August 4, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music]

[1:24] 2022 meeting of the boulder city council we're going to kick it off with a couple announcements those up on the screen please covet 19 testing and vaccinations so for information and provider locations for free code 19 testing please go to www.boco.org copic testing the boulder site is at 2445 stasio drive open seven days a week from 8am to 6pm for vaccine information and provider locations go to boco.org vaccine all right and here we are in august and

[2:01] during the entire month of august rtd is offering zero fares across its system as part of the zero fare for better air initiative this collaborative statewide initiative made possible by colorado senate bill 22180 in partnership with the colorado energy office is designed to reduce ground level ozone by increasing use of public transit current rtd customers were also benefited as you will not have to use or purchase fair products from august 1st to the 31st 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 our air quality by reducing single occupancy vehicle traffic and use your commute to catch up on work listen to music or read a book so for more info please visit our tv site at www zerofair okay so that's it for the announcements so alicia can we go ahead and do

[3:01] well i will call the meeting to order first i was good evening everyone councilmember benjamin president mayor brockett president council member focus present mayor pro tem friend here hi alicia i want to say happy thursday hi mayor pro tem council member joseph present spear present folic here whiner present and yates right here mayor we have our quorum great so i'm going to kick us off by asking if we could get a motion to amend the agenda to add item 6b a code 19 and hybrid council meetings discussion and the leading side

[4:04] motion in a second um all in favor do a quick show of hands all right looks unanimous so the agenda is hereby unbended all right now we can move right on into our open comment we have 20 speakers signed up i believe and if i could turn it over for a description of our conventions and expectations for public comments thank you so much mayor and emily is pulling up those slides now thank you emily um so we know that some of you have heard these slides many times and we appreciate your patience as we share them for those who may be joining us for the first time or who don't join us as often the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive civic conversation this vision is designed to support physical and emotional safety for community members

[5:00] for staff and for city council as well as supporting democracy for people of all ages all identities lived experiences and political perspectives for more information about the process that led to the creation of this vision please visit our website boulder colorado.gov the easiest thing to do is to type productive atmospheres into the search box once you're on the home page next slide please the following are examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder revised code and other guidelines to support this vision and these will be held during upheld during this meeting tonight all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct this meeting are prohibited

[6:00] and participants were required to sign up to speak using the name you're commonly known by and must display your whole name before being allowed to speak online if you think your whole name is not displayed please let me know in the q a box and i'm happy to change it for you and currently only audio testimony is permitted online thank you emily and we are ready to proceed very good all right everyone will get two minutes to speak and our first three speakers are jan burton emily reynolds and allison conte good evening good evening council and staff jan burton 11th street on the hill on the morning of july 4th just a month ago the music was blaring throughout the hill the parties had already started commercial grade fireworks were exploding throughout the neighborhood

[7:01] all day long but nipping it in the bud is nothing the city has ever excelled at by the end of the night due to a social media post one party had blown up into a mini riot with party seekers from denver and other cities joining in despite police attempts to shut it down partiers set bushes on fire jumped on cars and set off fireworks more alarming just a few blocks away more than 80 bullets were fired from an automatic handgun and an ar-15 style long gun this was right in the middle of housing and only a few blocks from a church a city park and the hill commercial district i hope each of you agree that guns fireworks and fires are not just a nuisance to be suffered by hill residents these are serious public safety issues for the entire city yet most of these violations start with seemingly innocent house parties and

[8:02] what the city has defined as quote unquote nuisance now almost a year and a half since the april 20 2021 riot you finally have legislation to consider please pass that legislation on september 4th on emergency basis to begin progress towards improving safety for our city but don't stop there ask your city manager in the 2023 budget to prioritize head count data collection detailed enforcement procedures and a new chronic nuisance ordinance dealing with landlords and and offending properties please involve the entire city staff not just the police and the hill working group please join rachel and mark in their efforts and be that council that finally takes actions we have needed for years thank you so much your time was up but thank you so much for your testimony um emily reynolds allison conte michelle rodriguez

[9:00] i don't currently see emily reynolds on the list so we will go to allison conte good evening i'm here to advocate for the decriminalization of psilocybin mushrooms in boulder county in boulder city i come to you as a homeowner a professional and a spiritual guide i've lived in boulder for 10 years i also went to college here many moons ago and i hold a master's degree from case western weatherhead school of management i work as an instructor an instructor of executive leadership programs at harvard business school and as a consultant an executive coach to large global organizations i also run a leadership program for women change makers on the spiritual path i'm an ordained priestess a spiritual guide and a shamanic practitioner

[10:01] with my husband a christian pastor who spoke to this council two weeks ago i co-founded a non-profit spiritual organization here in boulder i've spent 30 years on the shamanic path and i have studied with a number of first nations wisdom keepers i currently work under the mentorship of an indigenous grandmother a lineage holder and i recently completed a year-long training within a native american lineage tradition as a ceremonial guide working with what native americans call plant medicines and what christians call sacraments psilocybin mushrooms have been an important part of my spiritual life for 10 years this is a safe and sincere form of prayer and it has generated the most significant experiences of my spiritual life i have witnessed many people receive spiritual guidance and healing

[11:00] from this practice i consider it to be a protected form of prayer under the religious freedom restoration act so i'm here today with all of my training skills and responsibilities as a spiritual guide to ask you to decriminalize the assignment in boulder for use in spiritual ceremony thank you so much for your testimony i'm sorry that was allison sorry emily wasn't there sorry i also apologize for that um okay next we have michelle rodriguez celeste landry and patrick murphy michelle you should be able to unmute now michelle we're not able to hear you

[12:01] um michelle i see you oh she can't see the timer and we can't hear you michelle you may need to press the mute button and then we can start the timer over michelle may be muted on your ends if you can unmute your ends that would be helpful well let me come back to you michelle so yep i'll reach out to michelle on the chat and see if we can't work that out for a later time on the list thanks we'll come back uh next we have celeste landry then good evening council i'm here to speak to the proposal to move to council elections to even years

[13:00] first i wish that we could have a broader community discussion before the ballot text is determined waiting for the council's official public hearing seems kind of late so what are some of these often forgotten details that need to be discussed one of them is the impact of moving council elections to even years will probably end up with a dramatic increase in the number of signatures needed for citizens initiatives council recalls and referenda on council actions making the citizen petition process much more difficult by all accounts coloradans highly value the citizen petition process yet i've heard barely any mention of this issue so please consider changing the signature percentage requirements in the bowel text when you meet at the next meeting and not kick this can down the road to be dealt with in future years a second point how will moving to even

[14:01] year elections possibly impact council vacancies that arise that's something to consider currently a single council seat can remain empty for a year how many council members who are halfway through their term will run for a different office in an even year leading to a special election in the following odd year to fill the vacancy and finally please don't use the mayoral contest as the basis for the number of petition signatures needed the mayoral contest might be uncontested or i might have several candidates vying the multi-winner counsel contest would be a more reliable indicator of turnout than a single winner contest please fully consider the issue of election timing in the context of boulder and colorado rather than focusing a lot on what other out-of-state jurisdictions have done thank you thank you celeste now we have patrick murphy joshua harrison and caroline escher

[15:05] my name is patrick murphy i've lived in boulder for 52 years add one more dumb idea to the boulder energy future list so boulder wants to buy all the light poles and change them to leds why is that dumb everything that they aren't telling us that's what every town around us has had led street lights years ago and excel did the conversion that's right years ago while boulder was pursuing the mooney boondoggle we could have had xl convert all our street lights to leds all that savings in money and greenhouse gas from the electricity are down the drain because we were so smart we said no to the conversion what was the stated reason and what was the unstated reason for that decision the stated reason was that we didn't like the color temperature of the leds that was based on the idea that the street lights would keep us awake interestingly there has been no lost

[16:02] sleep outcry from all the towns around us that did the conversion years ago the unstated reason was that if the muni happened it would cost us more since excel would have to get reimbursed for the conversion this is just one more example of boulder energy leadership's warped logic one justification for this purchase is that boulder would do the maintenance and it would be so much better than excel right kind of like our poor library funding and our sky high water bills it followed the 2013 floods that revealed a poorly maintained water system nope this is just another costly dumb idea we can get all the benefits of led street lights by saying yes instead of spending seven million keeping leftover muni personnel and attitudes is a continuation of propaganda promises platitudes and paychecks with no cost benefit analysis or financial audits

[17:00] when asked for more climate action money in november be skeptical be very skeptical thank you patrick now we have joshua harrison carolyn usher and aaron gabriel i am not seeing joshua so we will move on to carolyn uh i just got a text from a community member that they thought that it was seven o'clock where we were going to be doing this do you know what that would be i can answer that tara tara apparently we missed one section which was the calendar that had the meeting starting at seven o'clock due to the tuesday and the late night out um so what we did first thing this morning is get that corrected and we've let several community members know that it was corrected so i think that they're writing to me now that they didn't know it was corrected so they're going to try to get on just

[18:00] fyi okay well if they're in open comment if they log on now they can still participate we'll come back to anybody that wasn't here thanks for that and now we're at um carolyn usher i believe and carolyn you should be able to unmute i see that you're on the phone you may need to press star six on your phone god can you hear me now we can can you hear me now yes yes okay strap in we're going on a high speed romp through three issues on issue number one nod versus even your city council voting stays of course i never liked the answer because that's the way we've always done it but sometimes there are good reasons for keeping things the way they are number one i want to have time to consider my choices unencumbered by national issues and candidates number two

[19:01] everyone gets the mail in ballot no one is being disenfranchised number three if it ain't broke don't fix it issue number two affordable housing actions have long-term consequences if you allow a new building with 25 affordable and the rest are luxury units to offset developers lost does that not cause the average income in boulder to go up thereby making it more difficult for the average citizen to live here and this says nothing about the added greenhouse gases from increased traffic and and spreading our diminished water supply scent issue number three crime want affordable housing if crime continues unchecked by revolving door policies property values will fall and boom problem solved affordable housing undesirable perhaps but affordable i quote amid rising crime and scrutiny of cops there is an exodus of police chiefs in denver suburbs

[20:01] and i reference denver police in today's daily camera or the denver post props to chief harold in our amazing police force we know you're doing the best you can to recap keep odd year city council voting consider the unintended consequences of the blowing building and please take a hard look at the revolving door of policy on crime thank you for listening in your thoughtful consideration thank you carolyn i hear we have emily reynolds in back end so friendly can we bring her forward emily you should be able to unmute yep there you go thanks so much good evening everyone i remember when boulder was welcoming inclusive and safe sadly public spaces in central boulder have become dangerous boulder creek is a hazardous and unsafe destination i'd love to walk my dog down the creek

[21:02] bath but i don't want him to step in feces or on a used syringe nor do i want to meet armed repeat criminals on meth and fentanyl i avoid the pearl street mall main library bike paths central park and events held there and the boulder museum of contemporary art and the duchamp tea house and the farmer's market i no longer feel safe in these areas due to high crime and lack of meaningful city supported monitoring or safety precautions neighbors and friends avoid these areas too out of town visitors are shocked when they see the deterioration of our public spaces downtown i'm not alarmed i'm appalled i appreciate the work boulder police department and city staff do to eliminate crime and the chop shop encampments cleaning up 400 campsites so far this year is non-trivial

[22:00] these efforts demand more funding what are council members doing to support policies to address these issues unfortunately it seems that the majority of council members are choosing to ignore the community that they were elected to represent before dashing off to higher elected office please do your work here like many others i urge you to move on the two park measures so we can actually enjoy and feel safe and welcome in our public spaces clean up our parks please support chief harold support in force i should say the camping ban thank you very much thank you emily now we are on to aaron gabriel timothy harvey and peter allen cool hi all uh first off aaron and juni congratulations and best of luck on upcoming hd10 race and thanks for your service to the city and to the state and thank you all my name is aaron gabriel ag for short i

[23:01] am a eco-psychology graduate from naropa and a developer relations engineer at google and a proud boulder resident i want to speak a little bit to what place i think boulder can hold and what i think our potential is because i think boulder is a really interesting space we have two amazing educational institutions here and we also have a lot of really awesome like tech from big companies and startups emerging and there are many who compare boulder to kind of like a new silicon valley and silicon valley is this hub of innovation but also we've seen a lot of gentrification and i think we can experience where some of that is happening here in boulder as well that there's big wealth inequalities and a lot of not great issues um not great things that we'd like to see probably address to be a more inclusive and progressive city um but i think our potential is great because we have so much intelligence here with our educational universities and with the innovative tech hub and i think we can do more as a community to

[24:00] look at what these different voices are and look at how we can include these different voices and how we can bring more voices to the table to make sure that as we are this hub of innovation we can also do it in a way that's really inclusive uh intelligent and well-meaning i think that naropa for example is really weaving eastern western philosophies and bringing a more integrated worldview together uh cu boulder also awesome cognitive science department neuroscience amazing environmental studies department a lot of really beautiful things and i think we can do a better job of honoring the intelligence that's present here and bringing more voice to the table to move things forward so that boulder can continue to be a hub for a really beautiful new way to move forward as humanity but i think it requires us to be very honest and i'm going to give a plus one to everyone advocating for decriminalizing nature and psychedelics because i think psychedelics can represent a really important point um in terms of this shifting worldview so thank you so much for your time and

[25:00] thank you all for your service thanks aaron uh i understand joshua harrison is available now can we go to him uh thank you to the council for your time uh i would like to speak briefly uh about personal responsibility uh as council prepares to discuss the funding of various programs i would like you all to consider the role of personal responsibility the personal responsibility of working boulder rights to pay their fair share the personal responsibility of council members to thoughtfully and compassionately allocate the resources of the city and the personal responsibility of all in our community to follow the law i am tired of the way some council members and organizations dismiss the personal responsibility of those experiencing homelessness to behave according to community standards to be clear when those experiencing homelessness act as responsible members

[26:02] of the community there are abundant ways to provide help most of which are already implemented by the city of boulder however it is the frequent anti-social behavior of unhoused residents that necessitates laws like the camping ban these are not the most vulnerable among boulder's community that label belongs to our young children who are unable to avoid dirty meals or human waste there are roughly 300 unique visitors to our needle exchange program each month and the number of needles returned by these individuals is only half of the number given out while this commendable program reduces the risk to drug users it cannot be lauded as a success when hundreds of these used needles are being found by the children's park near the main library our public spaces are often not safe all of this dances around the elephant in the room we are not dealing with a homeless problem we are dealing with a drug problem according to judge cook 80 percent of the unhoused defendants that end up in her courtroom are suffering

[27:01] from drug addiction and while drug addiction is a disease it is not one it is one that cannot be treated without the cooperation of those affected and that requires an addict to take personal responsibility for the consequences of his behavior it is unfair to claim that what's up all right thank you okay and then we're coming back to timothy harvey and then peter allen and kathleen hancock yes thank you city council for the opportunity to speak today i'm here in support of the decriminalization of psychedelics in boulder i have a degree in cognitive neuroscience i was a master's in engineering from cu boulder here i've worked for much of my career in the development and commercialization of medical devices and pharmaceuticals often recruiting internationally known physician thought leaders who give keynote presentations at specialty medical conferences these psychedelic these psychedelic medicines are very safe considering

[28:00] what's called the therapeutic index the ratio of the effective dose of a substance to the potentially lethal dose these serotonin 2a receptor psychedelics are safer than aspirin and caffeine i serve as the executive director of consciousness hacking colorado a 501c3 filed non-profit whose mission it is to build community around the intersection of meditation technology psychedelics and spirituality we have well over 1 000 local members host events every month in boulder and we draw participants from their 20s through their 70s i hear many many stories of the positive effects of these psychedelics in people's lives and i have my own experiences that contribute as a net positive to my life what's closest to my heart is the volunteer work i do with true community care the only non-profit hospice in boulder county every week i'm present with the dying and their families and it's an honor to support some of the most vulnerable moments of their life and death

[29:00] there's tremendous potential for these psychedelic medicines substances to be used safely and responsibly especially to support people that have more comfortable and humane experiences with death and dying september 6th i'm hosting an event focused on psychedelics for death and dying we already have overwhelming interest from nurses physicians clinical administrators our entire adult population can benefit from the decriminalization of psychedelics and i humbly ask you to keep our elderly and are dying in your hearts and minds as you consider this topic thank you for your time thank you timothy and i see uh mayor protem franchise right on that thank you mayor rocket i just wanted to apologize for having my camera off especially to um the last speaker i turned it off in the middle um i'm not not paying attention my computer is just overheating so i apologize actually i turned my camera off for 30 seconds because my dog was going nuts so i also apologize for that um coincidental okay uh also uh michelle rodriguez who is i think an attendee still in the zoo meeting if you could

[30:00] call in via phone i believe brenda has sent you that number in the chat so maybe we can get you audible that way please now we have a peter allen kathleen hancock and holly carlson i don't see peter in the meeting so we will go straight to kathleen hancock hello thank you so much for letting me speak tonight um yes thank you you have my presentation um like many boulderites uh one of my favorite pastimes is cycling i usually ride with a group of women so it's both exercise and social time i also commute to appointments and shopping i'd say i'm on the bike path about five times a week second slide please this summer for the first time i find myself and my friends almost every day dodging trash tents and people sitting in the bike lanes sudden swerving to avoid a tent person garbage shopping cart etc can result in the cyclist crashing possibly into a person

[31:00] those behind also risk crashing when cyclists enter a dark underpass they're often blinded for a split second as their eyes adjust to the dark it's very hard to see obstacles my friends and i've had people in the underpasses shout at us and blow horns walk right in front of us one friend found small chairs in a bike path she nearly crashed into them another reports a half-naked woman seemingly on drugs running right into the pathway some people are hammering on bikes most likely part of the so-called chop shops one person was working on a motorbike in the middle of the pathway in this slide you can see the pathway is almost completely blocked next slide this is the picture of more tents in the underpass on goose creek next slide this shows debris that was scattered all over the pathway creating quite a dangerous obstacle course next slide there's a picture of a small girl just reminding us that all kinds of people

[32:01] ride on our bike house seniors children parents visitors locals commuters athletes next slide i was super happy this morning though because as i rode past these usual trashed places they were cleaned and lights were being installed so i was very happy to see that i just want to really encourage you to continue providing funding so we can maintain safe bike paths thank you very much thanks kathleen now holly carlson lynn siegel and linda quickly and i mute myself i do not see holly carlson so we will go straight to lynn's sequel please i'm bringing up brocky flats and i understand that 145 prairie dogs have already been moved to rocky flats with regarding to

[33:01] negotiations of avoiding call up on gun barrel development of 200 some um housing situations there and um this already has such a huge impact on gun barrel with no libraries no re i mean they're putting a little library just for the community but libraries rec centers um please fire all the infrastructure needed um for growth is not there it's like you build it first and then the the infrastructure is an after thought and this is not okay but it's mostly not okay because the people that were opposed to this development are now assuaged with the the prairie dogs which were promised to be preserved a home there and have now it's just unspeakable sent to rocky

[34:02] flats this is um seven billion dollar cleanup at rocky flats that was supposed to be 30 billion you know on the cheap and it's a cheap cleanup and these prairie dogs dig down six feet and my mother died as a result of acute mild acidic leukemia that she got i believe and i can't prove in 1957 at the biggest fire downwind of where we lived in city park in denver and she died in 1969 when i was 16 my brother was 15 and my little brother was five and that was the year of the mother's day fire the second biggest fire at rocky flats get those prairie dogs out of rocky flats they dig they bring this stuff aerial and people breathe it and they die you wait until your parent dies you time this out appreciate your testimony

[35:02] we have linda quigley elise edson and ryan joshua hi city council members um thank you for your time and your service to our city i watched your study session on reimagining policing and i couldn't help but wonder if we can just go back to having any form of policing at all um i think the kovad summons or ticket approach to crime has failed for three years and certainly doesn't stop any crime i know sheriff kelly has served this community long and well for decades and until post vaccine covered i admired his service but that was before our national homelessness slash addiction crisis

[36:00] in january i hope a new sheriff will open our jail for post-vaccine-covered business meanwhile every single day we have our belongings stolen out of our cars out from under our cars out of our garages out of our homes you can see the evidence on any casual landsat next door social media it's every day we have illegal campers starting fires by canyon assaulting residents and tourists on the creek paths so someone yet some on city council seem to think the answers for boulder are more big business more density a doubling of the current size of cu via building cu south in the last wetlands in boulder and i don't understand how all this growth jives with a growth control town of about a hundred thousand citizens

