August 11, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[5:24] welcome to the august 11th 2022 meeting special meeting of the boulder city council uh we're going to get started with a few announcements here so if we can get those up on the screen please 19 testing and vaccinations so for information and provider locations for free coven 19 testing go to www.vocode.org covid testing our boulder site is at 2445 stasio drive and that's open seven days a week from 8 am to 6 pm and for vaccine information and provider locations please go to

[6:03] www.boco.org vaccine our next announcement is about zero fare for better air august so during the entire month of august rtd will offer 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 and partnership with the colorado energy office is designed to reduce ground level ozone by increasing use of public transit current rtd customers will also benefit as you might have to purchase or use 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 in traffic help improve air quality by reducing single occupant vehicle traffic or use your and use your commute to catch up on work listen to music or read the book for more information please visit the rtd site at www.rtvdenver.com

[7:02] and before we move on to the next slide i'll just add um a group of us from the northwest mayor and commissioner coalition did a joint ride along with uh city staff and county staff from boulder down to denver a couple days ago and let me just say it was it was smooth it was clean it was safe it was fun it was just a great ride all around and so just encourage very much anyone to just hop on the bus if you haven't recently or haven't it all give it a try it works out really really well okay next to announcement please okay so uh just recently we had the office post office dedication for officer eric talley so march 22nd 2021 is a date that will be forever seared in the collective memory of our community on that monday afternoon while carrying

[8:00] out ordinary grocery store visits 10 community members lost their lives and likely more would have fallen victim if not for an extraordinary act of bravery from one of our own officers eric talley who risked his life and paid the ultimate price in honor of his courage congress person joe mcgoose has made expedient work to rename boulder's downtown post office after after officer tally and we thank congress person from the goose very much for supporting our collective healing by making this one of the fastest post office renames in congressional history this dedication will serve as a perpetual reminder of officer talley's rich life dedicated service and sacrifice his memory will live on in the hearts and minds of our impacted community members and for those who never knew him those who make other ordinary errands they will notice their trips to the post office as commemorated by one of boulder's finest we're very grateful for that from this person

[9:03] that brings our announcements to a close so i will go ahead and call this meeting to order and ask elisha if you could call the role please yes sir and good evening everyone councilmember benjamin reza mayor brockett president council member focus present mayor pro tem friend here council member joseph president speaker president wallach here council member weiner is absent and councilmember yates right here mayor we have our forum thank you alicia and i'll just note that um council member tara weiner had a death in her family unfortunately and is not able to be here tonight because

[10:01] she's a typical funeral so we send our condolences and send our family our best wishes um okay so we're going to start off and i will note that today is a special meeting so we're not having open comments tonight because of that and we're going to start with a covered 19 hybrid council meeting discussion felicia that is number one a on tonight's agenda sir the covet 19 and hybrid council meeting discussion thank you so much alicia and i'm going to turn it right over to the incomparable assistant city manager pam davis for a quick little report hi good evening all and it's great to greet you at 6pm so thank you very much for that pam davis assistant city manager my pronouns are she her i don't have a formal presentation tonight in light of some of our previous discussions this summer but i do have a little bit of information to review prior to tee up your

[11:01] discussion um so tonight our goal is to establish direction from you all whether to officially commence our fully hybrid council meetings um as of today's data update from the cdc our county has now sustained a medium risk level for three straight weeks in a row with our seven day case average falling well below 200 cases per 100 000 people during your late july process discussion you had directed us to come back to set a date for allowing in-person participation during regular meetings once again after we reached this data milestone and previously you had already made the decision to maintain that study sessions and special meetings would remain virtual but that regular meetings would begin a hybrid format so before i raise just the two basic questions we have for you tonight i have just a couple of more pieces of information that i believe was requested at the last meeting as well as some information about what the rest of the organization and our city staff is doing

