guideline already that we've agreed to on our procedures but i think rachel you may be also speaking to kind of off-the-cuff comments about current issues right when there's um kind of pressing things happening nationally that we know is is you know the the community's probably experiencing wound like we are we want to talk about it and i've advocated like you know i think when when the

[264:00] uh warren ukraine started i was one who wanted us to do a declaration and now i wonder if that was sounds like maybe that was inappropriate because we haven't you know dedicated sufficient resources to that war before so maybe that should not have happened um apologies real quick rachel technically we did not pass a resolution oh right we didn't read anything no i i read words at the beginning of a council meeting but there there was no official resolution okay so yes then there's an example of one that that um you know we we took time and and many of us spoke on it and and you know we also have like our you know if you've got a twitter account or whatever we can speak there so just kind of generally wanting to know like what what should we be using these precious now thursday night minutes to accomplish versus what should we be doing on our own time versus where should we put it if we think it's it's council relevant thanks tara mark nicole i agree with you rachel i i just want to say a quick word about declarations we have an awful lot of declarations and

[265:00] sometimes they're super long about so many things and i'm wondering if we have to have so many and i want to honor each person and their declaration i'm not putting any declarations down i'm just saying can they be way shorter and can we do less or the other thing i'm thinking with declarations is somebody might say well what about my favorite declaration what about my favorite subject so then you start saying well i want somebody to talk about mine so to me it's a question of like how many and how much i'm just going to leave it like that and see what the rest of council thinks about either shortening and also lessening because declarations could take a considerable enemy time i'm just saying tonight um sorry mayor i i yeah not trying to step on toes well i just say charlie i think let's talk through this non-declaration resolution stuff first if you don't mind and then maybe we can come come back to that um but i hear i hear your points i'm not invalidating that but let's stick to

[266:01] rachel's all right stick to your current point yeah no it's fine i'm just also going to say that that was something i i have lifted up and i think we might invite taylor to speak to that because she may be when the when the moment comes when the mo yeah let's let's get through this one and then taylor i would love you because i know you've worked super hard on this exact topic um mark nicole actually this is this is a little bit tricky at least for me uh i don't think the city council of boulder requires a foreign policy on the other hand i thought the comments on ukraine were entirely appropriate in light of what was going on i don't know how you would avoid commentary on the supreme court's decision on abortion um so i i don't know where the line is i don't know where the balancing point is but there are some things that scream for some degree of commentary despite the fact that as a body uh we are ill-equipped to be setting national

[267:01] or foreign policy having said that there are times you got to speak and and certainly on the abortion decision on the gun decision on ukraine comments were required uh even if it lengthens the meeting a little bit i i just don't know how you can abdicate not responsibility but interest in in those topics um i wouldn't want us to be commenting on a senate race in florida despite the fact that we may all have a view on that senate race in florida it's just not what we do but some some issues are fairly transcendent and are appropriate for this body to ex not express a policy so much as a point of view and and i would not like us to abandon the ability to do that in those cases where you have such a transcendent issue that needs to be addressed

[268:00] by all of us as a statement of value thanks mark nicole and matt thank you um mark i i couldn't agree with you more um that that kind of captures a lot of my thoughts and what i would like to offer um are perhaps a couple of perspectives that may add some sort of research and reasons for why why we may want to consider engaging in this some way and then i also have an idea that i bring from my own work at the university to share out as a way that we could potentially help bring this in and also give us these opportunities so i think part of it is that you know to show up and do the work we do having just heard that 19 children a year or two younger than my child were murdered in their school i don't know how i can show up and have my my brain be present for the discussions we need to engage in without

[269:01] our acknowledging collectively what it is we're holding um you know i think the same is true for roe v wade right and i think that if if i am feeling that our staff are likely feeling that too our community members are likely feeling that as well and there is power in simply naming that we're in a really bad spot and things are hurting and we're still showing up to do work for each other and to move ourselves forward and then just to put on my little scientist and management hat for a moment there's actually research that shows that when top level executives or management have empathy with others in the organization it increases retention of staff and staff are more likely to leave when when that empathy doesn't exist and so i think these opportunities can be a moment for sharing and building empathy it's like the glue right that holds this all together um here on council and with the um with staff and the thing that that we do um