[37:00] finally uh i'm against the idea of gifting our city assets to the library foundation with an increase in mill levy and was shocked by your enthusiasm for that idea or maybe it was enthusiasm to get at more of our tax monies i'm grateful to those who voted against it and our commissioners for stopping it [Music] thank you council mayor and staff for the opportunity to speak tonight about a health crisis in our community lead pollution in boulder from general and recreational aviation i sent a slide deck for your review which is up and i'll touch on the highlights now but there's no need to change slides for this talk we are in a public health crisis over 70 percent of lead pollution in colorado comes from aviation and since 2020 over 125 pounds of lead have been released

[38:02] into boulder's air based on sales of leaded fuel out of boulder airport furthermore boulder is currently selling and profiting from the like sales of leaded fuel while unleaded alternatives exist longmont is selling unleaded fuel there is no safe level of lead lead stays in our bodies forever and is devastating for children this is a public health crisis being subsidized by boulder taxpayers and we are asking for city council to take a stand last week there was a congressional hearing on let it aviation fuel as a health crisis and the responsibility falls to us to take action so much good could be done with the city-owned land that currently houses the pollution engine of the airport in this case truly the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the privileged few you might have heard the argument for boulder airport as an economic driver in three words it's not true studies of similar-sized airports have found that airports like ours have the impact of a strip mall and are heavily subsidized by taxpayers finally

[39:00] by faa regulations any positive economic impact from the airport stays with the import the airport rather than going back to the city so much could be done with the land that currently houses the pollution engine of the airport affordable housing student housing floodplain protection and in this case again the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the privileged few city council has a strong record of standing up for what's right and doing the right thing boulder took a stand on fracking and this is a pollution engine just like fracking in the short term stop the sales of let it fuel the airport in the future consider alternative uses for the land that benefits everyone thank you for your time okay thank you elise now we have ryan yasuo neil rasmussen and uh schuler bailey hi my name is ryan joshua i'm a software engineer living in boulder county i'm here today to let you know that i am in favor of boulder decriminalizing psychedelics and i'm asking you to make

[40:00] that one of your top priorities there are many reasons to decrement psychedelics to me the top reason is that many people are using psychedelics to heal from various mental illnesses one example that can be found on john hopkins website as a press release is titled psilocybin treatment for major depression effective for up to a year for most patients study shows in america we believe in freedom yet the government can arrest people and put them in jail based on what substances they choose to put in their own bodies psilocybin-containing mushrooms are classified as schedule 1 which means a drug that has currently no accepted medical use and high potential for abuse but the federal government is currently funding research into their medical use and studies have shown that they are not addicted if you oppose are on the fence about decriminalizing psychedelics in boulder i strongly recommend you watch the new how to change your mind documentary series on netflix by michael pollan it explains why these plants and fungi were made illegal in the first place

[41:01] and shows how they can help with a wide variety of mental health issues like depression ptsd and ocd decriminalizing psychedelics may not be a priority for the city council yet but it is a priority for the people of baltimore county as you can hear by the number of comments on this issue today so again please make the criminalizing psychedelics one of your top priorities you likely have a family member a friend a neighbor a member of the community that you know that is suffering from one of these mental illnesses and psychedelics can help them thank you thanks very much all right i appreciate your testimony now we have neil rasmussen bailey and katie clum sorry i am trying to enable neil's allow to talk is not available oh i'm

[42:02] going to promote you to panelist neil um so you will leave the meeting and come back he's using an older machine that will not allow the enabled mute button and neil are you with us yes neil you should be able to control your mute button can you hear me now yes yes good thank you good evening uh i want to ask why some key city services have very nearly ceased to exist specifically i'm referring to public safety the enjoyment of public spaces and basic transportation infrastructure these are not new problems they've been growing and accumulating for years growing worse year after year first why

[43:01] doesn't the city repair potholes anymore and and and fix the roads uh main thoroughfares like canyon boulevard arapahoe road folsom road baseline road and many others go unrepaired this far into the summer despite being reported by myself and others the long-standing policy of deferred maintenance can only go on so long before we start looking and feeling like a third world country and i think we're halfway there potholes crumbling sections of road seem to be everywhere there are streets that have been graded as substandard for over a decade by this city's own transportation department and they get no attention when i make specific suggestions and requests of the city transportation department their response is that they have their priorities and then they say they have no money regarding their priorities in my opinion they're out of whack three weeks ago a two block stretch of 22nd street between pearl and canyon was repaved this road

[44:02] didn't have a blemish and bears very little traffic yet major arteries go unattended there are just so many examples like this all around the city regarding their complaint of lack of money i guess maybe that's your fault city council or since this has been going on for over a decade i can't help but wonder if it's intentional this is the wealthiest city on the front range yet it has perennially has the worst quality roads on the front range boulder does not lack for financial resources not to mention the tens of millions of free pandemic money that was delivered to this city by the federal government uh the same problem thank you for your testimony next we have schuler bailey and then katie clum and i hear that holly carlson's meeting again hello council my name is skylar bailey thank you for the opportunity to speak can you hear me

[45:00] okay thanks my comments are concerned with the safety of our public spaces or lack thereof i moved here two years ago with my husband and our three little kids to start a new life in a beautiful place we used to live in san francisco and we left at the beginning of its demise as encampments and petty crime were on the rise when we started to find used needles in the sandbox at the park and i didn't feel safe taking a walk while pregnant with our baby in a stroller because i was such an easy target it was becoming no place to raise children two years after moving here i fear boulder is on a path to the same fate our public spaces the bike paths the farmers market the creek the library spaces that are meant for children families all boulder residents to visit and enjoy have become tent encampments chop shops for stolen bikes and havens for hardcore drugs there they are cities unto themselves with no rules little oversight and great

[46:02] risk to our community i have never taken my kids to these places by myself because i'm afraid of getting assaulted or finding used needles i am not alone you've heard people speak tonight and i've heard many stories of kids finding drug paraphernalia and human feces in our parks and near our playgrounds this is unacceptable after the recent assault on a 75 year old woman on the bike path by a vagrant i felt compelled to speak tonight my kids and i are as vulnerable as she was of being attacked in broad daylight and now i fear for when my parents visit boulder has been through enough especially after the king super shooting we cannot stand idly by and let our community continue to be traumatized by violence we couldn't prevent king supers we can prevent this i urge the council to hear the cries of your constituents public safety is priority number one please vote that way if you don't families will leave thank you so much for your time

[47:01] thank you speller and apologize for getting your name wrong now we have katie clum and then try holly carlson and then try michelle review yes hi thank you for letting me speak tonight um i live in boulder i'm a licensed psychotherapist and boulder i also teach at the graduate school of um psychology at naropa and i hold a board position for a non-profit the noak society whose mission is around changing the dialogue around psychedelics bringing community um engagement in to allow for a more diverse and dynamic um so i'm sure it's not a surprise to you that i'm here tonight um to speak in favor of the decriminalization of psychedelics within

[48:01] boulder um you know from a therapeutic stance i recognize uh the healing potential that these different plant medicines hold um it is really difficult for me as a therapist to read the research to understand the impact and to have clients come in with some pretty profound trauma asking about this and having no way of allowing them the autonomy to make choices in how they heal um decriminalization of course is not legalization but it lowers the the potential risk of arrest um for for an individual making a choice for themselves and when i say individuals i'm talking about individuals and who are

[49:00] professionals who are elderly these are not drug seekers um these are people seeking a path through some pretty deep pain and um you know with decriminalization that allows boulder to become a hub for harm reduction um more information can be upgraded but thank you for your testimony thank you we have holly carlson and michelle rodriguez you may need to press star six on your own phone and your phone's mute button as well good evening city council and fellow fellow boulder residents as someone who lives in the boulder junction transit area and has done so since 2017 since late 2019 i have watched the chaos ndk of boulder when it comes to these encampments being allowed to pop up in and everywhere a grassy shaded spot or an underpass with no rocks lies

[50:01] become built up with stolen items from bikes to yeti coolers with brand new stickers still on it mounds of trash and other hazardous materials that everyone in boulder has become familiar with unfortunately these days i don't think anyone could have missed the ungodly sites that have come from the underpass of junction place on goose creek trail where until yesterday there had been an encampment there for eight months in between the underpass both on the bike trail and underneath the railroad crossing where crops were cold weekly if not multiple times daily by numerous passer buyers for events like assault theft obstruction of trail and fights within the encampment itself i've spoken about this area during the library district tax open comment on april 6 and then had the vice president of the boulder valley school district make a twitter comment about the same area saying i had lied and that she had traveled this area five times a week and that there was no issue well i'm sorry to say but my son who is a bvs student got to witness an assault here a week and a half ago along with a cyclist

[51:00] where two men beat each other with another to another one with rocks and luckily him the cyclist were able to interrupt the assault and call the police so i'm sorry to the vice president but that area is not safe as much as you wish to believe a safe camping area has to be designated where there is transparency between campers and people in charge as well in law enforcement and it can be maintained i believe that in order to improvise any type of safe area you also need to be able to know who exactly you're housing because i also want to point out that i have a lot of the campers on goose creek trail who have lost their housing vouchers here in boulder in less than three months for doing illegal activities as uh as production of meth and the sale of illegals but thank you for your testimony okay now we have michelle rodriguez as our last testifier can we give her another try please brenda yes michelle we're um trying to promote you as a panelist to see if that will

[52:02] help your mute button work you'll need to accept the little pop-up invitation that you'll see that says promote panelist and hopefully you'll be able to see that all right i think michelle has moved let's see she i'm trying to do both i'm trying to enable the mute button but also move you over to panelist and let's see if i can unmute you nope it doesn't seem like it's working unfortunately it doesn't um michelle did send us i'll turn on my camera michelle did send in a message um that

[53:01] she requested that we read so i will um read that if that is all right with you mr mayor if there's no objections from council since she's having technical difficulties okay very good go ahead brenda great please sit in silence for my two minutes and ask the full council to read the article officers of chemical restraint tell me why the paramedic confessed that he chemically sedated me at officer request chief harold nuria rivera joey lapari all claim it's okay my two minutes for the ones with no voice in silence please thank you and mayor it is up to you whether those two minutes um constitute a delay of the meeting um i it seems like taking her written testimony makes sense but i don't know about following instructions for stance

[54:00] out for two minutes um i'll look to teresa what do you think mayor there's nothing in the council procedure that would permit two minutes of silence um certainly you know we're we're glad that miss rodriguez was able to submit a comment and that that's been uh read publicly and that would conclude her public testimony very good thanks teresa okay thanks for doing that brenda and michelle thank you for your testimony all right that brings us to the end of public testimony so um any staff responses council just quickly i'll say that um i a lot of the comments today have to do with our public spaces and i think tonight's presentation uh we'll address some of those questions and um uh sort of share out with the community what staff has been doing i'll also say and i just wanted to mention to the call that called in about basic core services and potholes and so forth i appreciate that the

[55:00] i appreciate the conversation about um what are we doing to make sure that our roadways are safe and i'll say that i don't know that people and community really understand the impacts the financial impacts and the staffing impacts the pandemic had on the city please know that i'm excited that you'll see some of this in budget that staff is staffing up and that our future plans will certainly be putting a spotlight on some of those cool services as we move forward so i just want to acknowledge that and know that our transportation team is working really hard to address some of those issues as we move forward okay and there if i could just follow up on that i i've heard my understanding is that like our pothole filling teams specifically are lacking staff right that we've had trouble that they are understaffed and so there are delays in the pothole filling process because specifically in that area that is correct mayor and we are trying to work to address that as fast as we can working with our hr partners and hoping to give that department and that

[56:00] division some support as we move forward thanks all the best of luck to that department just want to get this possible okay thanks for that now i have some council members with comments mark nicole tara i guess this is a question for um our police chief um we've heard a lot of commentary uh today and in past meetings about the decriminalization of psychedelics as a practical matter have we been arresting people on that basis is that been a a major area of concern within the uh law enforcement considerations um [Music] i'm just trying to get a handle on what the scope of this problem might look like i am not currently seeing our chief online but um oh there she is sorry my uh computer is not working very well i had to switch computers

[57:01] um council member are you're asking about the legalization or decriminalization of mushrooms yeah i mean is it a problem that we're are we engaged in a great deal of active enforcement of that that that people are concerned about uh or they simply want the imprimatur of the city of boulder on that practice we do not see um the level of issues with the psychedelics we do get complaints from the university setting and we do have issues with the student population but as far as the vast majority of drug issues that i see are with methamphetamine and the fentanyl epidemic that colorado is experiencing as always unintended consequences of these decisions are very long lasting and i would just caution a lot of study needs to be done i come from a state that i've always supported

[58:02] legalization of marijuana but i think that the unintended consequences of some of these decisions are starting to be seen now in colorado so i think it it requires a lot more research and a lot more study to understand this thank you chief appreciate it i wanted to thank you all the community uh for your comments today i want to specifically say elise i appreciated your conversation about leaded fuel and know that we will be discussing and this goes to this is also for the other people in the airport surrounding community that will be discussing a lot of this at our airport master plan discussion and in the next six months would you say that's correct nuria i say it's more like a year i don't know and actually i was just gonna say i don't wanna i don't wanna mislead people and i'm not quite sure of

[59:01] the timing but i do know that staff has asked that master plan to come forward soon because it triggers some funds from the federal government and certainly can circle back on the timing of that but i do know that they have wanted to move that forward uh in the original work plan that they had anticipated so i'm sure i'm happy to get back to you council member and and like nuria i agree that i'm hopefully the community will be staying on for the remainder of the night and we will be discussing so many of these things that everybody has discussed uh earlier very good nicole and then lauren thanks um i just have a question for you nuria a lot of the folks here tonight are talking about um how we can basically get more resources to address areas of concern and i just want to highlight for the community that we will be having budget discussions coming up um i think in starting in september or so um and i'm just wondering how folks can engage with that

[60:01] discussion because um i think it would be helpful that you know hear some feedback from um staff about you know if the community is asking for more resources in one area where are we pulling from what are we what are we doing to you know make sure that we're not kind of overspending the resources that we have so i think that would be a wonderful place for people to come to us with some ideas about where we can put money to address some of the concerns where we're taking it from i appreciate the question council member and you are indeed right that we will have a study session three hours dedicated to our budget process on september 8th and subsequently we will have um a public hearing uh similar to what we do with um with budgets all year and i'll say i don't know off the top of my hand and don't know if anybody in finance and and no need to find them if they are not with us but we also for the first time are actually putting out our online budget book and we are finalizing some of that we are making sure that is ready to go publicly and that's another

[61:00] area that up until now community hasn't had a real good opportunity to see what that looks like and so we anticipate that happening i would say in the august september time frame unless staff is going to correct me and either give me a definite date or tell me i've completely misled them but i believe it soon thank you oh lauren thank you i had a question i think this is for theresa um celeste landry brought up um with the even year elections signature requirements for citizen initiatives my understanding was that we have different signature requirements already for even in odd years based on sort of average voter turnout is that um meet with your

[62:00] understanding of those requirements you know my understanding council member is that the the signature requirements are tied to participation in the most recent municipal elections and so as we look at moving forward to this evenier election possibility we have introduced language that would tie the signature requirement only to the mayoral numbers so analyzing those i did hear the the community member mentioned that perhaps um council might want to consider not tying it to mayoral but instead tying it to the council member races um and so that's certainly something council can consider if this as this item comes before you again but currently it's it's based on the the most recent municipal elections thank you rachel

[63:00] just to follow up on lauren's question are we in any hurry to calculate based on like a 2026 and 2028 even your election so mayor pro tem as i recall um there was some new language that's proposed that was in front of the council on first reading with respect to changing that um given given the concern about potentially ratcheting up the numbers of the signatures increased you know that's i leave that to council's will about whether council wants to do that in the near term um or whether council would prefer to wait until later to do that and perhaps do some study on voter turnout well that's what i'm wondering like you know what would happen if we don't do anything now i my understanding was we could see what the turnout is in 2026 and then maybe re-engage that work group to look at it and see if you know where we wanted to place it to match with what they were going for the last time because if i understand it correctly it would not be until 2030 election that

[64:02] those numbers would become relevant is that right because you're looking back several elections before with the calculation not like the one just before i'm afraid that i don't actually know the timing of when the numbers would become relevant however um i i agree with you that it's a matter that council could wait and look at um i and again i i hate to speak out of turn but i think it's a three-year look back um and and uh i see that council manager member benjamin oh thank you i see from a couple of you it's a two-year look back so thank you for that assist i really appreciate it um and so you're right that there would be some delay in thinking about what are the what are the voter turnouts and and there could be an opportunity for some analysis of that yeah do you mind i'm just sorry to interrupt but we've got a public hearing on this coming up in a week and where i think everybody will be prepared to answer our questions so what i might suggest is if we have any additional questions on these matters to

[65:01] get them into staff get them out to hotline for community visibility and then they can be answered at the the public hearing next week if that's writing folks all right rachel vanished but is that right i'll take silence as this end all right there we go very good um right not seeing any other hands uh alicia can you take us to our consent agenda please yes sir uh that is item three on tonight's agenda our consent agenda includes items a through e and i believe we're getting just a real quick presentation on item e indeed and i'll ask uh joey lopari to um introduce himself and kick us off on that good evening council appreciate your time good evening members of the public um i'm the uh joe lapari the independent police monitor for the city of boulder i'm here tonight with our two co-chairs uh who should be able to pop up pretty

[66:00] soon there they are daniel lindard and ariel amaru our co-chairs um so i'm coming to you tonight with a request to increase the number of police oversight panel members from nine to 11. for those council members who were on the council back in 2020 when we passed the original ordinance there was some discussion the original ordinance that was submitted to council did include 11 panel members there was some discussion during the presentation to council about whether that was the right number we ultimately went down to nine with the council's uh sort of suggestion that hey keep an eye on this within a year or so if the panel feels like they need to go up to 11 bring that back to us and so we're now about a year and a half into the panel's work uh they have concluded that they would like two additional panel members uh so we're coming to you with that request i have a very brief uh one slide presentation

[67:01] to share with you all i can just go through give you all a sense of what the panel members are contributing their time to and where it would benefit to have two additional panel members so i think everyone can see that so we have currently seven regular panel members and two co-chairs as you can see the panel member the regular panel members are currently devoting i would estimate about 10 to 15 hours per month that is made up of attending the regular monthly meeting conducting at least one case review a month we usually do a total of three so that's each panel member sitting on at least one case review each month they've developed they've created committees um they have three committees the legacy review committee the

[68:00] governance committee and the community outreach and engagement committee those committees have begun active work and are meeting at least once a month now and those meetings of course lead to you know more time commitments um then we also have trainings regular trainings for the panel members um with the police department with the da's office with other entities that can provide insight and information on the work that they're doing and then we're also wrapping up for increased public engagement as we hopefully are coming to the end of covid and are going to be able to do more um public events so that's taking up uh quite a bit of time of the panel members and then the co-chairs on top of all that they have an additional 10 hours or so that they are devoting each month with their additional duties planning and chairing the meetings um responding to fairly voluminous internal communications often um developing public statements responding

[69:01] to media interviews and inquiries and we have also coming up uh whether or not we expand the number of panel members we'll have um the first set of terms four terms coming to an end at the end of this year so we'll be going through a process of advertising for applicants to the panel reviewing those applications interviewing all those applicants and selecting those new panel members so that will be another huge time commitment so for the regular panel members the case reviews and the committee work currently i think are the areas where they would really benefit from having additional two additional panel members that would it could allow each panel member to serve on only one committee instead of panel members serving on multiple committees and it would give us a little bit of breathing room in our case review schedule if someone is out of town or unavailable for to do a review that month we would have two additional people that could always we could

[70:00] be more confident in consistently getting three cases reviewed each month uh so that's our request um i'm happy to take any questions and uh you can direct your questions either to me or either of the co-chairs ariel and daniel so much for that joey and daniel and ariel so thanks very much for being here tonight and for your service on this panel we appreciate it very much it's important work any questions from council nicole just had a question and i don't know if this is a question for um for joey or somebody on the committee or just sort of a general question about boards and commissions how does the workload for this one compare to the other um boards and commissions that we have because it does seem like it's a lot more work than some of the others and i'm just wondering if somebody could speak to that yeah i'm not actually sure i could speak to that if someone else could um i'm not involved with the other panels and and boards um i'm happy to jump into that it's a