[12:01] so the first piece of information is that now that we are at medium risk level the city is fully implementing our own hybrid work policy for city staff that will fully take effect on august 22nd and will bring previously teleworking employees back to the office a minimum of two days per week and we will continue to maintain all in-person services that are open to the community with no plans to make further operational shifts due to copid the only situation we might envision that would be additional public health orders from our partners at the county in the state the second piece of information is that um there were questions just around our peer cities in the area and um what others were doing as far as their council meetings um i can confirm for certain that we are the only city in the boulder county region that is still hosting virtual council meetings our other city cities nearby have begun returning to

[13:00] in-person meetings the only exception to that is the boulder county commission and i as i mentioned that is not due to covet concerns that is due to technology issues and supply chain issues that are plaguing us all and so their intention is as soon as they can get their room sorted out and their technology they will also be in person and then finally there were some questions for our facilities team as it related to air exchange and chambers and what we've done to accommodate that space in light of what we've learned about covid i can confirm our team in this facilities has maximized the air exchange in chambers so that involves adjusting kind of the outdoor dampers and things like that what they've done is is essentially mimic outdoor conditions by maximizing the air exchange per hour so that outside air is brought in and inside air is recycled back out of the building in addition to that we do have two portable hepa filtration units

[14:00] that will be on site and available for use during meetings to increase that circulation even further so with that and i'm happy to answer additional questions our question for you is are you now interested in transitioning to a hybrid meeting that will allow council to convene in person along with presenters and support staff and if yes what date would you like to start we would be prepared for the september first regular meeting or later based on your wishes the second question will be when you do return to person do you wish for members of the public to be welcomed back to attend and participate in meetings right away while maintaining our virtual options or would you like to phase them in after you all get settled back into the hybrid environment and with that mayor i will turn it back over to you for discussion thanks so much kim appreciate all that information um okay so i'll just open the floor to comments and i think we before we pretty much said that once we

[15:01] hit yellow we would start looking coming back into person but of course things can change but um somebody wants to offer a comment get us started rachel probably to the surprise of no one watching i will uh advocate for june 1st and i would say it's been a long time since we got to welcome the public into chambers as well so happy to to have public come back at that point too yeah i don't want to correct my colleague but did she mean june 1st or september 1st i probably meant september 1st i wanted to do it june 1st retroactive right i like the retro i'm 20 21 so i'm gonna go with september 1st of 2022. sorry about that don't worry um yeah i'm uh i support us uh going back into hybrid september 1st i i would though like to phase the public in right i mean it was we dropped like flies on our second in person meeting um so i would like to maybe give us a chance to uh work some

[16:02] of those kinks out um before welcoming the public back so but yeah september for us in person and then phase the public in one or two uh regular meetings after that nicole yeah i just wanted to ask steph um if you all have a preference i know before when we tried coming back before most of us got covered um you would wanted a little bit of time to make sure that um everything was working with council back before the public came back are you feeling completely comfortable everybody coming back at the same time now or would a meeting or so be helpful in that transition i'm happy to weigh in i think we're ready if that were the case but we'd always appreciate uh perhaps a meeting or two just to make sure that the flow for you all is fine as we um come in so that would be great but also defer to the preferences of council if it's just up to staff i'll say that i think it's it'll be nice to have a meeting or two

[17:00] under our belt as we start to think about inviting more hybrid um and in public and in person in thank you nicole do you want to opine on what we should do oh um yeah i think just just hearing that then um i would have a slight preference for giving staff just that little bit of time um to make sure everything is worked out um it's it's a slight preference not a strong preference but um it does sound like it may be easier for staff to to go that way oh and also i'm happy to jump back in september that sounds good to me i miss you all thanks nicole okay julie go ahead then i'll say thank you aaron i am happy to go back in is in september 1st and um i like the phasing approach but my question to staff is even with the phasing approach well we keep going the hybrid for this foreseeable future