[270:02] in my staff meetings is very short it can last as much as five minutes especially if you know a big group is is good about keeping it to 30 seconds we do a quick check-in at the start of every meeting how are you today what's what's hard what's good um what is at the front of your mind to center ourselves before we head into the meeting and you know i think those kinds of things right they don't they don't require a lot of you know speeches or anything like that it's just a really quick check-in to recognize that we are humans about to enter into some challenging work together and we're carrying things with us to those discussions that without speaking them may interfere with the work that we're trying to do sound that and then i'll offer comment oh nicole did you have refinished i was finished i'm sorry that was a miss press okay man which is ironic because her hand's been up all night so i thought that was kind

[271:00] of fun but she's hanging in there i bet that arm that hand has got to be throbbing tonight so hopefully she can get horizontal and get that thing some swelling down um i appreciate what nicole was saying about the empathy i think that is spot on um i i think this is just a connection back to having mutual trust among ourselves as council members as colleagues to know what's the appropriate thing to say and what subject is approach appropriate for us to broach and that subject matter may be different for each and one of us where we feel the attachment or what is impacting us or what we feel we want to speak to but that is the beauty of the diversity of the representation that we bring in our community is that point of view and who we represent and who we may may or may not connect to so so i i i don't need i don't know if you necessarily put guard rails on it sure i i appreciate the commentary about the you know senate race in florida but i also want to recognize also that there's a lot of things that that um

[272:00] can be causing pain or concern in our community and we and it's our job to give it oxygen to let them know even if it's one person that feels that that there's someone that that they may or may not have elected that also is connecting to that and i think that builds a stronger community so so i i'm gonna put my trust in the rest of the eight of you to make that discretionary decision whether you feel you want to say something um that speaks to you that may speak to one person or may speak to a hundred thousand people in our community um so so i just wanna let you know that i trust you all to to figure out and have that discretion sad well i'll call on myself here and you know rachel i really appreciate the attempt to keep us kind of on track and on schedule i i i personally am am fine with folks offering a few brief comments on on a critical issue as long as we're disciplined and restrained about it so you know if people speak for you know a few sentences 30 seconds or a

[273:00] minute and we don't all feel the need to pile on but you know people can you know do a thumbs up you know just to say you know that they appreciate that other people did that something like that can be kept to you know two or three minutes once every you know four council meetings but still give give us a chance to express some reactions to really visceral critical issues today so i i don't mind at that level i i would i would say i i have seen councils in the past somebody gave a long speech on something like that at the beginning and then like all eight other council members piling in and 20 minutes later you finally get to the start of the meeting and i don't think that's a good practice but if we can if we can stay disciplined about it i'm i'm comfortable with it staying similar to how it's been and so can can can you live with that well i i think i must live with it so

[274:00] yes all right no worries thank you for your flexibility i appreciate you raising the question as mark says we should not raise it to the level of having a foreign policy um okay well that brings us what about uh what about the declarations i'm really sorry i got all excited i just want you to know that your declarations are awesome i'm not in any way saying that they're not you're a great writer i'm sorry sorry that i was missing that taylor you want to talk about the work that you've done on on get corralling our resolution process sure thing brockett and tara thanks for the compliment uh actually a lot of those come together through some joint collaborations so some of those words are mine but actually uh there's a lot of sort of shared authoring of the declarations but appreciate that so this actually came up earlier this year typically the way that we've approached declarations has been sort of an ad hoc function the council the community even staff can

[275:00] recommend declarations but there's not always total consistency in bringing things up annually you know some years we might miss the um a certain declaration for a certain month and so in order to establish a more predictable rhythm um we have set out a declaration schedule annually and put a little bit more color to how those declarations would be routinely scheduled of course cac can always weigh in and change the way that they're routinely scheduled as laid out in the annual rhythm but also this is in service to racial equity strategy 3.3 which seeks to raise up opportunities to support and promote the value of diversity and multiculturalism now that said we reviewed recognition commemoration opportunities from a very big list and some of them are quite specific but we try to keep it at a high level and again routinely schedule those ones that