[71:00] heavier workload but it sounds like an area add on to that well i'm happy to jump in and if anybody has additional information i don't know that we've really tracked the workload of all our other boards and commissions but i will say that this unlike a boarding commission is really a working operational panel they are doing some very specific work to review cases um they they serve in um certainly in an advisory role but in a very different role for the magnitude of what they are doing their job really is to review cases review policies and provide the chief with their thoughts on some of the matters that are coming before them so it is why this is not technically a boarding commission and and really a different kind of structure if you will thank you um and i apologize for not knowing that the answer to this question on top of my head do we pay people for their work because it does sound like it's categorically different work and i'm just wondering if that's that's another um issue to consider is whether or not we're paying enough for the work

[72:01] that um is involved here so i imagine it's a it's quite emotionally taxing as well it is counselor absolutely and uh so from the beginning we've had a 100 stipend per month for the panel members that was intended to cover things like child care or elder elder elder care or other costs parking that would be associated with attending meetings um in our upcoming budget for um for fiscal year 2023 we have requested to increase that stipend to 200 for the regular panel members and 250 for the co-chairs and i'll add to that that we have recently agreed to have a contract with naropa university to provide some support we know that what our panel members are seeing and watching can be triggering and difficult to watch the many hours of body cam um videos and we want to make sure that our panel has the support that they need as they do some really hard work thank you for those responses

[73:01] rachel i'm just going to add maybe a little context to nicole's question i think sometimes there are boards that are a little bit more amenable to tucson i guess where you can spread the workload out and so one example that was the arts um commission where they review grant applications and so a couple years ago we also um put something on the ballot to increase their numbers like for the same reason to to reduce everyone's workload because they were getting overwhelmed okay uh well seeing other questions uh joey thanks again and ariel and daniel thank you again really appreciate the important work that you're doing thank you counselors appreciate it uh okay and did we have any other questions or comments on the consent agenda in general mark hey i'm sorry i was having a computer glitch

[74:00] um i just had a question relating to the noise ordinance uh one of the standards included in the language is is to uh is that the violation is based on um a person of normal hearing and i'm wondering if that might be a little bit vague i'm not quite sure how we would defend that if somebody called it vague um you know what is the standard for a person of normal hearing is there a range i i you know my concern is that it be a fully enforceable ordinance and i'm i'm just wondering about that particular language i'm happy to address that uh there are kind of two uh schools of thought on noise ordinances you know one is where you come out with a a decimal reader and um and get some empirical information um

[75:00] there are some them some drawbacks to that uh it's not uncommon for this to be the standard for it to be a reasonable person or a person of reasonable hearing i haven't done case research to see whether that has been upheld or how that's been defined but it is pretty common among municipalities uh happy to look into that further before second reading if if if council would like that no i'm not looking to make work for you if if that is a common thing in other noise ordinances and other municipalities i accept that as a standard thank you uh rachel one point of clarification question um for teresa maybe because we got an email about this will the noise ordinance apply just to the hill or city-wide it's i don't have an answer to that it came as a result of the hill work group but my understanding is it's city-wide so

[76:01] that would be i'm not aware of us ever putting standards into place that only apply to specific areas but i will confirm that and let council know okay yeah and i actually i was just review re reviewing the ordinance because i've always understood to be city-wide and when i re-reviewed it i saw nothing that was neighborhood specific so and i believe that is the intent of it but certainly open to if on second reading theresa needs to correct me on that that's my take too so i i thought that was a softball question i did not mean for that to be a trick one because it is in the in the intro language it talks about the hill but then the ordinance my understanding applies to um the whole city so let's uh report back on that thanks very good seeing no other hands someone might make a motion on the consent agenda remember the consent agenda

[77:01] i second that and do we need to stay as amended i think maybe we minded something anyhow second if you if it as a do you wanna just be specific about um the amendment no i just remember at the beginning of the meeting we amended the agenda in some way i couldn't remember consent so i was adding oh no no that that was to add a new item to the agenda at the end of the meeting but did not affect the consent agenda that's exactly how how good my memory is and how long it is second period we have a motion and a second on the unamended consent agenda and at least i think this is roll call yes sir you are correct and we'll start tonight's roll call with council member weiner yes yates yes benjamin yes mayor bronkett yes councilmember folkerts yes mayor pro tem friend

[78:00] yes councilmember joseph yes spear yes and wallach yes our consent agenda tonight sir was passed unanimously and thanks again to the oversight panel for the incredibly hard work that they're doing and glad we can get you all some assistance all right well we can move on to our public hearing now lucian all right sir our public hearing is item 5 tonight on the agenda 5a is the consideration of a motion to accept the 2022 boulder parks and recreation master plan and approve the boulder valley comprehensive plan known as the bvcp the parks and recreation master plan summary as well thank you council as alicia just mentioned we're here to talk about city council's acceptance of the boulder parks and rec master plan

[79:00] but first i really want to acknowledge the loss of one of our city employees and boulder parks and rec teammates our hearts go out to this employee's family and we hold you close in our thoughts during this difficult moment we're also holding close to teammates directly impacted and recognized the death of any city employee hurts us all teammates across the city are wrapping their arms around our parks and recreation colleagues and it's appropriate that tonight we celebrate their role in promoting our community's health and well-being and with that i will introduce our amazing director allie rhodes thank you for that nuria um we are here tonight for what we hope is your last touch on this 2022 parks and recreation master plan processing and the first step on some really exciting master plan doing tonight you'll consider a motion to accept our 2022 master plan and first we have a brief presentation to remind members of city council and our community members of the path that has brought us here tonight and some of the

[80:00] key elements of this master plan with me here tonight are members of our talented and incredible core project team regina elsner is our project manager and bpr senior manager for natural resources jackson height is parks and recreation senior manager for business services and tina briggs is a senior uh city senior planner and been the lead on the community engagement for this project becky zimmerman leads the design workshop team she is a principal and the ceo of the firm and we're so honored to have her engaged on this project our project manager from design workshop and here tonight also is eric chrome gold we know members of our team our advisory board and community are listening in and i want to thank them all for their contributions to this project our teammates passion and brains have ensured that this plan reflects our system and leading practices the crab's constructive input and community passion helped us align the recommendations with community goals and values and of course the community's input every step along the way has pointed us in a direction

[81:00] that will deliver a system that aligns with their priorities our prab chair pam ugar and vice chair chuck brock are here if you have questions of the board later during your questions and with that i'm honored to once again put you in the very good hands of our project manager regina elsner thank you ali as we mentioned this evening we are here with the requested action for city council to accept our 2022 boulder parks and recreation master plan as well as approve the changes to the parks and recreation master plan summary within the boulder valley comprehensive plan so we have been working on this plan since early late 2020 with some delays due to the onset of the copa 19 pandemic throughout this process we followed the city's standard approach to master planning and the information that we've gathered the deliverables that we've presented and the engagement with the community the process outlined here was reviewed

[82:01] with city council back in december of 2020 and was refined based on council's feedback to ensure a focus on engagement with the community the parks and recreation advisory board has been heavily involved throughout the process to provide input and guidance on that process and its outcomes we've talked about we've engaged the community throughout this process highlighting considerations for not just an equitable process but equitable outcomes of our master plan we've engaged with community connectors we've had micro engagements with specific targeted populations within our community including folks with low incomes and housed individuals as well as hosting bpr's first ever bilingual community open house we've also had ongoing collaboration with other city departments throughout this process through our master plan coordination committee as well as one-on-one focus groups that ensures the alignment between our departments and

[83:00] all the work we do for our community and now we have actually developed a video that we are going to be sharing with city council this evening something a little bit different for us and i have to i'm going to stop sharing my screen and pull up that video and re-share my screen so excuse me for just one moment while i do that [Music] i'm allie rhodes director of boulder's parks and recreation department and i'm regina elsner master plan project manager since 2014 in our last master plan we have come so far we've renovated over 15 playgrounds across the community in the scott carpenter pool we've intentionally

[84:01] invested your tax dollars in the programs that provide the most community benefit since late 2020 we've been going through the process to update our master plan since we first started the community has confirmed our direction we've utilized the three-pronged approach to inform our master plan recommendations using research policy and community direction the lens around the outside represents our commitment to sustainability equity and resilience throughout this process we've engaged our community to ensure the voices of our entire community are being heard we've done that through a statistically valid survey micro engagement with targeted portions of our population and our first ever spanish language open house we've heard a lot from boulder rights and learned so much and we can't wait to share it with you in parks and recreation we manage over 1800 acres of urban parks three rec centers the belmont bike park

[85:01] boulder reservoir and flatirons golf course we also take care of 54 parks 43 athletic fields 80 sports courts and 43 playgrounds all of which keep our staff very busy during the pandemic our community found comfort in the outdoor spaces that we provide and those facilities and spaces are still highly used today we also provide recreation programs along with many community partners before the pandemic we and our partners provided over 2 500 different types of programs some of those programs are provided by fees and some of them are paid for through taxes and grants to ensure access to our entire community what we learned during our master plan outreach was that generally our community thinks that we're doing a pretty good job taking care of our system and that we need to continue to promote the health and well-being of all parts of our community we also learned who our community believes should benefit from our

[86:00] services and how those services should be paid for the larger the community benefit the more those programs should be funded by the community through taxes compared to the larger individual benefit the more the individual should pay the fee our research also showed that taking care of our robust parks and recreation system costs us more and more every year and those expenses are higher than our income based on current estimates we need an additional 4.7 million dollars a year to take care of this system and continue to provide the current level of services this includes taking care of the parks and facilities and high quality programming that our community values such as expand and ysi programs age-based discounts for youth and seniors and financial aid so knowing where we are today helps us chart a course the future with city council's acceptance of this master plan we commit to the work it outlines our master plan promises that

[87:02] we use this plan every year to inform our decisions our work and our investments sustainability and resilience will guide everything that we do so that our work both mitigates against and prepares for the impacts of climate change we'll consider all of our choices with an equity lens so that we consider who benefits and who is impacted by the work that we do bolderites will see us taking care of what we have focusing our dollars on existing parks facilities playgrounds and more we'll grow our ability to be partners and earn grants and donations that all of our dollars can go farther part of our master plan promise is that every year we'll report out on key performance indicators we'll tell the community how we're doing with financial aid visitation rec center use and more so that we can show the community benefit we're providing we'll track our carbon footprint volunteerism and more together we dreamed of a parks and recreation system that is more welcoming and inclusive for all and more resilient

[88:02] in the face of growing demand and climate change as we implement this master plan that dream will become closer to reality we can't wait to work with you as we promote the health and well-being of the entire community through our incredible system of parks facilities and services ally you ready to race let's go we can't wait to see you in the park um thank you for watching that video i'm going to share my screen again with the presentation so if you just give me one more second

[89:11] as we mentioned in the video recognizing our critical role in promoting community health and well-being this master plan includes policy guidance that will help us ensure that boulder's tax investments in parks and recreation are optimized for community benefit we'll improve programming and reduce barriers to access and ensure bpr services support the total physical mental and social well-being of the community we will focus on those segments of the community that boulder has told us were most critical to serve those with disabilities people with low income older adults and youth across boulder's 1800 acres of parks and facilities evidencing the community's prioritization of taking care of our existing system we'll focus on maintaining what maintaining well what we have and providing multi-use parks and facilities through a consistently

[90:00] and clearly implemented asset management program we'll build a stronger parks and recreation system through meaningful connections with the community such as through our volunteer programs and connections with community groups perhaps most importantly we will support a workforce challenged by reductions in staffing capacity and funding amidst a world continuously rocked by social and political unrest continuing education team building skills development and streamlining internal processes are opportunities to support staff growth and morale and to foster deeper connections with each other we know that our organizational readiness is paramount to bpr's continued success in serving the boulder community the master plan also outlines policies to help us address our financial reality this graphic ties together the total financial picture for bpr the column on the left represents bpr's current funding levels as determined by

[91:00] the 2016-2019 averages of our funds 2020 and 2021 were intentionally excluded because of the incredible variance we experienced in funding due to the pandemic the column on the right is the recommended funding level to achieve asset management recommend asset management recommended investments for our system as well as recommended spending for urban forestry based on the 2018 urban forest strategic plan and funding levels required to continue recreation service levels maintaining only the current level of funding will require difficult conversations with the community about right-sizing core services and expectations from the community and this plan provides policy direction to guide those conversations while the plan provides guidance that will help us direct existing and stable funding towards the highest community benefit it also highlights and supports our ability to cultivate additional funding and address gaps through partnerships and philanthropy as council considers the 2023 budget you

[92:02] will see that bpr's budget submissions forward some proposals to align our expenses with these recommended funding levels in april of this year we shared with city council an 80 draft of our master plan since that time we've made some changes to our plan specifically we've refined the plan alternatives the action the fiscally constrained action and vision plan alternatives we've refined graphics addressed over 400 comments and included language about equity and latinx we've also added specific language related to sustainability and climate change we've added key performance indicators that help us measure our progress we've also added our executive summary glossary and works cited and this time i'll hand it back to ally

[93:01] part of our master plan promise is that each year we'll report annually on key performance indicators they're all outlined here and they're just a sampling of the data we collect and we've really focused on these ones to align them around the key themes and what we heard was important to the community so financial aid visitations and overall facility use will allow us to make sure that the rec centers are being optimized for community benefit the carbon footprint of the recreation centers volunteerism all of these align with the key themes and real priorities we heard from the community these kpis will keep us accountable to our commitments to the community where data and metrics will allow us to track our progress over time i want to note that these are our department-specific outcomes we'll continue to contribute to citywide metrics as appropriate to contribute to citywide goals for example while we will track the actions in our work to contribute uh to understand the carbon footprint of the recreation centers both as they're programmed and as they're operated we'll also continue to work with climate initiatives on

[94:00] other outcomes related to sustainability and of course with the city manager's office on making real our commitment to addressing racial equity with the acceptance of this master plan our team once again commits to fulfilling our mission into implementing the initiatives and the fiscally constrained alternatives through an annual action planning process we will make sure that this plan does not sit on a shelf and that we ensure that this plan is a living document views to improve the overall system and achieves the goals of the community well into the future we'll collaborate with the parks and recreation advisory board with you our members of council and align city departments to ensure the goals and initiative of each key theme are considered that we maximize our resources and efficiency and that we make sure we do everything we can to deliver best-in-class parks facilities and programs for the boulder community now and before your consideration in the public hearing i have a really smart team here to answer your questions

[95:01] thanks so much for that ali and regina and i want to say i'm not sure what the oscar equivalent is for videos in municipal government but that that one that one will win i'm sure and i i believe you mentioned um that the parks and rec chair um emily ugar was able to come here tonight is that right i i have not looked i'll be honest i have not looked at the meeting i know chuck brock yep i see chuck i do not see pam in the meeting but i see chuck so and chuck i just invite you to make a brief comment um thanks for being here tonight well hi everyone uh yeah i'm an enthusiastic supporter of this master plan i think it's uh wonderful tons of work has gone into it a really excellent community outreach especially reaching out to some of our more underserved communities in the city i'd like to call your attention to the implementation of the gis geographic information systems data in sort of mapping areas where we're

[96:02] not providing equity to everyone in the community as far as access to parks and recreation facilities and i hope that's the start of a of a new trend in doing quantitative analysis using these mapping tools to to look at access to the facilities and um how it intersects with transportation and other city uh city amenities so yeah that's all i have i'm happy to answer any questions you might have about uh crab's role in this uh in this master plan process thanks chuck appreciate your and the entire board's work on this topic and everything else parts related do you have any questions for for staff all right oh there's one mark and then rachel well first i want to thank everybody for the work on this and a very heartfelt thank you for the glossary um that was extremely useful um

[97:00] a couple of things on on late in the report on page 77 you're showing um actual surpluses uh between 2022 and 2025. um i'm having trouble reading that because i'm assuming we're we're having the shortfall that you're showing us and i'm assuming further that in that case these surpluses would be reapplied to cut down on the on the shortfalls am i reading it incorrectly and i'm basically taking you to i guess page 77 of the plan mark i'm going to ask jackson height our business services manager if let me see i know he was he chatted me he had zoom issues i'm looking for jackson i believe your assumption is accurate but jackson is really smart and i want to make sure i'm telling you the truth [Laughter] so i believe our intention is to reapply that fund balance to these priorities and there still be a shortage so it's a both end okay and in your 2026 projection

[98:03] you're showing a very sharp rise in capital uh from 2.4 million to about 6.1 million what does that represent good evening um i'm jackson height uh you are absolutely correct mark and ally uh the money that we have as the surplus and the out years will really be reprogrammed back into what some of the funny gap is the reality is over the course of the pandemic the sales tax numbers have fluctuated off and on and we took a conservative approach um based on the numbers that we had in late 2020's the master plan was being developed so that's what the revenue numbers are that are in place in terms of 2026 for your question i believe the capital funding is tied to valmont phase two but what you see with our all of our cip projects is we tend to have spikes as we are focused on bigger facilities and bigger projects throughout different timings so we will have increases up and

[99:01] down over the course of rca okay thank you um a little earlier in the plan you've got 2022 funding sources this is page 71 um and you've got a 2.1 million dollar subsidy showing from the general fund and then in a later category you're showing 4.057 million from the general fund are those the same source and if they are why aren't they simply listed as one source we have two different sources of general fund funding um the first one is for our general fund operations which is our park operations and maintenance for all of our park facilities as well as some of our urban forestry um funding this and that's the four point whatever that you're seeing the 2.1 is one-time subsidy received from the general fund for um the ongoing subsidy of our recreation programs that benefits the community users that are our age based discounts um as well as

[100:02] equity-based discounts okay thank you and and i guess my my last question is does the plan incorporate any potential funding from the infrastructure tax or is that going to just be an extra if you apply for a specific project at this time we don't have any funding planned outside of the dedicated parks and recreation funds so any supplemental taxes approved would be additional taxes going towards some of these goals because i'm assuming some of these projects that you may not be able to afford might be very appropriate for the for the infrastructure tax um so please keep that in mind all right that's those are my questions for the moment thank you it's rachel i hate to follow up such substantive questions with the one that i have um but i do want to say i'm sorry to ally and all of the parks family for what happened today and i really

[101:00] appreciate you still being here tonight i can't imagine that's easy my softball question um is just there were uh i noticed adam swetlick and mirabinego were not listed as previous council members and and wanted to make sure they'd be there listed um before this gets printed no i really appreciate you catching that rachel we will get that corrected immediately the other thing i want to make sure because it's come to my attention that not all council members are aware um that the buildings that get opened while you are serving have your name on them and so in addition to to the the glorious work of being noted on master plans i just want to note for sitting council members um that were on in 2021 when we formally opened the scott carpenter pool and the um the the reservoir main building that your names are on that and i say that out loud because um we all know that sometimes public service is thankless work but your contributions are memorialized on these incredible facilities that you supported and they will be on this master plan as well so we'll get that

[102:00] fixed thanks ellie i actually took a selfie in front of scott carpenter uh when i was here a couple weeks ago it's kind of kind of cool thanks thanks for calling that out of course the all the credit goes to ali your department and all the other departments involved in building those buildings and designing them but that's a nice touch thank you jenny i just want to thank ali for all the work that she does this is excellent and i'm fully in support and also i am a user of the rec center so thank you for the great service and to the staff as well well said okay uh seeing no other hands think we can go to the public hearing we've got i believe it's five people signed up so each person will get three minutes to speak and i think generally are folks who have testified before so maybe we don't need to go back through the public conduct

[103:00] rules so can we okay i'll go ahead and open that up and call our first three people our lynn siegel kerry politsari and sherry hack um yeah if you've got a problem with money don't take the taxpayers money take the developers money you rubber stamp everything that comes across your face from planning board third stories flood plain uh considerations for the millennium hotel for student housing for over 300 bedrooms that we need hotel facilities instead we've got two hotels one from cu and one across the street up on the hill why are you coming to the taxpayers for parks and recreation these burdens on our community causing

[104:01] the jobs housing imbalance to increase are very costly and you should pay for it through the developers 4.3 million dollars that you have for parks and rec that you need don't ask me for it don't get it from the developers the people that are driving the costs up it's very simple you know how all of these this promo from ali and everyone that's that's great but i heard tonight in open comment that you know our roads are in disrepair that we have homeless you know issues all over town what is it what is it that you have to come begging to me the taxpayer with increasing property taxes like like skyrocketing when i have to spend every two years

[105:00] months getting ready to fight my property taxes un you know represented because i haven't got money for a lawyer 69 years old trying to stay in my house deferred maintenance to the extent that my windows are being reclaimed by the outdoors basically one of my windows where there was poor um drainage why why are you asking someone like me to pay for parks and recreation which i'd be glad to do if you weren't accepting every development that comes across your plate it's just not okay and now i don't even have an art arts and crafts gallery i don't even have meningers up on the hill i don't even have the things that made the heart and soul of boulder anymore because you've sold them out to every developer well let the developer pay for the parks and rec it's very simple if they want to come to our town and cause these troubles you know that