[18:01] for people who cannot make it to council thanks for the question council member joseph and the answer is yes so our intention is to maintain hybrid uh in perpetuity we've recognized a lot of benefits to accessibility to meetings to dealing with those issues that come up that require folks to not be able to come in person so and we also want to respect those who choose to remain more distant so for all of those reasons yes and so junior do you want to opine as well what you'd like to do no thank you i i really appreciate the fact that we'll give um staff the opportunity to face this process and and also um doing it for the foreseeable future because i remember when i first got on council one of the um one of our council member was always advocating for actually having either um what do we call it um

[19:01] some type of services for parents because to help them but i think having hybrid meeting is oh it's going to take care of some aspect of that so thank you so much sorry about the dog there i'll just uh add in um i i'm good with september 1st as well and phasing it with the public in a meeting or two after that so i'll just put that out any objections and let me let the dog out and i'll check children and uh pets is what we're all used to in this new hybrid normal right okay were there any objections while i let the dog out okay so does that give you what you need pam it absolutely does and we'll follow up if there's any um sort of final reorientation support that you all need as you come back in september

[20:00] excellent and i'll just say one of the things that i'm most excited about this is that my dog may be barking a lot and if we're in person great well thanks so much for helping pam again apologies for the missing you at the last meeting and keeping you late for that so appreciate you coming back today it's all good i don't like missing any of the council meeting anyway so it's no worries thank you all right glutton for punishment okay great um so elisha can we move into our one other agenda item of the night well actually let me just pause for a moment here because rachel had asked us to chat about something at the end of the meeting so i'll just point out that we will have a chance to check in on that rachel um briefly at the end of the meeting but um we'll get to that when we get to that but the only regularly scheduled item on our meeting tonight is one public hearing so felicia if you could take us through please of course sir thank you our item tonight under

[21:01] the public hearings is our second reading and public hearings on the following ballot items we have first the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8534 which is related to the annexation of cu south the second item is the motion to adopt ordinance 8539 and that is related to updating the charter if the library district is formed through the county ballot item number three is the motion to adopt ordinance 8540 which is related to prohibiting running for more than one office item number four is the second reading and motion to adopt ordinance 85 46 related to converting our elections to even years and the last item under the public hearing tonight is the motion to adopt ordinance 8542

[22:01] which is related to the climate action tax with that i believe we're going straight to kathy thank you kathy thank you good evening council uh it's a pleasure to be here i'm kathy haddock with the city attorney's office and i am going to do a very high level review of the ordinances and what they contain in them um but the real experts and people that have worked on this are also on the phone and will be able to answer any of your questions as we go through um and i believe lisa or emily is um running my presentation too um and there we are going to be going through five ordinances for six ballot titles there are uh one of the ordinance for the climate tax has both the ballot title for the new the tax and for the debt authorization in it so next slide please for all these ordinances

[23:00] the um ordinance describes the code or charter changes that would go into effect if the measure passes and they contain the actual ballot language of course voting to put something on the ballot does not mean that you support or oppose the measure just that you are voting to put it on next slide please the first ordinance is ordinance eight five three four this is a referendum on c cu south this is on the ballot because the uh committee presented a referendum petition with sufficient signatures to put on the ballot whether or not to repeal ordinance 8483 regarding the annexation of cu south council is required to put it on law at this next meeting or this next election because it's um november election the original ordinance was adopted by emergency so the annexation has been recorded and the parties are implementing the terms of the ordinance and agreement the language that is in your ordinance

[24:02] as the ballot language is the same as appeared on each page of the referendum petition i know that during this week you got an alternative suggestion by the referendum committee for that i am concerned about that summary not being accurate and the um the statement of the effect is different than what the charter says the effect will be if it was done so recommend you stay with the language that is in the ordinance that's in front of you next slide please eight five three nine is the like library district provisions the charter has several provisions about the library including requirements for tax dedication for library commission and budgeting that will affect you this year so this is on the ballot because the the a group of library advocates did get the measure of forming a library district put on the ballot in