[276:02] are community specific but also highlight the the various um diverse parts of our community and we landed on about 48 declarations for scheduling annually just pre-populated into the agenda of those 48 25 are scheduled at the end of your agendas and never get a reading about 12 of them are scheduled for a long reading and so the reading of the full declaration but again in service to what you're saying which is that sometimes they do take up a bit of time we've also created a new staggered approach where we take we write declarations in a way where you can take sort of the first and last paragraph and really shorten it so that we're we're bringing the recognition but we're doing it in a little bit of a briefer way and so 11 of those declarations on the annual schedule are are proposed for short readings so this was implemented in the beginning of summer and actually there's between council break and other things there's just not a lot of declarations in july

[277:00] and august so you'll be seeing more of that annual schedule playing out in your council meetings and you'll be seeing more of those shorter versions read but i'm also welcome any conversation around how we could continue to tailor the approach that in a way that brings the the community recognition but also balances our need for uh really um prime council time i see juni has a hand up thank you taylor my my question is i think from what i'm hearing from tara is for instance i know the schedule as well i know i have one coming up sometimes in october or november but assuming that there is a declaration that is not on the the list that you have already formatted for us and we would like that declaration to be read because it's something that is important to community

[278:01] can we still do that can we still reach out and do that absolutely and our annual rhythm that we've proposed in no way precludes additional declaration suggestions in fact we're going to be reading one in the coming weeks honoring the life and contribution of clerics who unfortunately recently passed this in no way says no to other declarations we just want to make sure that one the things that we do really as a community want to continue highlighting and bringing recognition to we have a predictable rhythm of bringing them forward um and and two again we're we're being broad and and diverse in the recognition that we do have it's very good and i'll just mention i think since this has been set up maybe some of us are being a little more disciplined myself included there been a couple resolution requests that come through recently that i thought were really worth considering but i um forwarded them on only for um to propose

[279:00] to not be read but to be put on the end of the agenda so as to to keep our declaration time controlled so tara does that address your concern very good okay well so it is now 10 29 but we can potentially be done in like three minutes uh taylor do you want to to bring up the the boards and commissions thing and our option there certainly mayor brockett emily could we get those slides back up and i'm just i do want to acknowledge that we we are late on time and there is a staff suggestion to perhaps defer some of these board and commission items for later scheduling um but mayor brockett i'm happy to offer some some framing language just to help us understand the scope of all of those changes and potentially how we could address them emily could you go to the next slide i believe you'll advance too actually

[280:04] there we go so just a couple things for historical context in january 2021 at council's retreat um some of you were i if i remember remembering correctly this was a different council so this is a discussion with our previous council um but there was a lot of conversation around boards and commissions and various ways that we could change how they're um administered and a couple of those changes that came out of the retreat were a standard onboarding and orientation process for boards and commissions as well as a way to address vacancies during outside of normal recruitment periods another conversation that shortly followed the 2021 council retreat was the racial equity plan being passed in february of 2021 and the racial equity plan actually lays out very specific commissions that address boards commissions and working groups things like collecting data revamping

[281:00] the application process and forms ensuring outreach and commitment processes support and encourage racial equity identify and mitigate barriers and operations and in addition to both of those city conversations we've also heard from a variety of other sources the council subcommittee on engagement has recommendations some have come from city staff community connectors and residents dialogue boulder which is a community group and boarding commission liaisons and secretaries themselves there are a lot of recommendations and their details are outlined in the memo for tonight's item of them 17 have already been implemented or planned for implementation an additional 15 are being considered about 28 we think probably needs council or subcommittee input before we can really act on them and the we also have an internal cross department staff team that has been we're working on rolling out diversity

[282:00] equity and inclusion training for the staff that supports boards and commissions and the hope here is really that our work through the racial equity plan and diversity equity and inclusion can be sort of a guiding light for all of these changes that we're considering or um already implementing now that said there are just a lot of conversations going on and staff suggests instead of taking them one by one tonight perhaps we could study a study or schedule a study session later in the year maybe quarter three or quarter four another idea that came up is hiring a consultant to help support a real full system analysis and provide recommendations for how we could really holistically tackle things around boards and commissions now that said the subcommittee the boarding commission subcommittee that is currently represented by council member folkerts and weiner have a couple of high priority recommendations that they were hoping