[106:01] constant growth more and more service industry more and more service industry low paid workers it doesn't work let the developer pay just do it just think about that there's plenty of money they can take care of it thank you lynn now we have carrie sorry sherry hack and brooke harrison hi everyone i'm the executive director of studio arts boulder we manage the pottery lab up on uni hill and our partnership with parks and rec is perhaps one of the success stories since the last 2014 master plan so we want to extend our thanks to parks and rec for their ongoing partnership as we look to the future there are a few points in this new master plan we wanted to call your attention to and how they play out at the pottery lab

[107:01] the first one is demand we have enough students on waitlist to fill two and a half pottery labs we were not at all surprised to see on page 43 of the plan that the pottery lab was listed by name as one of the top six programs most desired by the community right up there with pickleball last year we provided over 60 000 program hours of service and this year will be even more the second thing we want to highlight is affordability since 2020 we've been replacing our scholarship process with a pay what you can fee structure and just over the past two years 600 students have taken advantage of this new model that's a 20-fold increase compared to scholarships regarding equity when we look at the list of population groups on page 45 of the plan those are the same folks that we invest resources to serving at the pottery lab 65 of all of our students are from low-income households 40 are children and teens 22 percent of

[108:01] our adults are over age 60 17 percent have a disability and 32 percent of our students identify as a person of color regarding finances when studio arts folder took over management of the pottery lab in 2015 we were able to eliminate the annual operating deficit that had been a drag on the department's cost recovery efforts and since then we have also invested significant resources to take care of the facility itself built in 1908 our historic location has been a community pottery studio now longer than it was ever a fire station studio arts boulder covers all the regular maintenance like the furnace and the water heater the windows and the floors our presence also prevents vandalism by both humans and bears the studio is much beloved by the community and by the uni hill neighborhood and we're honored to take care of it i could say so much more about how we tackle climate change by switching to lower kiln firing temperatures about our teen mentorship program i could also spend days talking to you about the

[109:00] physical mental and social benefits of getting your own hands in art but the point is that as we read through the goals and key performance indicators of this new plan we are so proud of how many the pottery lab already supports and we're really excited for the future of our partnership with parks and rec and the city of boulder thank you so much thanks for that kerry and i'll just chime in to say two of my family members take classes at that facility and they just get so much out of it so appreciate the partnership okay now we have sherry heck brooke harrison and lisa spalding hello city council this is sherry hack i'm a 23-year old resident the parks and open spaces are the lifeblood of a community please support the parks and rec master plan

[110:00] as i was reading through the master plan i thought how sad that the master plan actually first refers to illegal encampments on page 53 it states encampments and illegal use of park land like communities across the country boulder has seen an increase of encampments and illegal use of parkland which strains limited resources and impacts uses of space you know if city council would actually address this issue as was stated so often in open comment maybe parks and rec would have not have this type of problem and guess what else our parks and public spaces have turned into hotbeds of crime recently at central park we've seen a woman threatened with a knife a guy hit in the head with a small bat the stolen car crash at the farmer's

[111:00] market and don't forget the 75 year old female tourist who was strolling along and was suddenly grabbed by her hair and thrown to the ground shortly thereafter her assailant was released from the hospital and luckily the police apprehended him in fort collins so i just want to reiterate that our parks are deteriorating and are being used as living spaces when this is not their intended purpose the parks and public spaces are not to be used to house tent cities and stolen bike chop shops the south boulder rec center has been underutilized for years now it was closed for a long time during coven and then when it reopened the pool is only available to the public five hours a week and then it's closed on weekends when most people would go to it i heard of talk to access to facilities that's important

[112:00] but we don't have access to our parks as much as we would like due to public safety issues the citizens of boulder want to be able to use our parks and public spaces and bike paths again and i believe that this is what the parks and rec uh presentation that we just saw was all about we want it we need our parks we need our parks back so thank you thank you sherry next we have brooke harrison lisa spalding harrison i'm a boulder resident and i've been a member of the wreck for several years i urge all of you to vote in support of the parks and rec mass master plan and in so voting tacitly pledged to adjust the upcoming city budget to prioritize funding to support at least the master plan's aim of taking care of what we

[113:00] have in regards to our facilities and our parks the first key goal of the master plan is community health and wellness achieving this goal requires our public spaces and facilities to be functional accessible comfortable and most of all safe many of our facilities are not comfortable and not entirely functional sometimes and our parks are not safe as a tennis player our courts are an embarrassment compared to those in surrounding cities they're crumbling and cracked they're filled with filled with and surrounded by many weed forests they are unsafe but their disrepair is nothing in comparison to the current state of our parks and waterways evangee fine the kids fishing pond the library playground and most of our bike paths along the creeks of boulder are no longer usable they have been seated to illegal campers and their trash including needles has also impeded the bike paths i have an ever evolving map in my mind of the places that i avoid when we have

[114:01] visitors and sadly that that map is continually shrinking the master plan identified encampments in illegal use of park lands as one of three local park trends this is not acceptable parks and rec needs the funds to continue their work with their partners to make our parks safe and welcoming by voting to accept this master plan you all are committed committing to take care of what we have and to fostering community health and wellness the master plan was developed based on more than a year of community feedback you have the opportunity through this master plan and future budgeting to show the residents of boulder that you have listened thank you all right thank you brooke and actually it looks like lisa spaulding is not in a meeting is that right brenda i do not see her in the meeting sir okay with that we will close the public hearing and i'll open it up for council

[115:01] discussion if somebody would like to kick it off mark yeah colleagues forgive me i i forgot one question which i'd like to ask it's a short one before i comment in the plan this the civic arena is under the financially constrained scenario um the goal is quote activation with operational or operational focus um what does that mean good question we'll talk more about that in our later discussion but it means that within our current bungee budget there is a civic area master plan i'll remind members of council the elements that we can implement within our current budget all relate to programming so things like arts in the park things like facilitating community events fostering positive activity community connections um anything we can do without infrastructure enhancements to achieve the goals of the plan thank you um with respect to my comments i i

[116:02] uh very much support this master plan i think it's uh it's well thought out i am impressed that uh that we are with the emphasis on the fiscally constrained uh scenario you don't like it we don't like it but that's kind of where we are at the moment and i appreciate the realism uh in in dealing with that we can always have a later conversation about uh providing additional funding for parks i think we would all love to do so but under current circumstances at the moment i appreciate the fact that um this is the uh the way in which you analyzed uh your needs and objectives um i think as i said i think it's well thought out um and i wholeheartedly support it thank you tara then rachel didn't matt i wanted to thank you for a wonderful

[117:00] plan and i just want to give a plug that when the time is right i would like to make that motion to accept this plan since i was on parks i mean the time could be right right now tara well first i ask any of my city council members would you like to discuss further before we approve this motion i just wanted to say my hand was up to say i hope that tara and bob will make the motion in second so and we can always make additional comments after a motion is made tara so okay should i go ahead please okay i make a motion to accept the 2022 boulder parks and rec master plan and improve the boulder valley comprehensive plan parks and rec master plan summary do you have a second as the as the former chair of the parks and recreation advisory board who ten years ago worked on the last master plan a second tara's motion all right we've got a motion in a second from our two former parks board

[118:01] representatives uh any further discussion uh rachel that um well matt do you want to go first your hand was up then we took him down so you're that you're there first oh i uh i thought i appreciate it i thought you had some other comments uh but wanted to defer to tara and bob online um but anyway i i appreciate that uh mine's just uh brief i think you know okay we we don't often get a chance to sort of gush we find those opportunities and we see them this is one of them uh so so i certainly will take that time to to gush on parks and rec staff and ali's leadership this plan i think is uh i i think it's exemplary of what a master plan should be and i know it sounds sort of cliche but i think the process has been laid out the way it's been operated to mark's point being realistic with the financial constraints that are here and operating in that sense this is a really really good plan and i just i'm really happy that we've gotten to this place and we're in a position to

[119:00] approve it so so just great work to everyone top to bottom um i just and as a reminder we're celebrating this plan uh but also with heavy hearts um because we've lost one of our own so um but thank you ali appreciate that yeah i um i guess i just wanted to comment that um you know we got a lot of negativity during the public um comments on this and i i hear the community's frustration and i'm not dismissing any of it but i don't want that to tarnish the the wonderful parks that we have and um and you know i use them frequently and um you know i don't know people watching from afar might feel like you know it's a scene out of escape from new york or something and it's not it's not like that our parks are wonderful so i just wanted to to um stand up for the excellent work that our staff is doing there again not to minimize what anyone said but and i know why the frustrations coming in um tonight and as it is but um

[120:01] just hoping kind of separate out and and celebrate our awesome parks thanks thanks for that rachel well i'll go ahead and chime in and just first acknowledge the very sad loss of the member of the parks and rec team so our hearts are with their family and with all of their friends and colleagues i'm so so sorry to hear about that today um but then just uh huge congratulations on this master plan it's incredibly well done uh we're so fortunate to have an extraordinary park system like we do uh in our city and it is in large part due to the dedication and incredible talent and hard work of our park staff so thanks to each and every one of you and i'm looking forward to passing this master plan and then i think i'll be in at least one part tomorrow and i'm looking forward to that too juni thank you aaron i just have a question

[121:01] or also make a comment i saw a note from a community member requesting that there be a letter from council that expresses equity and or climate initiative goals as a priority of council as part of this master plan process i mean i see the letter from the director and it also mentioned inclusion and sustainability and climate as well um but i'm just wondering how maybe is that something that could be done because that is true that this master plan came from all the work that we've done together as a team but also as a council and knowing this will be approved by council is that something that can be done

[122:06] ellie do you want to take that uh sure i'm not i'm i feel a little in the dark i'm not sure the email you're talking about so i'm unclear on the request um so i don't know if you have a bulleted summary of what the ask is and how to facilitate it if it's not contingent upon council approving this master plan um you can discuss amongst yourselves and figure out if you think modifying it is appropriate i will i said certainly within your purview yeah i can most definitely read it aaron is that okay if i read it oh you totally but i just after that ali if you might address how the these issues maybe are already somewhat addressed in the master plan that could be helpful as well but yeah judy if you would mind reading it now you could talk about what's currently in the plan too no thank you aaron and it is true that is mentioned equities mentioned um it says it's from crystal gray and it mentioned at the beginning of

[123:01] each master plan you approve should be a reference to the city's equity goals as well as the climate initiative goals both areas are referenced in the documents but i i would like to see them emphasized maybe even an introduction letter from council at the beginning of each master plan to emphasis emphasize these two areas and these emails actually came from community members there there's there were a bunch of them um in anticipation of actually this meeting today thank you that does help i agree with you junie that we have highlighted that both in the exact the letter at the very beginning where we talk about the focus on climate um mitigation and impact and equity and then in the at the very beginning of the plan and in the executive summary i'll point to you to a few graphics in the video and in our presentation today we've showed you that the circle graphic that that outlines our triangulation approach and that

[124:00] everything we do is through a lens of equity um and resilience and another thing i'll point out is that through our six key theme strategies we actually didn't we with council's input i think it was one of our very first questions to you when we talked to you in december of 2020 we said hey these are two big things right for the community and for council both addressing climate change and addressing equity are important do you want us to call them out as separate things or do we weave them out through the entire plan and the strategies and and you supported that ladder strategy and that's what we've done we believe it's really strongly represented throughout this entire plan and specifically in the strategies the other thing i would call your attention to pretty early on and i'm not going to get to the page um quick enough but our team included a two-page summary of what climate change means for a parks and recreation system and i'll call i'll just appreciate that that um was a really great suggestion it's nice to have a climate scientist on your advisory board so they can help catch um the things where you can do a better job calling calling something out so

[125:00] um a gentleman um mr brock we we appreciate you we think it made this plan better so um aaron i appreciate your question i i think it's solidly and clearly throughout the plan and this is yours to discuss yeah thanks to you that such those are such important points about climate and equity i really appreciate you raising them do you do you think ali is covered or did you have an additional suggestion was that comment to me aaron i didn't hear you i was sorry i probably said your name too so quietly i just said um i thought that that was a great point and uh about the importance of raising equity and climate and um just i wanted to see what you thought about ali's response and if you felt like there was a particular um additional change that you'd be looking for yeah no i actually i appreciate all the comments that she made um [Music]

[126:00] maybe some stronger words in the letter from the director and my understanding is that something that we usually do we usually have a letter from council as part of our master plan and this one just doesn't include it i i have not done a thorough survey i don't know if any of my colleagues from planning are here because we have a master plan coordination committee i i believe um there have been different approaches i know the open space master plan has a letter from the director i believe the library master plan has a letter from the board of trustees and so there is no standard approach okay okay well i mean i would make that proposal that we include a letter from council if that's something the rest of my colleague would uh welcome however that's something that we should all make as a body if that is something that would be useful i mean i appreciate the comment that you make about

[127:00] it being fully re weaved into the entire uh document but having it as the basis meaning that at the beginning of the of the of the document that it is expressed thoroughly and clearly i think that's very important as well uh for the entire community so um i'll just chime in and i'll call rachel i mean a a a well written uh letter from city council at the beginning could be a positive addition to the plan um i might just look to my colleagues if we did if we wanted to do that we might approve the the master plan tonight contingent on the uh coming edition of an amendment with that so that they could move forward with the adopted mastermind that would just be a thought on on a possible path forward there rachel um i mean given that we did give previous direction to staff to go this way and and we're at the 11th hour here i would just uh leave it

[128:01] as is and i think it's great and um i think that i wouldn't really want to center it on us anyways by putting a letter in the front like it's not it's not really about us so i would just have it be more about the plan and um and the work so i think let's i'm i will probably be ready to vote on it as is thanks mark nicole i i do think the plan is quite eloquent on these subjects um and does not require you know additional amendment it's a product of of park staff i think they've done a great job and they have not ignored these these subjects at all if you you know going through the the full 130 pages of it there's quite a bit of of reference to these subjects so i'm i'm with rachel on this one uh i think it's a great document and deserves simply to be approved call him tara

[129:00] yeah i don't have a strong um feeling either way at this point i do see value in thinking about this maybe for future um plans because i think there is something to be said about future councils future staff future folks understanding our mindset what it is we liked about it why we were excited why you know we passed it and moved it forward um and just highlighting you know what is really um incredible about this plan what we're looking forward to seeing um come out of it it just feels like a way to summarize some of our um thinking about it in a moment of time almost like a little time capsule for the future um so i could see that being helpful but i i don't feel um super strongly about delaying anything for um tonight to try to get that in for this one good uh well maybe we just do a quick straw poll on whether people would like to maybe pass it tonight but amend it later with an introductory letter from council um junie would that be an okay

[130:02] approach yes yes that would be an okay approach thank you okay so just a quick uh raise your hand if you if you'd like to add in a letter to council sometime before too long just um keep in mind we'll need a little subcommittee or something to put that together but any anyone who'd like to add that can i just can i just clarify that we're not stopping at from moving forward like we're still approving it tonight we are just saying it would be cool to have a letter in the future that that's the proposed approach yes okay okay so raise your hand if you'd like to get that letter in there all right okay let's see you've got okay oh all right like move we got we have five okay so and then the the subcommittee probably needs to be among the five of us who said that was a good idea to figure this out um [Music] so um i would um invite a motion here that uh that

[131:00] includes the approval with the uh with a coming expected amendment of adding a letter in the near future quick question aaron i'm sorry to interrupt you to raise my hand are we then setting a precedent that we are going to be doing a letter for every master plan hold on i might take my vote back for that reason alone mary do you think this would be setting a precedent um i think it depends but i think that the conversation has been that there is some desire by council to see this some representation of council respond to it but i think there's more conversation to be had i know that fsc is taking a look at our master plan process in general and that might be a good place to take that conversation rachel nicole matt yeah i just um i just wanted to reflect that i don't know maybe two years ago we decided to write a letter on something and like the amount of hours in arguing over ofs and thus and like

[132:02] i don't know why we would do that here i understand that the intent and appreciate the spirit of it but i i would be pretty uncomfortable voting to put for this master plan we're going to amend it and we haven't we haven't even seen a draft of the letter yet like i'm not comfortable with that process i understand i'm in the minority but to just respond i think it would require approval of the letter it would not that the council would have to approve that that amendment later on i'll be blind nicole in that i was just wondering if we could put uh um can i move this to for whenever we next have a process discussion if maybe we could have a deeper conversation about it then so we don't have to try to have that night when we tonight when we still have a lot to talk about yeah i'm voting for my vote so just fyi i'm voting you're changing to the no on the letter okay well that takes us down to four votes for it so it sounds like it may be irrelevant then

[133:00] but matt did you want to throw something in no okay i'm not sure where we're at at this point to be honest sort of bounced around um so um all right i based on tara's rescinding i'm not sure it might be a moot point uh if it's not i'll just i'll just point out that yeah i don't like the idea of setting a precedent especially if we're gonna have a process review committee looking at our overall master planning process seems like we might be uh jumping the gun on process before allowing that process to give insight as to what we should be uh modifying overall so i think we kind of have the cart before the horse a little bit but anyway i think we've already had a vote so that might not be relevant so yeah i think our straw poll now stands at four votes for adding a letter which means there's not majority support so then i might instead um you know thanks junior for raising the the issue and the possibility and invite a motion on the master plan in front of us oh we already did that we have emotion on the table i'm getting

[134:00] lost in all these back and forth um of course we do by our two parks and rec um former board members so in that case um i would invite a vote um alicia how are we doing this well you're doing this by roll call sir all right we will start did we have our we had our first our motion by council member weiner and our second by council member yates so we'll start this vote with council member yates a resounding and proud yes councilmember benjamin 100 yes mayor brockett i'm tempted to say nope in honor of the parks and rec tv show but no yes yes absolutely yes see you just had throw that wrench in the soup didn't you [Music] yes mayor pro tem friend yes

[135:02] councilmember joseph yes spear yes congratulations ali and staff wallach aye absolutely and winer definitely yes mayor the 2022 parks and rec's master plan is hereby accepted with the also exception of the approval of the amendment of the master plan summary and the boulder valley comprehensive plan unanimously excellent thanks so much everyone again for the amazing work and chuck for being here from the board maryam yeah mayor i'm sorry to interrupt but i just wanted to alert folks that we have staff is responding to a large fire up at chautauqua and you may be receiving notifications so that as we learn more we will notify you but just wanted to make sure that was

[136:00] um on your radar as we are getting some information about that that is very scary news do we know anything about exactly where it is or the science so far as soon as being clear to be clear it's a structure fire at this point in time a house fire so not a wildfire and as soon as we know more we'll uh perhaps interrupt and let you know or unless marist you have more information you want to share yeah it's a large house uh located on fifth street we've evacuated houses around there's pretty much a lot of space in between the house so we're evacuating as we speak and i'll give you an update if i get anything during our next presentation and it may mean chief that you may have to leave if that's the case so i just wanted to alert folks to that yep i'm here for now thank you thanks for the additional information we're thinking about our first responders and about the family in that house or i trust they're out of it but the family will announce that

[137:04] okay um well on that sobering note let's move on to our next item all right sir next we have item number six on tonight's agenda matters from the city manager item 6a is the safe and managed public spaces update thanks so much council this presentation comes at council's request and is tied to a june 7 2022 memo we shared earlier this summer as you'll see throughout the presentation this work is truly a cross-departmental effort and i'll highlight perhaps some colleagues you may not see speaking tonight rit department who has been truly useful in helping us think through the appropriate measures uh metrics to measure our work and our colleagues in communications and our city attorney's office who have also helped support aspects of this work some of you may recall this work started with a conversation in january of 2021 where staff shared some of the challenges associated with increased encampment numbers something that has sadly become a nationwide reality

[138:01] from that council approved various new efforts and today's update is intended to give you that information about that work as that has moved forward and with that i will turn to our director joe tatayucci to introduce himself and kick us off good evening uh mayor and members of council uh thank you nuria i'm joe tadiucci i am the director of our utilities department and um i'm talking to you tonight and kicking off the presentation because as part of our pilot um we established a cleanup team in utilities that is part of the cross-departmental team that maria mentioned and before i i really get into the slides i want to acknowledge that we have a heavy subject that we're tackling tonight we heard about it in open comment we know there are diverse and sometimes intense perspectives on how we should manage our public spaces and and camping