[25:01] the county's ballot in november so in order for the city not to be between a rock and a hard place if it is adopted we are also putting the library measure on the ballot now it does not go into effect unless the voters form the library district if the voters do form the library district then the city question would repeal all the charter provisions about the library and allow the council to negotiate an intergovernmental agreement with the new library district during the transition during that time council gets to choose how to fund and operate the library and they could determine to do it the same way that the charter currently requires but this measure will allow them to make the decisions that are best for transition rather than operating a library next slide please the next ordinance is 8540 that's clarifying things for candidates in the charter um one clarification is there

[26:02] can only be one candidate i'm sorry one person can only be a candidate for one office at an election so that means that the council member wants to run for mayor and their seat is not i'm sorry try to say this super clear if a council member wants to run for mayor of course they could run for mayor on an election year when their term ends and they'd just be running for mayor they would not be running for council that doesn't require a change the thing that requires a change is if a council member is in the middle of their four-year term and want to run for mayor this provision doesn't require them to give up their council seat unless they win the mayor's seat and then if they do win the mayor's seat they'd resign their council seat the candidate that received the fifth highest number votes at the election would bill that person's unexpired term

[27:00] the newly elected mayors on expired term the other change that this makes is it changes the swearing-in date of elected candidate from the third tuesday in november to the first business meeting in december that's so that the swearing-in of new candidates is for sure after all the ballot results have been certified and even gives some time for onboarding between the time of certification of ballots and the first business meeting in december although even still it doesn't give much time next ordinance or next slide please excuse me this next ordinance is what would implement if approved by the voters moving to even year elections there were several processes considered by council and this is um the one that was selected to put on the ballot it changes the regular municipal election from odd years to even years starting in 2026. in order to get offices set up between here and now for the mayor the first mayor directly elected in 2023

[28:00] would get a three-year term rather than the two-year term plan now so they would serve until 2026 then for the mayor elected in 2026 and every even numbered year after that they'd only get a two-year term for the council members to get to even-numbered years the members elected in 2023 would get three-year terms to 2026. the members elected in 2025 would get three-year terms to 2028 and then every candidate uh and every council member that is elected in 2026 or after and even numbered years would get four-year terms next slide please this is the climate tax slide that we talked about the um this imposes a new climate tax that is levied like the utility occupation tax is levy now which means that it would be 6.5 million dollars on the provider of electric and national gas natural gas services

[29:01] starting january 1st right now the only a provider of electric and natural gas service is excel the 6.5 million dollars would adjust annually by the cpa cpi starting january 1st of 2024 the uh ballot issue also repeals the existing utility occupation tax on december 31st 2022 so basically sun setting it early and also sun sets the cap tax early the ordinance includes the changes to the code that would become effective if the issue passes and then it lists all the types of services that the or programs that can be done with the revenues from the tax the general statement of the revenues is that they're used to maintain and expand climate focused programs and services including wildfire resistance financing capital projects and stabilizing fundings for

[30:01] the initiatives to meet the city goals and then there's a much more detailed list of examples in the ballot itself next slide please for the debt question um on that same ordinance it authorizes debt up to 52.9 million that's the debt that could be issued anticipating that that the debt would use 5 million per year to pay back the debt service and the term of that would be 15 years the maximum repayment cost would not exceed 75 million that's principal and interest the use of debt proceeds are the same as climate tax revenues it also allows for the city to do a backup pledge from the general fund the we don't anticipate having to use it because the tax is being i'm sorry the bonds are being paid being pictured to be paid back with 5 million of revenue there is 6.5 so you know we've got a super buffer there

[31:01] um so not anticipated that it need to be used but we would get the city's rating which would reduce the interest cost so that the money would be less expensive to borrow the debt would be to accelerate the projects and programs to reach the price the climate goals rather than paying as you go and it's important to remember that the voters are authorizing the maximum amounts council ultimately makes a decision when bonds are issued about whether all or only some of that debt is issued the length of the bonds the timing um they can also narrow the use of the proceeds all of those things are determination by council afterwards basically the voters define the box and counsel gets to just to determine how they're going to use in the box next slide please so that's all i have for a high level um presentation i