[283:00] could be considered immediately and then council has an additional i think around six or seven recommendations for changes across boards and commissions so the question tonight is do do we address board and commission proposals here do we defer some of them do we defer all of them and with that i will i will turn it back to mayor brockett thanks for that overview taylor um so i i'm just gonna get us started with a proposal here given the lateness of the hour that we work on all of the boards and commissions proposals together at an upcoming study session but tara and lauren i know you had a couple that you thought were potentially could move forward quickly but it seems like they'd still take a decent amount of discussion so i just want to see if if you all might be comfortable with um tackling all of them together in an upcoming study session

[284:09] um yeah i am fine i clearly i'm thinking very quickly on my feet right now so i think we should definitely discuss every single one tonight no um i think it could make sense to push them off but i mean i wouldn't mind a straw poll about the board and commission liaisons uh but is it too late for that probably right well it's it's at the discretion of counsel i just think it's a significant enough topic that that we might need to talk about a little bit about how it would work okay so anybody feel um i can't quite see everybody's faces but would anyone like to go ahead and tackle

[285:03] that topic tonight or so speak now all right i'm not i'm not seeing a lot of energy for it so lauren and tara appreciate your work on this we will get to this before too long um do we need to talk about the possibility of a consultant but is that something you need guidance on tonight or what's the next step on that idea i will look to nuria for that i'm happy to weigh in and frankly i'm happy to have further conversation there have been a variety of suggestions as we move forward that include much deeper conversations like can we actually critically look at how many boards and commissions we have and what is their scope we came across a report in bloomington that actually did this very same thing and it is an approach if you would have sort of an external or an outside conversation so we pose it happy to do

[286:02] that but also happy to take the smaller items as we move forward because not everything needs an approach and so mayor i'm happy to take that um offline and talk one-on-one with council members and see if they or if you all as a council body would like us to consider that but that's certainly something we can do ourselves and perhaps recommend it well maybe i'll just take a straw poll on this one you know like do people want to raise their hand if they think a consultant is is the next step forward i'm getting a maybe i'm kind of a maybe i'm seeing like three kind of maybes so i'm not seeing a huge amount of energy for it but but not an absolute no i will send you yep i'm sorry mayor i will send you that report but just know that we're ready to move forward with a study session on the topic anyway because certainly these are things that we can do but i think it might be useful

[287:00] and um for you all to have that i don't know if we had sent that to you all previously but happy to share that lauren and matt yeah i mean i guess just to kind of what we had talked about with on the boards and commissions committee was that there were you know that this could be a fair amount of work and so given staff constraints and things like that to take this to the next level you know and to make some more change major changes it probably would involve a consultant as opposed to trying to do that internally with sort of my understanding so i think it's it's not just do we want a consultant or not it's like what level of change are we interested in looking at lauren i think at the end said my point is i think we need to decide what we want to do

[288:00] and what that scope is before we determine what our resources are to allocate that so i think we need there's a a before b so nearly maybe we can have some offline conversations uh to help shape direction there absolutely mayor okay so uh taylor does that bring us to the close down of that item just about emily could we bring up the slides um there's a next step slide hoping that we can get to second to last i believe just wanted to let everyone know coming out of this conversation staff will begin implementing those proposals agreed upon by council and perhaps bringing more things for you to weigh in on on those conversations where we receive direction to draft ordinances or working agreements um and and so we'll we'll finally approve these later in the year and then the council retreat committee i i know it just feels like yesterday we

[289:00] had our retreat but it's almost upon us again um we will start meeting with those current representatives council members spear and fulferts in august to plan for the mid-term check-in retreat currently scheduled for january 13th just as a little context here the midterm check and retreat which is comes halfway through the council's two-year term typically a one-day retreat session instead of a two-day retreat session so it is um like i said scheduled on january 13th and with that i my portion is over if there are no other questions great well thanks so much on guiding us through that appreciated taylor and uh alicia i think this brings us to the end of our agenda is that right that is correct sir that was our last item uh any any uh debrief tonight um i'll just say thanks everybody for hanging in there

[290:00] it's been a good discussion all right seeing none i will go ahead and gavel us closed at 10 40 p.m have a good night everybody and uh good to be on thursdays good night [Music]

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