[139:00] and there are no easy answers and as nuria noted it's a national issue uh for myself and in preparation for tonight i spent some time this week out in the field with our public spaces team i just i do that from time to time and just wanted to make sure that i had to had the pulse on how the work was going and um i was really struck by and and pleased with the grace that i saw from our team in the way they're doing this work and the way they're interacting with the people who are are camping and at the same time they have a job to do and they're trying to clean up the spaces and and i and i really saw a dramatic change in the in the before and after in the work that i that i visited with uh this week when i was out there present with the team and i saw the same thing last week even though i wasn't out there with the crew in the area that they targeted and cleaned up of course the encampments do reoccur in

[140:02] some cases and that's that's part of the process that's that's elusive for everyone but anyway i'm happy to share more about the the visit that i did this week as we get into the discussion and our intent tonight is to provide an update on the safe and managed public spaces pilot it's a significant cross-departmental effort with many layers and you'll hear from numerous department directors and staff tonight and is the presentation up if we could go to the second slide i'm just i'm not saying anything because i were this is like the seventh or eighth or night slide just waiting for the second

[141:01] one i realized sometimes it can be glitchy there we go um and and just to build on the comments maria made in her introduction we'd like to review briefly how the pilot program started um in the past several years staff and council have increasingly heard concerns from the community we heard some of it tonight uh in open comment and during the the public comment on the park's master plan about um unsafe conditions in public spaces this slide lists many of the concerning conditions that have uh that are we see frequently in our public spaces and it's what we're trying to address with our program and back in january of 2021 that was really the start of the

[142:00] conversation and the impetus for the pilot program city staff shared with city council an overview of the various challenges and associated data in response to those concerns and if we can go to the next slide i think this is not the next slide this is a few down the next slide should be timeline there we go um in the conversations we had back in early 2021 councilx asked staff to return uh with some options to address the challenges associated with our public spaces we did return in april of 2021 and proposed an 18-month pilot of various programs that you'll hear summaries and reports on tonight and part of the direction we received

[143:00] from the from council in 2021 was ensuring that we would also develop metrics and and ways of tracking what we are doing to see if the program was successful and we'll talk about those metrics more but also wanted to touch on some of the themes and or guiding principles that we use to establish this pilot program and a couple of things on that we have worked very intentionally as a cross-departmental team to assure that everything we're doing uh is done legally and also compassionately in a way that aligns with our city values and that that goes to the the people we're looking at to hire to do this work i observed some of the results of that and just what i saw when i was out with the team this week and as i mentioned i was pleased to see that and so we now have the programs and and the

[144:00] associated policies and procedures and the reporting and resident communication tools in place and if we can go to the next slide which should be the program goals thank you and so our program goals are listed on on this slide a big part of our focus and um a big part of what the cleanup team that resides in utilities it looks at is keeping people from residing and or taking up residence and camping in our drainage ways and and stormwater infrastructure and we also wanted to address some of the hazardous conditions and materials that occur in our public parks and playgrounds while also having elements of our program that could help the people who are experiencing homelessness to find solutions and

[145:00] and have touch points that can connect them to city services in a way that's consistent with our city homeless strategy next slide and while the the public spaces program is is not uh in and of itself intended to end homelessness it's really about making this the spaces safe for everyone including the people who are are attempting to camp in them and our our program does align with the best practices that are put forth by the u.s interagency council on homelessness the the interagency council's sole mission is focused on preventing homelessness nationally it consists of 19 different federal agencies and it has established a federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness

[146:00] and in that the the interagency council recommends seven pr the seven principles on this slide for addressing encampments our approach aligns with these uh principles and some of the highlights on the on the first bullet we have multiple departments who work together we coordinate with outreach and engagement entities there are other city non-profit partnership examples like our downtown ambassadors and be there we have connections to uh resources in the field for people who are experiencing homelessness including the coordinated entry and diversion program um we have a for comprehensive and coordinated outreach we have client level staffing where we try to match outreach with with particular individuals and we regularly regularly conduct coordination meetings with agencies and groups involved in [Music] in this issue

[147:00] we address the basic needs of people experiencing homelessness and and storage of of their um the stuff that they have with them and i'll talk talk about storage later in the presentation and in terms of access to shelter or housing and developing pathways to housing a big component of this process to it is to ensure that people are treated compassionately and that they have access to services that will ultimately end their homelessness that be there be there in the hot team work with the housing focused entities to help campsite residents navigate the housing priority prioritization [Music] a mouthful for the for the last point around creating a plan uh sites are frequently cleaned and remain open activating certain sites with things like the skateboard park when there are safety concerns and when there are safety concerns the

[148:01] operation team works with the appropriate department to mitigate the safety issue as i acknowledged just when i was getting started uh we do know that the camps do reoccur and um that that's part of the situation that's been elusive and we're continuing to work on and i believe the next couple of slides or in ally's area and checking with ally to see if she's she's ready to take those otherwise i can quickly cover those i'm here joe thank you sir so with the next slide and going back to the timeline in january of 2021 and april when we were talking about this work we shared with council some other projects that were planned that didn't require any additional funding or council approval and i just wanted to give you an update on those as well um so boulder creek management is still on our work plan similar to how golden has done with clear creek and um

[149:00] steamboat has done with the yempa we know um a plan will help us balance recreation visitor safety in the riparian corridor due to uh staffing transitions that has been deferred we intend to kick it off in 2023 we have worked with boulder county public health and boulder community health to have two large secured sharps containers installed behind the tape building and on a plot of land at arapahoe in broadway just west of boulder high this project has been delayed due to some supply issues but we know that many of the folks in the camps are provided handheld disposal containers including by the team joe we'll talk about later and then we continue to work really hard to provide positive activity in the parks which research and leading practices just show is one of the best deterrents to negative activity in a public space the second season of arts in the park at the historic glen huntington band shell has been wonderful and we see people of all ages enjoying the skate area under the library and improving safety at the

[150:00] adjacent playground uh one of the programs if you'll move to the next slide that council approved and funded last summer was a limited commission ambassador or i'm sorry oh there's a note um sorry about that a limited commission urban park ranger program so these folks are um do have the ability to cite for municipal va violations uh doing this right has taken more time than we anticipated but we feel really good about the program that we've now um are standing up we realized last fall we needed an additional resource to set this program up for success and after a few hiring rounds we have hired a lead ranger with great experience and passion for this work she has hired several temporary rangers and they are on the ground since june at various sites across the community is represented on this screen they've been able to conduct 77 patrols over 200 non-enforcement contacts their training has included but is not limited to attending ranger excellence school that

[151:00] folks from across the state attend where they get uh training on ranger leadership virgil verbal judo and other de-escalation tactics um they're trained in the delivery of narcan and community bike patrol tactics their most common enforcement contacts are related to prohibited items in parks and dog violations they are forming relationships with the appropriate members of the boulder police department including the hot team and animal control this weekend they'll be supporting the 20th iron man at the boulder reservoir um and and really just i want to highlight there are opportunities system-wide to improve the user experience and protect our natural resources our entire team and parks and recreation has a wish list for the urban park ranger team that we're having to prioritize so with that i will pass it to my colleague chris jones thank you so much ali good evening city council i'm chris jones the interim director of community vitality and i have had the pleasure of working with

[152:01] shep and the downtown boulder partnership on standing up the downtown ambassador program and this team has been first and foremost uh able to provide a visible visible presence in downtown the civic area and the university hill area hopefully many or all of you have seen the ambassadors at work in their bright blue shirts they have been doing a ton of interactions in these communities that they're serving one of the things that they've been involved in is encouraging compliance with quality of life issues like no smoking in public spaces oh sorry i i had my slide in front of me but i didn't i realized you didn't have yours to slide in front of you um so no smoking in public places no dogs in the mall no bikes on the mall things like that just interactions in our public spaces they also engage quite a bit with the business community they're they've been building relationships with

[153:01] business owners um in the areas that they've been serving so that they can be the first point of contact when there might be some stressful situations in interactions with folks who might be experiencing homelessness so that the police department doesn't have to be the first point of contact if there's not really a life safety issue but more maybe some sort of escalation that doesn't necessarily warrant uh public safety interventions yet they also do social service and outreach they're building relationships with people who are experiencing homeless homelessness in the areas that they're serving so again they can they can be part of that de-escalation and and part of providing information around the services that are available to um those residents and also they are interacting with all of the visitors and anybody who's visiting downtown they are available as a resource to provide information about

[154:00] we've heard folks can't remember where they parked their car and they're connected in with with the community vitality team to help people locate and remember where they've parked their car to wayfinding to finding businesses and other other resources uh in our key economic centers um they are supporting the downtown boulder partnership and their special events programming the spaces to to create more activation in the pearl street mall area and other locations and they're doing a great job of collecting data and we'll share a little bit of that data today um but they have a huge data collection platform um that they use to to make sure they're tracking all of the work that they're doing um and so we'll share some of that and of course when they're out and about they're doing a lot of uh custodial beautification and maintenance work from removing graffiti to handbills to to weeding tree tree wells and just trying to make sure that our spaces are

[155:00] looking their best and and welcoming and safe if we go to the next slide so this is just a sample of some of the data that the ambassadors are collecting and these are the actions that are related um that we've designated related to public safety over the months that the ambassadors have been working a majority of these actions have been related to cleaning up graffiti and hand bills and things like that but just an indication of of some of the things that they're keeping track of some of these statistics are not necessarily indicative of an increase in graffiti or or the need to contact emergency services some of this is just related to the level of staffing where there were we did have less ambassadors um over the winter months there's less of a demand for that type of of work in the winter so the activity does go down then new folks were hired in the spring and more graffiti was getting cleaned up in the spring months as we as general activity was increasing

[156:01] in these areas so just wanted to share some of the information and data that we're collecting and with that that's the the roll-up of the work that the ambassadors have been doing and i'm now going to hand it over to chief harold if she's still with us thanks chris i'm still here um mayor's harold police chief next slide please yes so um council approved six additional police officers to provide safety support the last time we are in front of council we are currently staffed with three officers we anticipate onboarding for a fourth officer in mid-september and that will be four out of the six um keep in mind that these officers receive specific training and uh legal training uh the icap principles use of force principles that we've discussed recently

[157:01] they also receive onboarding and training from our hot team on services that are available in boulder in boulder county next slide please [Music] yeah so we've been collecting different data sets some is more refined than others but at this point we can definitely discuss that from september 21 till now the boulder police department has issued 414 unsanctioned camping tickets either for prohibited tents or camping this is approximately 37 per month on average there has been 46 reported arsons or built fires on public property this corresponds to approximately four incidents per month on average many of these occur at or near the unsanctioned campsites furthermore and we've discussed this a lot too crime is more concentrated around the unsanctioned camps than

[158:01] elsewhere in the city our analysis has demonstrated that this is true when we consider unsanctioned camps reported by community members or camping tickets by the boulder police department and calls for service in crime reports crime is 6.1 times more concentrated within a 350 feet radius of unsanctioned camps crime becomes less concentrated at further distances from these camps the victimization rate among members of the unhoused community is approximately three times greater than that of other boulder community members unfortunately we do know through research that the victimization rate is very conservative following research that proves victimization is often not reported these results are consistent with other research about crime around unsanctioned camps and among unhoused individuals so when we're talking about violent crime these are concentrated in areas of assault intimidation and sex offenses

[159:03] and we're talking about property crime these are mostly concentrated around theft reports vandalism and burglary and i do believe i am turning this over now i'm not really sure who i'm turning this over to now but that's the end of my slide thank you chief harold uh kurt fernhardt director of housing and human services um you can go on to the next slide please thank you um i'll just notice i don't think the you note that your video is not pointing at you i don't believe oh i'll turn it off i've been having problems with my video um thank you for that um so i'll talk a bit about the outreach um uh but before i go in to be there sort of between our two slides i'll mention the homeless outreach team which is

[160:00] a team from under maris's department and i i think they've been around for about six or seven years um and tremendously effective at um uh working with um some of these individuals um some who uh are camping and some that are not but those that are living on um uh who who are unhoused and they assist um greatly with services and getting people into housing solutions um in the the so the outreach and engagement um the be there team was set up um actually before this pilot it was set up uh in response to covid uh it was originally funded through the cares act and initially they they were out there um trying to engage individuals into services and directing them towards coordinated entry um but they were also doing a lot of uh

[161:02] covid screening um when this program first initiated this has changed a bit over time we uh we now have a different service provider for this and over the last few months it's it's been it's become significantly more comprehensive in its approach and um so now uh the the be there team actually does um coordinated entry um in the field um at the areas where where people are camping as they're working with individuals this this data here is a snapshot from our dashboard um over the last six weeks and so you can see that um as an example um we're working with uh the be there team is working with individuals for identification documents which is a critical step in moving towards

[162:00] a housing solution some individuals are referred to to medical care and other benefits um are directed to individuals so it's become much more of a of a service than simply a referral uh program so we're um uh we're pretty excited about that transition um i'll also mention though um however with this program as well as other programs that at times um we've had challenges with uh staff turnover this program at times has ebbed and flowed um and in in uh to to uh uh to work on that challenge we've actually done training with um other members of this interdepartmental work so joe's team that does the cleanup has actually received you know training on what

[163:00] services are available for individuals and they also participate in um ensuring that people are given the information they need um to help direct them to services so it's really a multi-prong approach and with that i will turn the presentation back over to joe taduchi thank you thanks for that kurt and just to elaborate on what you're saying the the what i've learned in working with the team just this past week is that um they've they've really integrated into the community that they're working with and have established relationships part of their process is is doing wellness checks with people they know a lot of them by name of course some people move on and some people stay here um and and they i've i've learned the

[164:00] list of training that they've gone through as kurt mentioned a lot of it having to do with just recognizing mental health issues and it's tough work for them as well and um so recognizing it in themselves and in the people that they're working with in the community so um moving on to the the cleanup work that we do [Music] next i'm going to talk about that and a lot has been done as we've talked about throughout to develop reporting tools for the community we have a pretty good dashboard now i think that people can see the numbers and the metrics and and they can see if a campsite has been reported and we've also established a lot of procedures as we've discussed tonight if we can go to the next slide so just talking about the work that our

[165:01] internal cleanup team does uh by the numbers here and i believe this goes back to october of 2021 we've cleaned up 486 encampment sites 53 of those were with fire rings and and or propane tanks we've collected a hundred and twelve tons of debris and uh 5100 needles and one of the encampment sites that when i was visiting with the team this week i saw a full dump truck load of stuff that was just trash and debris [Music] we've also established a prioritization formula and we have a formal program for personal property storage and retrieval as i mentioned just a second ago we've updated our mapping and online tools for the community members that they can use to report the encampments but before i i leave this slide i would say

[166:01] that this work is is again more than just about the numbers the primary goal of the work is to create safe public spaces for everyone [Music] removing the fire rings and profanes and and the needles accomplishes that and it also improves the safety for those living in the encampments and um i know for me personally and just thinking about a week i believe it was in the middle of the week last week we had a rain event where we got two inches of rain or so in about an hour and over the years as the encampments have become more and more of an issue we find people living in our utilities infrastructure inside box culverts and inside storm water pipes and we just can't that's just putting their their life at risk and um that's that's why i'm personally passionate about that this program we

[167:01] can't let that happen and and as we've noted the the encampment cleanup work is not intended to end homelessness um although i think the way that we perform the work including the notice we provide and um the touch points that go along with that it does create an opportunity to connect people experiences experiencing homelessness with services that can help them next slide i know one thing um that that we hear frequently is is questions about how are we how are we choosing which sites to clean up and which ones do we do first and um it's not a it's not a random process we've talked with other communities who have programs like this i believe portland oregon has something asked how when we really got started on this pilot asked how they were doing it

[168:02] and looked at some of those examples and then thought about our needs here in boulder and we established a prioritization formula before i talk about that just talking about the work that the cleanup team does each week they they're currently averaging two uh police supported cleanups each week where the encampments are inhabited and those are the ones that involve the 72 hours of notice in accordance with our procedures on days when the police support is not available the team is is out there surveying the multi-use paths and drainage ways and and cleaning up trash and debris that is left behind from prior encampments so they're really out there five days a week doing cleanup um and in terms of the prioritization we have factors that we look at you can see some tables that are part of our

[169:01] our document that has our prioritization formula we assign points for each category they are weighted and then we we apply the formula and total up all of the points and and prioritize first the cleanup for those that have the highest totals though those are the ones that have the highest combination of concerning factors and are the most impactful to maintaining safe public spaces so there can be smaller ones that are that are in in an area somewhere that don't uh take a lot of those boxes and and and they can stay there for a while because they don't [Music] uh they don't rise to the level on our prioritization life safety and proximity of schools are two categories that carry a lot of weight when we're applying the formula um [Music] and i think i will move on to the next slide and talk about storage

[170:03] so um well as mentioned previously one of the things that we've established is a process and location for storage and retrieval of personal property we're legally required to store personal property and that is that is not trash we have a formal definition of what constitutes personal property there can sometimes be issues where a person's wallet or identification gets left behind we have procedures to make sure that we're taking care of those and um when we post the notice uh that we're going to do a cleanup 72 hours in advance it has contact information for retrieval so that we can reconnect people with their personal property next slide and and we're wrapping up here the next series of slides captures some of the data associated

[171:00] with the encampments and cleanups and the metrics this is one of the things that starting from scratch to establish our own program a year and a half ago it has been a significant undertaking to establish the metrics and a lot of credit goes to our i.t team and uh there as kurt mentioned their staff staff transition and changes are are part of what we're all dealing with on all of our programs and we had the departure of a key staff member who was really holding up the initial data gathering and reporting and so we had to adapt in that [Music] i would i would and i think the team would characterize the data that we have to date as a work in progress it's a new program the data collection is new we're streamlining and refining our tools and data collection procedures so it's not always entirely

[172:01] consistent and and so i'm not sure we can draw any absolute conclusions just yet and so i'll walk through a few of the the goals and metrics slides you will see that many things are trending up and at this point we don't know if that's that's a seasonal thing that will go back down once the weather cools off um or or whether we'll see after a period of time that it's a trend that's continuing and concerning [Music] next slide and i'll just touch on these quickly this this one shows the reports of camping which as as i mentioned the trends it's it's trending up over time [Music] and if we can go to the next one one of our goals being the waterways being free of of contamination and this slide shows the

[173:00] number of structures or campsites that are next to our waterways again it's been trending up over time of course we're in the we're in the peak of summer and it's the warmest time of year so again we'll see if that goes back down um the next slide uh chris talked about our ambassadors program and contacts again it's generally been trending up although we've seen some decline in the in the last few months and then the the next slide one of the things that we track and you can see it on the left half of the screen is the number of sites that have access issues where people or materials might be encroaching on or blocking access to to the multi-use paths or the parks or things like that and then the uh the right side of the slide shows the number of bike trips and if the the lines are pointing up

[174:02] that means uh there there are more bike trips compared to the same month the year before so most of the months are up but um january of 2022 was down and chances are it was a cold january and if we can move to the next slide which is our last one before we turn it over to discussion and questions in in terms of our next steps and areas of focus we're going to continue to staff and and build out the pilot program and continue to refine our measurement and metrics i don't want to get in front of the budget process but as part of our budget process we'll be bringing forward a proposal to expand the utilities cleanup team so that i can do a larger geographic area of the city that goes beyond some of the multi-use paths and drainage ways

[175:02] and that would allow us to get to some of those those sites that i mentioned when i was talking about prioritization that sometimes are lagging in in getting attention and if we can go to our our next slide that's the end of our um of our prepared presentation and uh look forward to quick questions and and discussions with council thanks so much for that joe and um everybody else who presented those um helpful information i appreciate those presentations questions for staff we've got um bob and matt and mark uh thanks uh aaron um aaron i've got um about one question each for a couple of the presenters do you want me to do those all at once or do you want me to ask one question and get back in queue what will be best

[176:00] go ahead and ask all your questions i think everybody can ask all the questions they have okay thanks well i'll just order joe since jill was just presenting joe thanks for that i'm great great data great initial effort i guess i kind of a two-part question one is um you mentioned uh that you're doing some some walk-alongs drive-alongs with your crew to see how things are going uh is that something that you're going to be extending to maybe the council members i know that there can be some dangerous situations but uh is that i know the police offer and the fire department offer right alongs for for council members and it's a great way for us to learn uh what our staff is doing is that something that you would feel comfortable having us join join you on yeah we have talked about that recently as a leadership team and and i i think it would be good to to extend that to the council members of course we'd have to figure out how to do it and make sure it's safe but that's i i think that's something that we can look at great thanks joe and then a final question for you joe