[32:00] happy to answer questions now or believe i and everybody else will be here after the public hearing thanks so much kathy well let's just say if council members do have any questions and uh right now let's let's go through those before we turn to the public hearing i've got bob and then mark thanks guys that was very very helpful i think i heard you say but i wanted to maybe have you reiterate or clarify with respect to the ballot measure i remember the number the ballot measure that relates to the cu south referendum that one is not discretionary by council in other words we are acting as administrators on that one because a petition with adequate signatures was delivered and we must vote yes on that one is that correct correct it doesn't say it as blatantly as you must vote yes but there is another way we have to do it and uh so yes you are doing your administrative duty it's not discretionary thank you kathy mark then rachel yeah uh kathy two questions first with respect to the cu south um

[33:02] are any um clarifying language changes possible or do we are we simply uh stuck with what what has been petitioned for and and received the the uh adequate number of signatures the council decides what the ballot title is going to be what's going to be on the ballot so so you can change it if you want the guidelines that you have is that it has to be clear and concise it can't include arguments for and against no but is it possible to pull up the cu south language at this point or is that not yes um and i'm not sure if it's emily or litha but that would be slide um 10. and actually i have the wording that the on this slide the wording that the um referendum committee asked for it's like you were right the first time back up thank you um so what is on the ballot now is should ordinance 8483 regarding the

[34:01] annexation of cu south be repealed that's and that's it that's it okay that's fine um uh my second question is on the climate action text did i correctly read the memo uh where it suggested or at least to me suggested that excel will actually determine the allocation uh among residential uh commercial and industrial properties yes yes the taxes actually levied on excel but they are allowed to pass it on to customers so we cannot inform the community as to what their actual the actual tax consequence will be um i mean i don't think they would do it but in theory xl could say you know let's dump it all on the consumers or let's dump it all on the industrial properties do they have that freedom in in theory but carolyn elam i see has come up and she can answer it more

[35:01] directly because there are limitations on them being able to do that okay yes and that's a really good question councilmember wallach currently again we're using the utility occupation tax mechanism and it's allocated equally based on revenues that are collected so depending on what a customer's bill is it's effectively a sales tax rate as excel applies it so they don't necessarily take discretion to say we're going to bill residents at eight percent and commercial businesses at two it's the same effective tax rate they just have to figure out what the tax rate is based on what their projected revenues are for the year we also anticipate providing additional guidance to them because we tell them and we levy the tax on them and we have the ability to provide guidance as to how we expect that to be levied to include the exemptions that we've identified for recipients of energy assistance financing as well as potentially

[36:02] addressing the fact that they do not collect all the revenues associated with natural gas use so we do anticipate providing that guidance so the what we presented in the memo as the tax effective tax rates or average tax rates are intended to be applied okay and have we had any of those conversations yet with excel um we have scheduled meetings with them to start to affect the changes or anticipation of a tax approval so it can go into effect um january 1st as planned daryl thank you rachel thank you um i had a couple questions first i'm looking at c south 8483 i think the same language is in all of these but just wondering wondering about it section 5 reads this ordinance is necessary to protect the public health safety and welfare of residents of the city and covers matters of local concern um if if that is to say that

[37:00] repealing annexation is necessary to like a yes vote would be necessary to protect public health safety and welfare and that like that's the opposite of the truth people could die if this um referendum measure passes so what's that language mean and i'll um i don't know if theresa wants to jump in here too i'll take a first stab at it but but that we do put that in all um ordinances and no it does not mean that saying yes on the ballot measure is in the best interest of public health and safety it's saying putting this measure before the votes is and it's more of a legal requirement so teresa is probably going to be able to give you a more clear answer may i call a queen with you on rachel for that on that for a second um kathy shouldn't there be language that that says in effect um that the petitioners believe it is necessary for life health and safety as opposed to the blanket statement that it is or we could another alternative is we