[177:00] i know you don't want to get ahead of the budget process and we'll be talking about the budget in a few weeks but can you just at least give us an order of magnitude are you about the expansion of your program which i'd be very much in sport about myself are you talking about a 10 increase of 50 increase of doubling i mean what just give us kind of maybe uh and if you don't want to answer the question that's perfectly fancy but i just want to get a sense because it sounds like a program that's been pretty impactful but it also sounds like um it's it's hard to keep up and i understand that because i think you only got five team members and uh uh you know there's a lot of there's a lot of things out there to address what um what's the order of magnitude of the increase you might be seeking in a few weeks yeah for the the cleanup crew that i was just talking about right now we have a supervisor a crew lead and three crew members and and the the trucks and equipment that they used to do the cleanups we would be looking at doubling doubling that um and and would be

[178:00] uh for four ftes that are at around 300 000 and and several 100 000 for the same equipment that the current crew has great that's just that's helpful joe and we'll obviously talk about that more in a few weeks um my next question is is kind of a similar question for chris jones uh chris um another outstanding successful program i think of the ambassador program that was also done on a pilot and we're now you know a year and a half into it i know that several members of council are involved with different downtown organizations i think matt and mark are currently our are our liaisons onto the business improvement the downtown business improvement district and then tara and i serve on the board of the non-profit downtown boulder community initiative so i think several of us are familiar with the ambassador program and of course those of us who go downtown a lot interact with the ambassadors are really really great they've had just literally tens of thousands of interactions with community members um with with business owners and just phenomenal success i hear nothing but compliments about the ambassadors from

[179:00] visitors from residents from um businesses um and and so just i'm going to ask you the same question asked do you foreshadow for us will you first shadow for us uh the possibility of extending this pilot program or maybe making this program quasi permanent as we go into the 2023 budget thank you bob for the question um yes we certainly are um intending and are proposing an extension of the this element of the pilot program into 2023 and certainly will want to monitor the ambassadors and their their effect on these measures and the goals of the coordinated program um so certainly do anticipate and will and that will be part of the proposal that you're going to be seeing through the budget process for continuation of the existing level of ambassador service great thanks thanks chris i appreciate that uh again i certainly support that um i'm gonna shift uh uh

[180:00] it's a scatter shot here a little bit uh shift to uh the chief if if she's still on um chief harold um really kind of two questions um i know the last time you checked in with us uh you gave us a good report there on the on the six officers that are focused on on this particular subject and i know you're you're up you're three with the forthcoming and hopefully the last two will come soon more of a broad picture about your overall staffing i think last i heard you were down maybe 26 27 28 officers from your budget how how's it going and and what um what plans do you have to to continue to try to build your your staff up to that that budgeted number uh thank you councilmember yates uh that's an excellent question so currently we're down 27 police officer positions which brings our total right now to 163. um as i presented part of the master plan we are aggressively have a recruiting and retainment strategy um that we are really uh pushing out

[181:00] um we are actually doing better than a lot of police departments uh in colorado we're all suffering losses but we have recently seen an uptick in applicants i am hoping that we continue this trend as i presented before i think our partnership with ceu if we can get in a police academy up and running for this area i think it will be a game changer and we'll really be able to control our destiny as far as far as recruiting and then training our own officers so i really think that will have a huge impact uh for boulder uh and see you that's great chief and chief um i i think you mentioned a little bit or you referred to it tonight and i think i've heard you say before a little bit of um frustration i guess i'll say among some of your officers when they encounter a person who looks like they've maybe committed a crime a property theft or something like that as far as um what prior to code would probably result in an arrest and some detention and and

[182:01] i realized during the hot times of kovid and that was not possible because the jail was largely closed to um to to all but not very not very violent offenders um you know as the coveted um situation eases are are are are we still having some challenges in in arresting people who um who we had or who your your police officers had arrested prior to to covet and if so what's what's the um what's what's the solution there well it's it's another excellent question and it's uh obviously it's frustration uh for me in the in the police department um the jail has really experienced challenges during covet those challenges continue um uh inmates and staff alike in the jail system for boulder county continue to have coveted issues um and to be quite frank with everybody here the the jail is pretty much full

[183:00] right now as we speak the other issue is when a police officer issues a citation those are not arrestable offenses and it actually requires before we can actually detain someone and take them to jail it takes actually three warrants from the municipal court and a police officer will transport the arrested to the jail system and then they are immediately released on uh pr bond on their own recognizance um so this is obviously a cycle that is frustrating to everyone and most certainly the community members and obviously like we talk about crime is concentrated it's most certainly concentrated with repeat offenders and so there's a lot happening after the police officer writes the citations and a lot of that we don't control that's either the court system or the jail system and so there's a lot that takes place after an officer issues the citation but i must certainly understand the

[184:00] community's frustration because they see the same people doing the same activity day in and day out and so there's a whole process behind when a police officer tries to intervene if that's helpful councilman yes it is and probably worthy of longer discussion which we won't have tonight but i appreciate at least the brief summary of that situation and aaron if you if you indulge me i have one more question this one for kurt is that okay sure go ahead look kurt um i know that earlier in the year um council asked you and your team to look into um i think we we call it a day shelter for for shorthand is probably more of a navigation center can you give us a quick report on on where that i know you've been working on it um during the course of this year can you give us a quick update on where that stands and what you see the the timeline for that might be uh yes uh thank you councilmember yates um and again i'll apologize for my camera not being on uh apparently i need to get that fixed um uh or or figure out how to use my computer um

[185:00] but anyways um yes so the the the navigation center um uh we've hired a um uh consultant who was hired um i think a couple weeks ago um to do engagements um with the community um to pro to receive input um on some of the uh the questions that council had at the retreat um like what kind of services um uh should be there uh um you know what would the what's the goal of the of the navigation center where where should it be uh possibly located where shouldn't it be located um and we expect to be bringing um some of that community feedback to council on september 1st when we do the annual homeless update and we look forward to having a um a more comprehensive conversation with council at that time about the direction

[186:00] we're going and to ensure that we're we're on the right track great well i look forward to that aaron that's all i have for now i may have a few comments or questions later on but i i'm taking up a lot of time and i appreciate your accommodating me thanks okay we have lots of other hands matt mark tara nicole lauren rachel jooney thanks aaron and i appreciate all the department leads coming together and presenting and doing a nice tag team on that that worked out quite well um i wanted to follow up on one of bob's questions for kurt since it was the sort of last question asked is in that september first update will we also be getting an update on the progress for our version of the star program um you we we can give a brief update on that that wasn't our intention um i believe however um if i'm correct it's in october i don't know the date we're we're actually

[187:01] planning on a uh um an agenda item specifically on that we we do have a team that's working on that that was a separate uh city council priority um we are making progress on that and um that that project is being led by wendy schwartz and um it's a collaboration between hhs um pd and and fire and um i believe it's october that that will be coming to you mid october 13th is where we have it slated right now uh thanks kurt thanks for yeah just knowing that it's coming down the line and you know we're you know just on where those council priorities are so i appreciate knowing where that is in the pipeline uh one of one of my questions is kind of a forest for the trees question and i don't know if it's towards staff or just towards my colleagues which is a lot of what we discussed was based on a 18-month pilot and we're at month 15

[188:01] and so i'm kind of wondering in this process of an update are we going to come right back on the heels of this and then evaluate the success of all these and then determine the fate of these pilots as either great they get folded into a permanent structure and we move forward or no that wasn't for us and we we jettison them as as can happen with pilots i'm just wondering we're so close to the exploration of of these pilots shouldn't we maybe my question is are we going to have yet another check-in in just a couple months on that is that part of the budget process or should we maybe take a little bit of time tonight to kind of maybe narrow some of our guidance to staff and maybe our own sense as council as to what we want to do with some of those pilots to maybe better inform that budgetary conversation that we're going to have here in just a little over a month um so so i just i wanted to kind of know where this is really headed beyond just an update because those things are gonna the expiration of these pilots are are right on top of us

[189:07] i'll ask a question of the cac member we're currently is this scheduled to come back to us in three months at the expiration of the pilots right now it is not currently i think what you've heard staff say is that some of this we're actually hoping to extend the pilot because we haven't been able to um move forward as extensively as we would like for example the park rangers program continues to be built and i really appreciate ali's intentionality about what that looks like we will continue to expand joe's cleanup team and as we have more data we want to come back to you but it will not be in the same uh as you heard staff say it's not intended to be in that same window of the 18th month because we didn't start um for a variety of reasons at that time i don't know i can i can rephrase a little bit man if you don't mind just it sounds like the answer is we're not

[190:01] ending anything at the end of that 18-month point your plan is to continue as described and then with possible modifications increases etc through the budget process is that fair i think that's fair and as we learn more from the data we certainly plan to continue to update council on where we are but we want to give some things the opportunity to move forward we want to give some things the opportunity to start and then really think about what that data looks like so it will not be the end of the conversation on this that is that it does i think it does uh well i mean it maybe raises some other questions about funding and what the original proposal was and what really council action is here is because we clearly i'm not previous council clearly was at an inflection decision point to decide whether to fund these pilots or not to go forward and i'm not sure this council's being necessarily going to have the same opportunity to make that evaluation at this point so i i'm a little bit confused as to how this kind of maybe just sort of

[191:00] moves forward without a clear decision from council as to how this will happen so maybe that's another discussion but it does seems a little strange that we can start it but not really be in that decision point before we move to 2023 budgeting i may circle back when i hear from my colleagues on other points about on an idea maybe how to siphon things off to to better calibrate what we might see is focused on permanent funding versus needing to maintain its sort of pilot status until we have enough to evaluate whether or not it's successful or not programmed but i'll circle back but i think there's more to be had here on this piece thank you mark tara nicole etc um i have just a couple of questions but i just want to start out with a a shout out to the people who are working in the homeless outreach team be there program the ambassadors anybody who is doing this sort of of work it's obviously deeply stressful and difficult

[192:00] and [Music] you need to know that that our community really appreciates what you're doing um most of us could not do this and um you know i certainly want to express my appreciation uh for all that you do um with respect to my specific questions my first is um you know there was some language in the uh the memo um that was sort of comparative of our city to other cities and i was wondering if we've gotten any more granular on that let's look at cities 100 000 to 125 000 how do we compare in terms of the types extent and dollar commitments of our programs and then on the flip side how do we compare in terms of the severity of our homeless problem um and i'm not going i'm not making a point that the programs create the problem which some people suggest it's just an order of magnitude i'm trying to understand where we fit into

[193:00] the scheme of things uh mark i might uh this is kurt fernham or i might jump in and others may as well um some some of the questions you've asked will be answered on september 1st where we continue to do some comparative analysis this tonight isn't really about um this isn't our annual homeless update um but obviously these issues um correlate with one another i i would say a general challenge that we have not just around this work but other work and um we certainly experience it with um data around topics of homelessness is that the data that the city of boulder collects makes available on dashboards publicly information that we have internally is significantly more comprehensive than

[194:00] other similar size cities often what we have to do is find the right person within those cities and they they often have to spend time trying to gather information it's off often our information is apples and oranges it's something that we really work on but i must say it's challenging um and many we also receive a lot of requests from other cities and a lot of that information they can simply go on our dashboards and get um but it's uh generally it's a challenge for us um in a lot of different ways but there there may be other directors with other points of view and other data points as well well and i can certainly wait until september 1. um if that's more convenient um my second question is um

[195:02] last year we we passed a tent and propane ordinance [Music] can anyone comment on the effectiveness of that ordinance to date how well has it worked and if it has not worked what else should we be doing to be to be addressing the the issues that we're dealing with uh councilman uh councilmember wally i'll take a a stab at this one um i do think uh that it is working and i do think that the holistic approach that we are using as a city uh is being uh impactful um but uh

[196:00] make no mistake it is very challenging work um and the police department tries to use the least uh restrictive means as possible when dealing uh with these encampments and tents and if we can get cooperation for them to take the tents down and move on that is the preferred course and i think that the city attorney would agree with me that legally that is the best course of action but i do think that if you take that and the unsanctioned camping and you partner it with everything the city is doing on this holistically with other city departments i do think we're making an impact and i just wonder if if we were not doing this work what we would be up against and i think that's what the community sees on a daily basis and i do think that um we are making progress and i'd let the other directors that are intimately involved in this work as well

[197:00] say what they they see most certainly i am out on the bike pass all the time and i know the other department directors are as well and joe am i consistent with what you see yeah for sure i agree with everything you just said maris and the ordinances are an important component of allowing the cleanup team to do what they do and i think i mentioned a couple of times in my prepared remarks that the the the encampments do reoccur that's a reality um and i didn't say it in my prepared remarks but my personal opinion observing this work for 15 months or so now i think there would be large encampments with multiple tents and tarps everywhere if the multi-department team was not doing what it's what it's doing it can you still see tents and you still see

[198:00] encampments so it might appear like we're not gaining any ground but some of the data and just seeing the the truckloads of trash being hauled away and collecting the needles and the propane tanks and things i i think were we're having an impact and i know internal discussions from other departments who previously before we had an internal team it was it was like other staff in our parks and rec department who were deferred from their regular duties that were having to do this cleanup work and [Music] i've i've heard numerous people say that having the internal cleanup crew and seeing what they're doing is a game changer thank you on that um and i guess my last question is is really just one for my personal curiosity when we clean up a an encampment that contains a chop shop

[199:01] are we actually storing the bicycle parts on behalf of the individual running the chop shop while we clean up the tent site we we do store everything that's there that's uh that as i mentioned in our property storage that has value um and i i part of the visit that i did this week i saw our storage facility and how neatly everything is is contained maris can maybe speak more to this but i believe the the police do cross check the serial numbers of all the bikes that are in there and attempt to to see if they're on a stolen list and reconnect them with their rightful owner if they do what i heard from one of the police officers when i was visiting the team this week and talking about the storage and i i admit i'm guilty of this myself i

[200:00] don't know what my bike serial numbers are but it's really important for people to to take a minute and and record those maris yeah joe's absolutely right the police officers routinely uh check serial numbers at the encampments um we have lists either through bike index which is our software that we've partnered with bike shops across boulder and boulder county for people to put their serial numbers on unfortunately a lot of people do not identify their bikes either by a serial number or some self-identification number on bikes but also by parts and so this is so challenging for the police officers that are investigating what appears to be stolen property if we do not have a picture of the owner with the bike or a serial number associated with it and obviously the police officer needs some form of reasonable suspicion to even investigate

[201:00] these crimes um that we know are going on in some of these encampments and so i i will willingly put a plug out for the community to please enter your serial numbers not only on your bike but expensive bike parts that you have and then take a picture of you and and and your bike so the police officers have reasonable suspicion to stop uh people that they think have your stolen property if that's helpful mark yes it is thank you and uh uh that'll be all for me for that at the moment thank you thanks mark um it is 9 20 so i just wanted to do a time check as we've agreed to do when it gets at nine o'clock or later uh this this is our one uh major agenda item remaining we have a little bit a small one after that is everyone comfortable with continuing with this gen diet until it's complete all right i'm seeing none non-heads all right but um just as we continue forward keep in mind that we're getting later into the evening but this is an important discussion

[202:00] right uh tara nicole law and rachel jimmy so tonight i mostly want to discuss trash um i have always been interested in trash incredibly saddened by the way we treat our country and our earth just throw things on the floor we've been sad about i actually have a non-profit that i'm involved in and have been on the board that deals with trash in the middle east so um which there's also a big problem there so um it's this is a the subject that is really you know my heart it really is um so my first question is for chris chris jones are you still here you are i'm thinking about west pearl i know we're not talking about that tonight but there is a specific area of west pearl namely right um where i believe not far from bar taco where there sits a very large pile of trash you know that area

[203:00] probably talked to you about it before being that i'm worried about rodents as well as how unseemly it is is there anything this city can do legally to do something about the uh trash that sits there or that sits let's say on pearl street mall uh thank you councilmember winer for the question i might actually end up deferring to chief harold on this question because the trash i believe that you're mentioning in this particular instance is associated with a particular member of the unhoused um that's been chronic and we've been trying very hard to to connect this person with the services that are available to them and they've just continued to be uninterested in participating in those services so maris i'm wondering i imagine this all sounds familiar to you and you know what we're talking about um uh your thoughts

[204:00] uh and perspectives on this particular challenge by bar taco yeah uh thank you chris and thanks for the question um this really is the sad part of the work and we have sent every available resource to this house woman and unfortunately she refuses help but more importantly we should have a discussion on there really is no place to take this woman and all of her belongings on the street and i think that a lot of the issues we are seeing is because of severe drug addiction and severe mental health issues most certainly this woman that we're speaking about on pearl suffers from severe mental health issues but i have sent and i know the other directors have sent just about every every available resource that we know um and it's just not it's just not good

[205:01] enough the community calls about this woman probably three to seven times a day and our police officers are constantly trying to convince this woman to get into housing and she has a lot of belongings and unfortunately she's in front of a business that is not occupied right now so this causes further legal implications for the police officers that are trying to help her if that's at all helpful yeah i actually was referring to the trash for instance i did ask that woman would you mind if i clean up the trash it was mostly like a discarded food sitting there and so i was concerned about um rodents and cleanliness it's right by restaurants and such but i guess the two are intertwined then yes they are and uh she claims that as her property further complicating the situation okay so then i'm going to move on to the most important thing i want to talk about ask questions about tonight and that's going to be the uh bike underpasses

[206:01] so um i just wanted to thank who was it that gave us that video um earlier that was kathleen hancock who showed us that video of what the underpasses look like and how hard it is to bike through them and how dark it is and so we all know all of us bikers on city council that uh when the bike when the lights aren't working is if you're in daylight as soon as you hit those uh bike underpasses that have barely any lights or no lights you know most of them are out it's really hard to see anything never mind debris and mattresses and furniture and um so i'm wondering joe first of all i wanted to thank you for your outstanding work and i mean the whole cleanup crew it's been outstanding and believe me when i drive on uh the foothills and arapahoe underpass it's night and day from when you guys do clean up the problem is is between the days you do clean up because you only

[207:01] have so much staff and money then that problem reoccurs and again it gets pretty unsafe for bikers i know for me um when i first went on the campaign trail so to speak we had we met with the we had these uh all these different um different uh forums and one of them was with the biking community and i promised you know you promised things and i said i want boulder to be the best biking community where people visit you know from out of town and we're definitely on our way not to be in that uh city if we keep up at this current rate and so joe my question to you is what would it take how many cleanups a week how much more staff how much more money so that we can prioritize the tunnels so that they're safe for bikers and walkers to walk through also natalie might be on the phone i guess kathleen said that there was some lighting fixed in that underpass so that's great news so maybe we can tell

[208:02] the community how that's coming with the lighting and um so i guess my question is is what can we do and we had please from the community um on this very subject because people really do want a bike they want their kids to be able to bike and it's getting harder and harder is there some outside of the box thinking can we increase the cleanups can we um what do you suggest you might expect colloquy on that too before he answers yes please you know i know you love that word so i just wanted to use it i do thank you um well i was wondering you know i'm an advocate for uh cycling being treated on par with driving and so it seems to me that if we had and this is nothing to do with how i feel about you know encampments or where people are but if we had people you know laying down the street or tents in the street i think that they'd be moved pretty quickly and and the bike

[209:00] paths don't get that same um you know treatment so i just wonder what do we do for streets and might we do that similarly for other modes of transportation because that and i think it does uh cause some people not to want to bike um and again this is not not to say where i think people should be but i think that um bike paths are a place that i think should be treated equally to cars and it doesn't seem to be so just wondering how you handle those cleanups if that happens joe or how you would as well yeah i'm not sure natalie wants me to speak for her and and i don't know that she's here tonight but we have had internal discussions and just recently recognized that there are some lights down in places and i i do believe it's on the collective teams immediate work plan to address those in terms of what would it take to to [Music] address the issues i do think it's

[210:01] expanding the the cleanup team so that they can get to spots more quickly get to some of those that that don't score as high on our our priority list and and maybe get we missed in the cleanups that we're doing now i think that would help part of what i've experienced just working with the team and being out this week that that doesn't show in any of the data and the numbers is that um the team the police officers that that are involved the whole team that's out there and kurt and vicky's group just connecting with people developing relationships working with them to encourage people to get plugged into services those relationships and and the team that's working on and they've really established those relationships part of what is starting to happen that i just heard this week from our supervisor is that

[211:02] we give the notice on fridays and about half of the people that are living in the encampments clean up and move out on their own before we before we show up at the scheduled time and not all of them but a number of those we give them trash bags and and they clean up their their own stuff and leave it there for us or in some cases they they put it in neat little piles so the numbers don't tell that story but there are positive things that are happening and if we can build on that with with expansion i think you know there's some possibility there hard to say like you know can you expect to see half the encampments or something really hard to predict so joe i appreciate that answer and

[212:01] where it sounds like you're talking about an encampment cleanup which is a little bit different i think maybe from what rachel was talking about which is about making sure that folks aren't in the right of way right and that's and that's this is often not about a tent it's just you know somebody um like you know my sometimes i say this every once in a while it doesn't happen very often but somebody may be sitting in the middle of the bike path which is not an enchantment situation but just uh excuse me sir you can't be in the middle bike path please you know move over a few feet so that nobody hits you and you're safe and and nobody get you know falls off their bike so got on a much lower level than the surf situation you're talking about yeah thank you for reminding me of that and rachel i'm sorry i missed that part of the question um riding a bike is my preferred mode of transportation to and from my house to work and i ride on the loose creek path a lot i know exactly what you're talking about i think um this this probably is outside my sphere to answer but i'll offer a few

[213:01] thoughts i think as ali talked about the ranger program and staffing that up in the boulder creek corridor that can certainly help with that and um with the cleanup crew and the and the police support that goes with that i i think just having a larger presence out there can help with some of those issues but if we're not there and and somebody holds a mattress halfway on to a multi-use path i mean that there's there's not really a lot we can do about it when we're not there but just having more more people working on this and um more of the resources that i think would help but i'll offer the floor to the other directors who may have an opinion on that yeah joel i'll answer that obviously if a bike path is being obstructed um by a mattress by people um and they're causing harm then my

[214:00] expectation would be the community calls the police and we respond to clear the obstruction now obviously if this is a tense situation that we have seen in some locations around central park and especially the goose creek area when they erect a tent that is obstructing a bike path we do send officers to ask for voluntary compliance if that doesn't happen then we usually come back and get legal advice uh from our internal and external legal partners um because the last thing we do is uh we don't want the behavior to escalate and we're in a use of force situation over a very low level uh misdemeanor crime which i think teresa could agree with me that is uh not a good look for the courts uh the proportionality of use of force compared to the crime being committed so those situations are very delicate but my expectation would be the police would go out and clear the obstruction um

[215:00] especially for those situations that we've seen as of late where actually cyclists are getting harmed or pushed over in these areas uh downtown and near goose creek if that's helpful that that is chief feral thanks for that because yeah that distinguishes it's it's a separate issue from you know encampments and such it's really about making sure that the bike paths are are clear just like we would expect the street to be clear as as was mentioned before thanks uh does that get rachel's colloquy and tara's question yes i just have a few more questions but so many people have questions so i'm going to talk really really fast and um my next question is actually i just for a second wondered whatever happened to the um if somebody pushes you down on when you're you're riding on your bike what actually happened to them is it just a misdemeanor teresa yes i believe it would qualify as assault and the police chief knows the

[216:00] offenses probably better than i but um and certainly would depend on what kind of injury was sustained that's one way to get people to not bike have that happening especially children but i'm going to move on from there because i have to i guess i'll just do one more and that is the needle so i was surprised 5 meals is a lot of needles to discard did i hear correctly that wha around the encampments we do have an opportunity for them to dispose of their needles now and they're just not doing it now uh i've been stepping over a lot on needles lately and driving past a lot of needles uh i'm just wondering uh about that and that's that'll be my last question for now so um one of one of the things that i experienced with the team and talking to the supervisor this week they do provide the containers when they do the cleanups and safe disposal of the needles and i'm not sure i

[217:00] i got all of the retained all of the information of what he told me but um i got the impression from his remarks that he felt like that situation was improving the way we're collecting them and um vic abner hhs senior operations manager um just wanted to add on that that um as joe mentioned in the presentation we do have the large containers that are getting placed in the parks um there is also a significant effort through the county public health department and boulder community health around education to people who are living unhoused and so really about safe disposal um all the things that go with that and how to dispose of your noodles how to exchange them um and so the there are some efforts that are around a lot of the mitigation efforts there but

[218:01] you know at the end of the day there are still needles in the in our parks and it is still an ongoing issue that we have all right tara was that your last one yeah i guess the answer is to really increase clean up isn't it by a lot just throwing that out there folks okay i'm okay i'm done nicole lauren rachel jr thanks everyone and thanks to staff for staying late to answer all of our questions and things um i wanted to start just with a comment on the memo itself and just something that i found i'm just a little curious and wanted to ask about um so i like a common joke that i hear among people um in boulder is when you meet somebody who's actually from boulder or even boulder county it's sort of surprising right they're kind of like a unicorn we don't see that very often i think of every all nine of

[219:00] us on council not a single one of us was is from boulder county and so in the memo it was just a little concerning to kind of see that called out about the unhoused community that so many people are coming from outside of boulder county when i think a lot of our house residents also come from boulder county and so i'm just curious about you know if we know how many house residents come to boulder um from outside a lot of the folks that i talk to who don't have homes here they came because they had a job opportunity they have friends or family nearby they think it's beautiful they lost their housing after moving here but they haven't quite been here long enough to have a support network um and it just feels like separating those of us who are housed from those of us who are unhoused and our motivations for being here doesn't really help us find solutions to homelessness so i'd really love to see us stop talking about how many unhoused people are from outside of boulder county without the context that at least as many if not more housed people are from outside of boulder county where we

[220:01] come from isn't a distinguishing factor between housed and unhoused residents nor should it be um so that's just a general comment uh something that i would appreciate seeing in future reports is that recognition that we're not different that way um so on to some of the questions that i have um i think some of these first questions may be for uh kurt and um i am recognizing that the problem we're trying to solve the thing that we're talking about tonight is trash um and i i will these questions are kind of getting to a point that i would like to get to um which is um kind of the as as we're doing these cleanups are we really having an impact in getting people to a place where we won't have to keep doing this or is this just a problem that's going to kind of keep going so one of the questions is are we in service providers seeing need for services for people experiencing homelessness increasing or higher than usual at this point of year

[221:05] and that was for i think probably kurt is the right person to ask that but maybe vicky or somebody else can yeah i i i think i fixed my camera and thank you thank you ali for that assistance um um yeah so i i i will defer some of that to september 1st um uh however we have seen an increase year over year particularly this year in the number of individuals who are staying at the boulder shelter i was just looking at that data for we get that data on a daily basis i was looking at that this afternoon uh august um compared to a year ago

[222:00] um we have uh approximately 30 percent um a high a 30 higher number of individuals who are staying at the boulder shelter predominantly um and there's sort of two main categories those who are engaged in services and those who are not and that's those who are engaged in services are uh connected to um a reserve bed program um that's where we've really seen the increase so the the real increase has been people who are engaged in services so that's only one data point and so it's hard to draw conclusions to that and quite frankly that's something that we've been talking about we don't know um why that increase is occurring this year it's very different than other years

[223:00] year over year we also know that our point in time counts which was in january [Music] showed a 30 decline in individuals who were unhoused in our community whereas other parts of the metro area saw a 10 or higher percent increase we also know that this looks very different this month and it did that month or the previous month or the month before so it's it is changing um and and kurt i'm sorry i you don't have to go into the september presentation now i think i'm just looking for just uh you're welcome to just kind of give give some brief answers i know you and i talked about this um a little bit last week and i just kind of wanted to bring that conversation out into the open um for my other colleagues who were not kind of present at that meeting but um i think you know one of the things we had

[224:01] we had mentioned was that um folks do seem to be seeing more uh more people experiencing homelessness i think we're the community is certainly telling us that they are seeing more as well right um and i as i understood from our conversation you know part of the um the issue is that we don't have enough services in our region to meet the needs that we have now um we don't have enough places to kind of help people um get somewhere that's not um on the paths or on in the parks or something like that is that is that still correct yeah again we can talk about this on the first of september but i would i would say that we are housing an extraordinarily high number of individuals um compared to other communities absolutely yeah and i don't i don't mean to deny that just uh just trying to trying to get to the sense that i think you and i talked about that we don't have enough services for folks to to be able to to kind of

[225:00] move people and to kind of i mean is that right i mean we don't have enough places for anyway well that's a very hard question to answer and i and i would just like to make one comment um about measuring how long people have been in the community i certainly agree that we shouldn't be judging people according to that or providing services according to that but if if 50 of the people who lived in boulder who were housed had arrived in the last six months i think that would be very different than what it when it actually is and so it doesn't it does actually impact our ability to provide services um and just getting people engaged in services so um i i still think it's a very worthy um data point that's important but i also agree that we shouldn't be judging people um according to that so thank you for that

[226:01] nicole do you mind if i call it quite just on that one before you move on which is i have a couple data questions too but on i think this one links to this um we do our uh point in time our pit surveys as i understand it in january and i wonder could we look at doing one additionally or maybe instead probably additionally because you have to do it nationally right for january um could we do one in july when we know the numbers of individuals are are higher and and i don't feel like we're getting quite the data that we need so is that something that we could nail down i don't know yet this summer um past july what do we do in september or at least start next year yeah that's a that's a great question rachel thank you um so um a slight bit of background so you're correct it's done in in january each year it's actually a requirement of hud and if you want to receive hud funding through the cocs

[227:01] you have to do the point in time count and we we obviously want to participate that with with that and we do that fully um then that don't alternative like we need to sure yeah sure yeah so i um so doing an additional one in july um i i think that's a great great question and i think we should maybe consider that i think that would be helpful for us i think it would be helpful for the community as well as how we think about services and and how that changes you know seasonally i would if we did look at that i would probably want to consider maybe doing it on a county-wide basis versus a city-wide basis because that's how the point in time count occurs in our community and it would be nice to do it in a way which is very consistent with the exact approach that happens in

[228:01] january just so um you know as we collect that a consistency is very important so i would want to explore also with the county to see if they would want to participate um and we could bring back acronym of the regionals is it mdhi like does we regionally do anything other than the january pit count uh we we don't um and um so this would be through hsbc um i i don't think we'd be able to convince um a larger region um to participate in that but you know maybe so well i'll get out of your way in one second but like my understanding is when i went to the training or whatever with i think it was mdhi uh you know they were talking about built for zero and like a linchpin of that was you know you know every individual who's unhoused in your community you know kind of the name and where they're living and what they what resources they need and it seems like that would require so much more than uh

[229:01] you know a july count so i guess i'm confused if if regionally that's our goal is the bill for zero and we're denver's doing it and other cities it seems like this would sort of already be built into the system beyond just one day so i'm surprised we couldn't get everybody on board for at least one day um if i might add some in there um what you're talking about is very different from a point in time count point in time count is fairly anonymous and it's a cross between observations and actual surveys but again very anonymous um that has been one of the goals when first of all i i would i would be it would be shameful of me not to point out and and really support our hsbc partners boulder county was the very first organization uh within the front range area to get 100 on their built for zero scorecard so we are

[230:01] participating with that um but uh to your point about getting knowing who's on our streets is incredibly important and uh that is one of the charges um that we gave to our partners and and our partners were very insistent that they wanted that to be their role when we were re-formulating be there that that could be a way to start getting a better broader understanding of who's on the who who's living unsheltered in our community and then really targeting our resources in reality we know who our highest utilizers are we know who the people that we're connected with but it's the people who are newer to our community the people who are not interested in discussing with with engagement opportunities that are really tougher to get that information on um okay well i appreciate that and it's hard for us as you know like we have a

[231:01] pilot here and and we did ask and this isn't uh um a knock at anybody but i think i i recall a couple of us asking um to make sure that we got you know sort of baseline data on numbers and things and it's hard to evaluate some of the successes and i'll hold the rest a lot after i'm not eating into nicole's time but appreciate it back to you nicole that's fine rachel i'm just you're gonna make me cut to the chase um so you know the issue that we're talking about tonight right is really focused on trash and encampments we'll talk about homelessness strategy um in another month or so um into that point my concern is really that despite picking up so much trash and doing so many cleanups we're kind of just trying to plug holes in a dam that seems to have more cracks every day so rather than just clean up i would really love for us to think about a strategy of harm reduction and how we can move to that kind of strategy homelessness and unsheltered homelessness is growing across the

[232:00] region and across the country we are lacking in kind of resources to be able to meet that need and the housing market and income inequality are just going to keep exacerbating that issue there's a lot that we really can't change about these contributing factors because they're national they're much bigger than us we're doing a lot of work to get people into housing and we keep doing these cleanups but again it seems like until we get these root causes in hand we're not going to get to a satisfying solution anytime soon so when i kind of think about the context that we're operating in what it feels to me is that our job is really to mitigate harm to everybody in our community to housed unhoused unsheltered folks and make sure our parks and bikeways are staying open and accessible to everyone in our community again housed unhoused and unsheltered i've heard some really really good ideas from people in our community who have lived experience and homelessness on how we could mitigate the issues that people are experiencing so um incentivizing

[233:02] folks who are living in our community without shelter to do their own trash pickup to kind of give them some autonomy and control in that regard i'm really excited to hear that there's some safe needle disposals um coming putting in bathrooms and things and i know that we've tried it in the past and had some issues but can we can we find some new um new things that we could try so that people aren't defecating in doorways um in science you don't really give up on something if you try it once and it doesn't work you figure out why it didn't work you make some changes and you try again so i would really love to see us work towards solving this problem of trash of inaccessibility and of um kind of public defecating and things like that really by by coming with some solutions on those issues because i don't think they're going to go away i think they may just get worse um i think that's something we can do that would promote the dignity and safety of all of our

[234:00] residents no matter what no matter where they would they live and i'm not really all that enthusiastic about committing more money to programs um that aren't achieving those kind of goals um when we know that this is a problem that's just growing so that is all i don't think there were questions in there but that's that's all my comments that's that's right i think we're doing one round through council with uh questions or comments um but lord is giving a big open mouth here uh lauren because you're next why do you open up only one round no i'm just kidding okay so you can you can do a follow-up if you need to i appreciate um that this is a really difficult situation and um you know i think that the city is trying to make strides towards sort of harm reduction for all um and you know i hope that we continue to evaluate these programs and look for how we can improve them with really that being you know our primary goal

[235:01] so some of the questions i have oh and also i just wanted to mention on the sharps containers i really do appreci one of those is on my bike path and i do think it's making a difference and i appreciate that the city has installed a couple of those as the pilot part and the part of their pilot project for that um so one of the things joe that you brought up um which is something that concerns me as well is you know people sleeping in um in areas that are in really high risk of flood and things like that and um but one of the things that i worry about and i was hoping maybe you could explain your thinking on this just you know from to help me um is that as we you know in a program that is

[236:00] largely um you know people calling in to report these things i have concerns that aren't we going to see just people moving more deeply into areas of infrastructure and things like that where they're not as noticeable and kind of the the public the safety issues that people trying to be more out of sight might cause yeah it's a good point i think since we have established this program we do see people just move to different locations of the city i haven't heard from our our maintenance team or our cleanup crew that that type of thing is occurring a lot of the a lot of the infrastructure that you see in the city that has water running in it

[237:00] is actually irrigation ditches and they're and they're running a lot of the time in the summer and so it's really limited where people go but i i haven't heard that the team is out five days a week so they're they're seeing what's there and where people are camping and where they're locating um so i guess that's what i can offer on that subject i appreciate that thank you um i also really appreciated the information you brought forward on um the storage of personal belongings that wasn't a program i was aware of and i just had two questions related to that um where like where do people go to to recover their items i guess i'm sort of wondering about transportation connections and like how able people are to actually

[238:03] request their items back and go get them and then also what percentage of belongings do we typically see like re-collected both good questions um that there's on the notice that we give out on the notification day there's a phone number that people call it's a different look and and so they can make arrangements to meet with a staff member and and a police officer and um i i think they do make accommodations for for transportation and help them i'm seeing a note coming to me right now to help me answer this question um and what was the other part of your question oh just what percentage of people collect them honestly not a lot it's it's actually fairly rare and sometimes people call and and make

[239:02] arrangements to come and pick it up and and don't show up but but it's it is a um in working with the whole city team i know that it's a very strong legal requirement that we do it and do it right thank you um there were a couple of sections one of the things that you know this laid out well was the desired long-term outcomes and i appreciated going through the different goals and kind of what data is being collected um one of the ones i have concerns about was water contamination and i was kind of expecting to see numbers around like you know water testing and what our contamination levels look like on boulder creek and i couldn't i didn't see any of that information in the report and i also

[240:00] struggled to find anything after like 2019 on our website and i was just wondering are we going to have data like that that we're collecting as part of this we we do have a program in utilities in our water quality group that are sampling routinely along boulder creek and it's part of our water quality reports we can certainly get you that information in those links and it's continuous and it's and it's up to date and it is it is a fair point that the trash and and the human waste that goes with the the camping is a source of contamination for the creek and we worry about that the the difficulty for the water quality team that's doing the sampling is a drop of water comes down the creek and it moves by and it's uh it's very transient and

[241:00] they they do the sampling they do take it to the lab they see what's in the water and whether it is a concern or not but it's difficult to know what to attribute that to we one of the problems that we have in boulder creek water quality is some of the storm water pipes and raccoons crawl up the hem and go to the bathroom and it's a source of contamination in the summer especially when creaks are low so hard to attribute the what we're seeing to specific sources but there is a program investigating that i think it's going to always be difficult to know what's coming from the homelessness yeah i appreciate that and you know i don't it's just one piece of many pieces that i think we should be looking at you know i work very close to the creek you know and um

[242:00] i think it would be great if we had more public restrooms closer to you know the farmers market and um that kind of south of where we currently have them or sorry [Music] east um i was also you know along that line of data collection wondering um how we're tracking if public space is safe and welcoming is that um just since that's one of the goals and we're talking about what kind of data collection and things we're doing is there plans to do polling around that or what what kind or is there any data collection that we are looking at to try and determine if we're succeeding at that goal i think part of that is answered um by the collection of

[243:00] of um the data that we're tracking and we showed some of it some of the highlights in our presentation tonight so it's it's the cumulative effect of that i do know that there are a couple elements where surveys are part of the data and the metrics and i'm looking back through the slides to see if i can put my eyes on that really quickly but it is a part of it i'd invite vicki or curt or others to add to it if i if i said anything wrong or you have anything to add and i think sort of more specifically i know we're collecting you know data around crime reporting and various things of like feeling unsafe clearly but that's not necessarily the same thing right as feeling safe because i you know a reduction in crime reports could just mean people have given up on reporting it like that it's not always um you know

[244:00] correlated necessarily lauren i hear you and joe i can chime in here not to correct anything because i think you answered that really well but i'll add that there that one of the goals is that users of public space report feeling safe and welcome and there's a couple of of surveys that we have as baselines that have been conducted in the past both by the city and downtown boulder partnership and the intention would be to use those and i would just highlight that is a data point that we would want to consider with others right um and and just it's a perception of feeling of safe feeling of welcome we've done that work in in tandem with other city efforts about feeling welcome and inclusive in spaces and it's also relates to our equity goals um the other thing that i'll highlight that i think aligns with this conversation is some of the work that connects to my earlier uh conversation with you tonight about the boulder parks recreation master plan some of our engagement was with members of our unhoused community and we asked questions specifically about values in public spaces and learned that members of our community from various

[245:00] demographics including our community have the same values for our public spaces we intend to continue that conversation by having um at some point that is not planned or in our work plan but in 2023 we would we would continue this using these tools and have a conversation about behaviors and across the community and in public spaces start talking about our shared shared expectations for for public spaces so that was a whole lot of words it's late and i'm rambling but lauren i hear you and we are we are doing this and we intend to continue the conversation about what does it look like for everybody to feel safe and welcome i appreciate that thank you so much ali and i have another one for you specifically so um you mentioned the urban park rangers have been citing people for things and you kind of mentioned what some of those citations are are we gonna get any data around sort of what citations are okay that would be great absolutely we're six weeks in and and working on that so just to be clear one of the things that we have been incredibly

[246:01] intentional about is that the way we collect data is the same way other people are collecting data so it's not parsed and you're not looking you're seeing one city one one data when you look at it right um but as far as is parsing it out and seeing what exactly the actions of the urban park rangers i think it would be really appropriate to report out on that that would be great thank you um and then maris i had one question for you um you mentioned that we have the team of three people that's um helping with this work um and then i think it was mentioned that you know the cleanups that involve police are happening about twice a week and so i was just wondering um you know is this team of three doing other kinds of work related to this throughout the rest of the week or are or are you kind of like shuffling them in with other