[38:00] could say if you wanted um that it's putting this measure on the ballot is required by law and therefore necessary i mean we could talk about what it actually is because i don't know that we ever want to give the implication by you adopting ordinances to put things on the ballot that you're advocating a vote for or against and while teresa's answering too because i belie there's charter requirements for this language and i miss checklist what they are and i'm just gonna before theresa answers mark's question if i may i don't know that we can know whether petitioners think that this is necessary for health safety and welfare like they may just you know prefer it but not think that and i don't think their their referendum in you know necessarily said that so i wouldn't want to put those words in their mouth necessarily and positive i don't want these words out of my mouth if i could avoid it to say that it is necessary and i'm sorry to bring this up at the last minute i just noticed it on my last read through these so can't be exactly right on this

[39:02] in that what we're saying is putting these putting this question on the ballot is necessary for health safety um and and you know kathy's having a look to see if she can identify a charter provision that requires this um but it but it's it is not a statement at all about um about the substance of the measure so much as putting the measure on the ballot well i guess i i just would not want somebody to casually read this and be like oh council says that this referendum is necessary to protect the public health safety and welfare and i wouldn't want anybody to point to that as any indication that we think that because i can't say that everybody on council agrees with me but i think the opposite is true so i'm just concerned we could add language to america do you mind if i just jump in here that

[40:00] like sounds like kathy's looking stuff up we've got about a good public hearing coming up maybe we could return to this question after the public hearing with the benefit of kathy's research at that time right rachel would that work for you that sounds great and i had uh one or two other questions okay go ahead and then we'll go to jeanne okay um in the um let's see ordinance 8546 where we are cleaning up uh some some issues i think attendant to even number years there's language in here that that changes to say the mayor shall serve until a successor is duly chosen and qualified um i guess like what if nobody runs for mayor like shell sounds like i mean if i were the sitting mayor i might i'm not i'm not necessarily wanting to serve longer so um i just wanted to vet what that is saying the mayor shall serve well the the the mayor elected the terms

[41:01] are the terms don't change with the people so for instance if somebody resigns january 1st the term still goes to the following november or whenever the november was going to go so the reference is to the term it's not indentured servitude and that's what we were trying to correct to make it not indented servitude so we're talking about the term goes two years if the person wants to resign um they you know they are allowed to it's charger doesn't require it now your question about whether nobody runs for mayor is not something that i believe is dressed okay maybe we'll hear back from you on that one then thanks uh junie did you still have a question i did have a comment instead of a question of making but you're saying that you're going to come back to rachel's question but my thought is the ballot measure language did we work

[42:00] with you know the petitioners on that language and if we're going to change it do we need to go back to them and have that discussion so that there is no uh how do i put it you know a sense of that we're not doing a good will toward them right that what the charter requires is that there is an initiative that the council has to cons i'm sorry the staff has to consult with the committee about but not for a referendum there's no requirement to do that and we did not do it for this one we just took their language off of their petitions and i don't think i'm asking that we changed their petition language at all i'm or the language i'm talking about the the sort of boilerplate of ours that's on all of these initiatives subsection 5 appears on all the ordinances we're looking at tonight so that's the piece i'm looking at thanks thank you aaron thanks gene all right see no other questions how about we proceed to the public hearing we've got 47 people

[43:01] signed up to speak and um ryan are you going to talk about our rules of department yes mayor thank you so much and emily thank you for pointing up those slides here we're grateful to each of the community members here tonight to speak to the public hearing and pause for a moment as we get those slides up here and we want to be sure that everyone knows that the city has engaged with new members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful inclusive specific conversations and we want to make sure that this vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members staff and council as well as democracy for people of all ages identities live experiences and political perspectives anyone interested in learning more about this vision can visit the website shown here we can move to the next slide please

[44:02] and we'll share a few examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder revised code and other guidelines that do support this vision and that will be upheld during this meeting during the public hearing all remarks and testimony should be limited to matters related to city business no participants will make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial abstracts and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited and participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they're commonly known by individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online if only your first name is showing up in zoom please use the q a feature in zoom to share your whole name and please know that only audio testimony is currently permitted thank you