[247:00] teams doing other work throughout the city i was just um trying to um understand how that that's a great question so the majority of their time is spent on on these issues um we have to post the encampments they're engaged in service delivery as well as the hot team and obviously they go out with the whole team as well and they clean so i would say the majority of their time is spent on these issues i hope that answers your question yeah thank you that was it that's it okay uh let's see we got rachel and then genie and then i'm gonna call on myself all right i'll try and be quick but i am i make no promises uh nuria did we ever get a fire update

[248:00] no i had asked maris to chime in as we finish this conversation but i don't know maris if you've got something to share um i'm going to call upon steve if he's still with us because he's got his radio and i've turned mine off so i could listen um the last i heard is that we had it contained but they were still working on it it's a large house um and they they have not uh got the whole thing under control yet steve you got an update for us yes good evening uh steve bradford deputy police chief i did speak to our police commander that was on scene a short time ago and um it's quite a large single family home they are calling it under control at this time but it's a i guess it's maybe four stories so it took some time to get um under control uh there's about six homes without power in the area due to its power issues that came up and we stopped some roads closed but uh at this point they're um kind of in what they're calling overall the fire department's telling us so a positive note is the residents we're all able to get out of there safely and at this point we're not reporting it there were

[249:00] any injuries so i know our fire partners are probably going to be there well into the night working on what i'm being told thanks so much for that um that was uh i think distracting probably a lot of us so it's great to hear that everybody made it out safe and thanks to the fire department after watching um nuria while i'm still with you here just wanted to verify that maybe we could plan at the end of this discussion to have like a list of commitments like you know i've talked about the a new point in time um number i think matt was getting at a you know maybe an end date for at least portions of the pilot so i just want to kind of prepare in advance for maybe a some closure with some dates attached um okay and then maris well maybe while you're still there and i'd like to preface all my questions with i do not intend any of these to um i hope they don't make anyone defensive i'm just trying to get information and understand and to do my job best so i hope everything is received in a wonderful spirit and when you talked about that crime rates you know sometimes in in uh criminal justice you

[250:03] know if you're policing something more you're going to find more crime it's like if they take an x-ray of your lung they're going to find all the spots that you didn't even you weren't even worried about yet so um i just want to know do you control for that data at all given that we know we get a lot of calls about homeless encampments and you're going out there a lot and then the crime rate's up i'm not saying it's not it's not actually up but how do we control that data i'm going to let uh dr reinhardt who is crunching these numbers and looking at these trends constantly uh way in here dr reinhart yeah yeah so my name is dr reinhart i work for the boulder police department um yeah so the way that i controlled for that is um i looked at two different ways of identifying in canvas um unsanctioned camping the first was all the locations where officers issued tickets and so i think that could experience the kind of issue you're describing the second kind of unsanctioned camping i used as sort of like a baseline was all of the citizen reported encampments so the citizen reporting

[251:00] encampments they're not conveyed to the police department like they're not conveyed to officers they're conveyed to the public space reclamation team and so that to me represents um a data point that the officers because they're unaware of it seems like that might be more free from that kind of bias and so what we found was that crime was concentrated around the encampments that officers aren't told about and the ones that officers ticketed um and that's sort of consistent with some research that i saw that came out of portland oregon so that's sort of how we we did that so in the second category you're saying officers i guess there's still crime happening there so somehow officers are ending up there but it's not in relation to somebody reporting it you're saying it's not because the officers went out there that they find a crime they people are out there and know about him and then separately something's called in the person who's living at the camp calls for help or something kind of i understand how that like you're out there somebody the community member is recording it so somebody's

[252:01] aware of it but you're saying somehow there's a firewall between that department and the police that assures your data validity yeah so uh so more or less so uh not necessarily at the encampments but what we did is we looked at concentric circles from them and so we looked at we used 350-foot buffers because that is kind of what other studies have done and it's kind of consistent with like one city block in some places and so we looked at crime sort of around that area so within one city block of them and then two city blocks and three city blocks and we found that crime was dispersing further from both of those sets of encampments if that makes sense yeah now that that clarifies okay thanks i i would be interested in maybe getting some more uh information on that emailed to us the the uh two different types and how you can kind of really confirm your validity yeah so thanks for that um i just want to say it's a general thing and i brought this up last year too i do

[253:00] not like separating the discussions where we talk about homelessness one month and we talk about kind of outdoor spaces a different month because these are so tied together and it's really hard to say what you want to do on subject a without being able to say but i'm going to need you know this assurance on some you know on the second part so you know we're going to do you know it feels like we're sort of being asked to i know we're not voting on anything tonight but um generally you know kind of moving towards we're going to need more funding for this or that but like especially for for those of us who who um really want to see more services like that's part of the discussion and and uh hard to tease them apart so if there's a way for future years to have a longer meeting on both subjects together that would really be appreciated um so i've asked for when is the pilot gonna end we'll come back to that um let's see my next question are over here bear with me um okay so there's a part in the background of the memo it says most communities of 50 000

[254:01] people or less have no resources for homelessness assistance most communities under 200 000 in population of minimal resources dedicated to the issue um but consistent with our homelessness strategy and the county working together county-wide partnership test with policy decisions related to single adult homeless homelessness we've been able to leverage resources to house approximately one person per day in all four and a half years of our existence um and that this is significantly better than typically provided in a county the size of boulder county so my question is is really i've i keep coming back to it seems like sort of um the county gets the money and and is really tasked with um health and human services and that's a lot of what we're talking about when we get into resources and and then we're trying to do both that and what we're talking about tonight and i guess is are we really better off by leveraging um you know having these separate teams

[255:00] working on it um you know i think i could make a pitch for the county doing more on us doing less so i i never get good data on what the county like what money is going into the county for serving people who are currently unhoused and where they're putting that money i know a lot goes into housing first but i would love for our september conversation to really have good numbers on that if that's possible to get what is the county paying not for housing you know not for the people who are getting housing but for those who remain unhoused because that's that's largely what what we're talking about sort of trying to um make you know improvements on in our in our city and i worry that we're kind of doing we are maybe carrying the county's water for them as well as our own that question i guess is for you kurt thank you rachel and i know you posed that question to me the other day as well so i will say that that's something

[256:00] we're we're working on not just uh in comparison to um or not not just information from the county but comparisons to other um cities along the front range as well um i don't know how far we're going to be on september 1st or um and um we're working towards answering that question um i don't know how complete we're going to be able to answer it but it's our intention to just to satisfy that as much as we can and if we can't answer it by september 1st we may need more time but i i think it's a valid it's certainly a valid question um and and as i mentioned earlier in the presentation tonight um other cities are even much more difficult to to get that information yeah i appreciate that and you know there's like we often get compared to denver denver's doing this and you know denver's a city in a county together and

[257:00] and you know you really have to i think kind of tease out which who's in you know which lane is ours and which lane is theirs and make sure that the lane they're getting funded to fund is that they're doing that so like if they're not providing enough housing and shelter and maybe a sanctioned encampment for their community members we should be pushing for that um okay for our community members but monetarily theirs i'm saying okay um looking at uh let's see so adam swetlick had really pressed for the intended goals and outcomes and i think that's what um probably translated into the program goals slide that was presented by joe so thank you for that um and you know it it seemed like that was in keeping with what i understood the majority to be voting for last year i think that um the the notion was that we would have kind of less trash and fewer campers if we did all these steps and committed the three million dollars and it it really does not look to me like the data is favorable at this point

[258:01] when i read the program goals no camping in public spaces um connected to coordinate coordinated entry for people who need it um access to public space not impeded reduction in crime visitors have access to knowledgeable resources sounds like we're doing maybe well on that one um and then joe your crews being able to safely access the critical infrastructure and free uh the waterways of contamination so um you know i think we what we're hearing tonight is we're not we're not necessarily making those goals and i know we're not making decisions tonight but again i think it comes back to some of the data that we're asking about so that when we come back and do make a decision on this pilot we really have the information that we need so if the goal is a reduction in the average number of new encampments a day or a week i'm not sure i can tell looking at what i've i've seen like that we have the drill down information and the the weekly data that we need to know like what you know i know we know what we're

[259:01] kind of clearing and seeing but you know we talked about that built for zero data and the real granular data i don't know how we how we can make good decisions without having something close to that and i think that you know a summer pit count would be great um but i think we also need you know for if the goal is to know like are we reducing um x y and z it just doesn't seem like we quite have the level of detail that we need and given that it was asked for last year um i understand staffing shortages have have made it difficult but you know that definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result like i don't want to come back whenever we come back to check in and say we don't we haven't been able to start it yet because then it feels like it's just going to keep going and we we won't be able to make an informed decision on whether that's helping any of the measures we're going for that's probably i don't think there was a question in there but i would love it for for nourish wrap up maybe just

[260:00] that's a i we really think a lot of us are asking for christopher yeah thank you i appreciate that i really do rachel and i i say that that's i think why the team is um is moving forward on extending this work right because we don't have the data that um that we think is reliable that right now really shows a period that we can land on um i i don't know that i was that clear when matt was asking the question about the um the extension of the pilot i mean our proposal is to extend it and that's what you will see in the budget so i guess the budget approval or not is part of that discussion in that inflection point there but i think it's too early yet and it's too soon we're seeing more um you know we're seeing increases in um in need and we're seeing some really good outreach but i don't know that we have correlation data yet as we think about what that looks like with the encampment cleanup team we don't yet have a full year's data on the ambassadors and certainly we know

[261:01] anecdotally that they have been a huge success um and really uh supportive and community seems to like them but we're still collecting some of that data so that is one of the reasons as we continue um to look at some of the work that's moving forward is that we really want to be crystal clear about being making data informed decisions so we don't know that yet um but i do think that that's a conversation to be had and we'll see that in the budget if you um you know there will be decisions it's about 750 000 to fund um the additional cleanup crew in joe's shop that's a decision point to be made if we're going to do those efforts and double down on additional cleaning it could be that there are additional ideas that moves forward but that's a those are some policy considerations that will be matched with budget that we hope to hear from okay you may just made me think of one last question what what became of the like we weren't able to hire the police officers and there was a million dollars

[262:00] left in that budget where is that going like we we really dedicated that in in the budget a year ago to help with this issue do we have a million dollars to to do something with i feel like we could do something great with a million dollars and well i'll ask maris to talk a little bit about her budget but she's got three officers now a fourth coming forward and two more that are coming into fruition by the end of the year so those six officers are are going to be hired uh as that means we're hired like they were authorized a year ago as a yeah we didn't spend that money in the last year and and i think that was true of some maybe a range or two so i guess i would maybe um i don't know maybe that's on the list like where is that if that money was set aside and and we intentionally were like we're going to go with this you know this bucket of of ideas to help you know resolve this situation if we have money left over from that i feel like counselors should

[263:00] probably have a chance to say well let's try this oh i think we're definitely going to have conversations about salary savings at all levels right because it's not just police it is a variety of departments who have not been able to fill those vacancy savings and what has that been used for and what does that look like so we'll certainly have those conversations in the budget um in the budget meetings and i just wanted to mention to your other question that you asked about the pit count my understanding and um sorry and i'm getting a note from finance that unspent some unspent funds are available for one-time uses and they revert back to fund balance after reserves but again a bigger conversation to have with our budget team right and for this particular conversation since we were strategic there like yeah one time choice yep for p um for the point in count my as i'm hearing it and kurt please correct me if i'm wrong i think there is interest in thinking about doing something at a different point in addition i think we need to go back and think about what does that look like in terms of timing in terms of our partners in

[264:00] terms of resources because that is not something that we have perhaps have accounted for but i understand that kurt seems supportive of the idea and i think we just need some time to explore perhaps we can bring that back at the september first meeting and if not he'll certainly let us know but i i think um there seems to be some support to moving forward in that direction kurt am i speaking out of school for you uh that's perfect yeah and i think um at september first if we can bring more um information about um an approach that we would take um that would be an opportunity for council as a whole to give us um input on what they're on if they had support for that or not and just one one thing that i got emailed i guess some at least one person's watching are you here can i interrupt you for a second yes sorry um we are almost at the 10 30 threshold uh which requires a motion to extend the meeting so uh i wonder if i could have such a motion from someone who moved

[265:02] second all in favor raise your hands uh i got it i a bare majority but only barely but let's try we'll we'll push through a secret okay just one one more piece of information to share somebody watching this emailed that um there is a summer pit count going underway in denver and doug coe and one was done two years ago in jeffco so i don't know if we can maybe piggyback on the ones that are happening right now that would be great maybe maybe it could be done before september a girl can dream that's all i got thanks thanks rachel okay junie and then and then i'll call myself thank you aaron most of my questions that have actually been answered um i welcome the comment made by nicole earlier and when i was reading the memo i had the same question and concern about who are the unhoused community and

[266:00] because of the way it was mentioned in the background um and i wanted to know at least from staff and my question is those people who come to boulder are they people who come here looking for jobs because i remember even when i was running and a few times thereafter i have talked with people who expressed to me that actually they become homeless after moving to boulder um when they start working so are there do we keep data on that on you know how these people how you know certain people become homeless in the community uh so so uh councilmember joseph thanks for that um uh i'm not gonna respond to that now and we'll use that question for september 1st and see what information we might have to help

[267:01] answer that well i ask you a question you said you're not going to answer it or do you not have the answer that's to that's two different things i'm not going to answer it because i don't have the information and i don't want to give an answer that's not complete okay so if i just sort of rephrase that kurt like you need some time to come back with the answer and you will do so for september 1st is that a fair week raising uh yes i don't know what information we have on that um we'll have to look at that um to know whether or not we can answer it but at least you'll do your best absolutely awesome thank you sorry go ahead thank you thank you aaron i have another question it's um i think lauren mentioned earlier that she's seen the signs actually for the um for the disposables or since she's seen the disposable for the needles i have not seen them

[268:00] and i have walked the trail so i'm wondering if there's any signage for that i'll chime in i don't know the answer off the top of your head what signage there is my understanding is that we were waiting for a supply contractor for these to actually be in place in the park um and so i i believe one is installed but not available but certainly our intention is that they're visible and known and would be not only visible but communicated through the various connections we have so okay thank you thank you very much and also i just wanted to make the comment curt i find the way you respond to me extremely disrespectful i've been a council member for about three almost three years now and i've shown you as much grace as i can in the work that i do and at many many occasions you've talked

[269:01] to me in the way that you responded and i find that absolutely disrespectful thank you um kurt muria i wonder if we maybe just a response to that from jenny i i'd be glad to respond um uh i'm sorry if it if i uh came off that way it wasn't my intention um i i wasn't aware of that previously i i wonder maybe if uh kurt you and jimmy could connect tomorrow if that's inappropriate let me know but maybe the two of you could talk because i think we do not want council members getting that feeling in meetings yeah yeah i'd be glad to connect uh next week well i appreciate that mayor and i

[270:01] know that um certainly we can connect and kurt i appreciate that um and and not an excuse but i also just wonder as we get into this lateness of the hour we tend to be a little curt uh no pun intended kurt and uh just want to be thoughtful about these exchanges that we have with each other and how to um how to continue to have a positive dialogue as we move forward uh that is that is an important call okay um junie apologies he took that turn uh do you have anything else you'd like to add there's not there's not much i can add to that i just expect courtesy as a council member and that's all nothing more and thank you very much aaron absolutely um okay i i think the only one who hasn't said anything and then i'll try to wrap this up here i won't talk for too long i all

[271:00] of my questions got answered uh so i don't have any follow-ups i'm just gonna offer a few quick thoughts um so one is um uh one is that the i'm a big fan of the downtown ambassadors so they're doing a great job i'm downtown all the time i think they're awesome so thanks uh for that program and sorry i'm tired so i'm not the most articulate right now i will say that that we do have some um options coming online at the state level that may help out with some of these issues you know hundreds of millions of dollars are being devoted to behavioral health issues and housing so hopefully we'll we'll be due with some some assistance here before too long i was glad to hear we're going to get an update on the star program uh soon because i think that equivalent because i think when it does come online it can help with our resources and provide some additional solutions for folks i appreciate the answers about how we can ask and require people to move out of bike paths for safety and mobility reasons glad to hear about the sharps

[272:00] containers and then i wanted to uh to echo as well what nicole was talking about in terms of some some kind of relatively simple things that could help um you know and other options for helping with this like providing additional trash containers you know that and that can be used that can be emptied fairly frequently and you know we added some additional restrooms in the creek path a few years ago that was great i think more restrooms um are good for everybody you know families with kids need a restroom sometimes people who don't have a home need a restaurant sometimes so do all of us so you know i i think those are always helpful to have online so i'd love to see some more of that and then this is more of a september first thing but i just uh you know denver has had some great luck with their safe outdoor spaces and providing alternatives to encampments so where they had one these are essentially sanctioned encampments they had one that they stood up a couple years ago where they essentially had a substantial

[273:00] unsanctioned encampment and were able to move like two-thirds of those folks into a safe and managed um uh place to live that that had more options for them anyway so love for us to to look at things like that as well to help with these issues i'm gonna leave it there it's really late we're all tired um but uh terry you got your hand up but if anybody needs to say one more thing you can but let's try to close up here well now that you brought up that other thing i just whatever we'll talk about that sanction camp being some other timeline i'm just throwing it out i'm not expecting anybody to agree or disagree with me okay but that's not what i wanted to say um i do want to say that i i really hope that we can uh look outside the box for some of these cleanup answers and i know a lot of community members thank you for all the community members who wrote to us with ideas and some of them were pretty good so in the back of my mind i was wondering cleanup wise

[274:00] um is there a possibility for a very specific working group that maybe because i i've been a part of city working groups and they're fantastic when we have a very specific subject and then we get some input on how we can solve it so i'm wondering about that and i do want to thank all the community members that wrote with their ideas just so you know i almost read all of them i haven't had a chance to read there was quite a few of them and um so that was my latest thought that i don't need an answer to now but i would sure love to go into solutions now that we've established the um and any out of box solutions that we can think of that normally are not thought of because it's you know it's unusual times and uh you never know sometimes out of the box solutions can work excellent tara okay good enough for this one all right this is among the most complicated and challenging topics that we work on as a city i'm deeply grateful

[275:00] to all the staff members who've worked with us on this topic tonight who do the work day by day and to my council colleagues for the discretion tonight so thank you very much everyone um all right so we're after 10 30 which which means it requires a vote to take up a new matter but i'm going to propose something we have the the covid what we do next we're exhausted um i wonder nary if we could maybe just get an a a short email update on this and and talk about it at the very beginning of our special meeting next week i'm sure we can and i'll ask pam to do that um uh pam has been leading sort of our recovery efforts as we move forward and appreciate her staying up late but we can certainly do that and mostly what we want to know from council is when do you think you want to come back and so if you have that ques that question in your mind you can let us know because then we can start preparing council chambers and notifications to the public

[276:01] um staff will be back on the 22nd in its full hybrid capacity as we have now reached yellow so we will send you that information and we will figure out how to get that input from you very good is that are people comfortable with deferring that to next week i'm seeing mostly head nods but not entirely nicole yeah i am and and i just really want to apologize to pam and folks who stayed up late with us um for that so um i truly sorry thank you for being here and um i hope we can try to um not not let that happen in the future a 100 echo that and that and we would get you on at the beginning of the next meeting um subject to cec approval finally my question is does delaying it to next week delay staffs runway they need

[277:00] um in order for us to actually go back in person in some form so i'm only worried my only concern is are we are we delaying a whole bunch of process by kicking the can till next week um in which case that worries me because if we can just knock that decision out then we're not holding staff up for decision we need to ultimately like do they need two weeks from our decision to be ready for us in which case we kind of need to work backwards from that so that's more just an open-ended question to maybe nuria and pam before we actually sign off tonight i just don't want to get get caught on the process end pam since you're here and you stayed up with us why don't you uh take that one yeah no i'll keep it brief um i think the one decision that maybe we'd like to clear with you if we delayed it next week can we take august 18th off the table as the first day back the biggest thing i think of is um the the sort of no penalty adjustments to the food orders and things like that that we do it would be nice to be able to give those vendors notice and um let them know so

[278:00] happy related next week um my recommendation if we do is that we'd be looking at september 1st being the earliest day back i i think no on august 18th is a pretty safe bet so okay everybody yeah okay okay thanks for that matt um and thanks for that pam and again apologies all right uh that then brings us uh to the end of our meeting um thanks again everyone for your time and attention tonight and take care and have a good night i'll gather let's go at 10 37 take care [Music]

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