[45:10] or dog drama okay so uh like i say we have 47 people signed up to speak each of them will get two minutes and uh since we do have a few different ballot items that are on here you uh i would recommend that folks be clear about which ballot item they're talking about in their testimony all right let's go ahead and get launched right in here our first three speakers are leslie glustrom eric budd and spencer wilcox so leslie can lead us off good evening council uh thank you so much for this opportunity thank you so much for holding the the public hearing and mostly thank you for your service to the community obviously we're not all going to agree a lot of the time but it doesn't matter i am so grateful to you all for your hard work so thank you so much and of course to the staff for

[46:00] everything they've done i'll speak briefly about three of the the ballot measures and obviously i think they're all going to go on the ballot and then we can have a really big robust community discussion and there you go that's boulder so that'll be fun starting with the cu south annexation ordinance 8534 i am very grateful this is going on the ballot i'm very sympathetic to the concerns about flooding i'm sympathetic to the assumption that somehow the only way we can address the flooding is by working with cu and letting them put a lot of building into a like our our best flood plain frankly and i don't think those are good assumptions so let's have that discussion again let's really think about it and let's not assume that cu has to build there or that we have to do the annexation in order to get flood control none of those assumptions actually have to be if cu would see the world differently and i think they should because education is going to be very different in this century than it was in the last century i think

[47:01] bricks and mortar will be much less important so let's not destroy our last our excellent floodplain for some bricks and mortar on even year elections um i'm opposed to even your elections i know a lot of the councils forum but i would really like to see these robust discussions for local uh measures and finally on the cap tax thank you so much this is oddly just beginning really appreciate the work that staff has done to get us to this point going forward i am hoping that council will i know you've had so many issues but please engage make sure we have strong metrics that we have strong community engagement on strategic planning let's not have positions down at the public utilities commission that say boulder says this without actually asking the community so thank you so much council i appreciate it very much next we have eric budd spencer wilcox and andrew harris thank you boulder city council for

[48:00] moving forward with a measure that will protect and strengthen boulder's democracy i fully support the efforts to move our municipal elections to even years when i first wanted to understand moving elections to even years i found a really incredible book the book is called timing and turnout how off-cycle elections favor organized groups by sarah f anzia associate professor of public policy and political science at uc berkeley and dr anzia writes moving local elections from off cycle to the same day as presidential elections is three times more effective at increasing voter turnout than the most effective mode of mobilization which is face-to-face candidacy and as someone who has knocked thousands of doors in local elections over the years in boulder i was really surprised to hear how important on-cycle elections are for turnout in our local elections and so while boulder has had off-cycle elections for many decades we have to accept the simple fact that off-cycle

[49:00] elections suppress the vote by aligning our local boulder election date with state and federal elections we can nearly double the number of people that are participating in our local democracy and i want to highlight an important detail about that statement it's not just moving elections to even years that makes a difference in fact some cities have elections in the spring of even years which are also off cycle and suppress the vote the policy itself is moving elections to align with the state and federal elections so i would encourage city council to to look and up consider updating the ballot question and the charter language to reflect this language as a as that is the definition of the change rather than moving elections to even years so thank you again for moving forward with this item um you know as we have studied when similar measures have been on the ballot in nearly every other city we have researched um it's passed with greater than 60-70 of the vote and we are super excited to help boulder make this change thank you

[50:01] thanks eric i understand spencer wilcox isn't present so we're gonna go to andrew harris then sarah don haynes and nick chrisman hi everybody uh my name is andrew harris i've been in the community for about six years but as a grad student and now as a working professional trying to start a family uh over that time i've become increasingly involved and invested here in boulder uh including uh politically via get out the boat efforts with boca towns as a result of both of these things i strongly support the effort to move municipal elections to even years as anyone who has participated in get out the boat ever knows it takes a huge amount of time money and and effort to actually get people to do the work of voting checking their registrations filling out ballots graphing those ballots oftentimes even with a vote-by-mail system that beats the pants off of 90 of the country

[51:00] the national parties all know this they have both the organizing infrastructure and the media power to rally their prospective voters to the polls every two to four years and even they struggle a lot with getting turnout and all that infrastructure doesn't exist for local elections so we're compounding this problem and actually driving full turnout by keeping our elections in off years where they essentially provide uh not another opportunity but another issue for other people to deal with um at a time where we're reckoning with the impacts of voting expression at the national level i think boulder really has an opportunity to lead the country in engaging or in encouraging voter engagement eliminating the additional time and energy needed to organize another year of turnout by aligning municipal elections with the two year cycle takes one more speed bump out of the way for prospective voters that's good for all of us as a result i strongly supported the measure to move our municipal elections to even years thank you

[52:04] thank you andrew next we have sarah don haynes nick grossman and lila hickey hi everyone this is sarah don haynes of south boulder i am really excited to um speak to you on these issues in our community we have um a year ago released or i should say the ipcc released a daunting report about how little time we have to preserve planetary conditions for our civilization if emissions continue at the current rate we likely have five and a half years until we cross 1.5 degrees c warming of threshold and that's that's a significant um impetus for us to say um no on the uh repealing su south and getting our

[53:00] community to be able to live car free i also am tired of losing on climate change and housing justice so i'm going back to grad school or i'm starting grad school and i'm going to be studying media and public engagement because we need new tools to engage our community and to educate and you know i think starting with even your elections and i can't support that anymore because it's just to me really common sense evolution to include more people and you know we've got to engage our young people in being a part of governance and they feel really disempowered and they feel like um you know the the messaging that they don't matter and and the world that we're giving them um you know is leading to the highest rates of suicide between 10 and 24 year olds that we've ever seen so you know we need to um also support uh the library and i know it's out of

[54:00] the council's hands but i think that that is one of our other great resources for taking care of our community and our planet thank you so much rachel mayor do you mind if i ask uh sarah dawn hands a follow-up question just wanted to clarify sir don if you're still there you said i can't support that anymore about even your elections and i just wanted to clarify i interpreted that as you can't you couldn't possibly support it any more than you do not that you've withdrawn your support from it oh thank you for clarifying no i'm super stoked about the opportunity to um engage more voters through even year elections i i thought based on the rest of your testimony that's likely what you meant but just wanted to make sure that everybody understood it thanks thank you very much very fine we'll put you down is super stoked okay next three people we got nick grissman milo hickey and katie farnham

[55:03] hello imagine that boulder has always held its city council elections on even years in that scenario how do you think boulder voters would react to a new proposal to switch city council elections to odd years that would likely be a tough sell for our democratically inclined population it would be challenging to convince people that it would somehow be better if fewer people were aware that a local election was happening if a less representative minority of our electorate was responsible for choosing boulder's representatives people would ask how having fewer voters participate in our democracy would be more representative of the will of the people or how it would ensure better outcomes in response odd-year election advocates might argue that voter quality is better than voter quantity that only those who have sufficient

[56:00] interest and ability to dedicate some vague but substantial amount of time and effort to extensively research local candidates have somehow earned the exclusive right to vote for boulder city council proponents of changing boulder's elections to odd years might claim that doing so would reduce the number of uninformed voters in our local electorate one of the most educated populations on the planet people they believe are less inclined to make good choices however these so-called uninformed voters are the same americans we trust to choose our country's president and congress colorado's governor and the state legislator our boulder county commissioners along with city county and state ballot measures older voters would recognize that making participation in city council elections more challenging by moving those to odd years would mean that busy working people and families people of color renters students and people with lower

[57:00] incomes would have less representation in local decision making they would realize that a fraction of your voters don't possibly contribute to as rich a diversity of viewpoints nick i'm afraid your time is up but thank you very much for your testimony thank you next we have laila hickey katie farnan and kevin mcwilliams hello council and staff i am here to speak in favor of moving boulders municipal elections to even years modern life is incredible and overwhelming we have opportunities our grandparents couldn't have dreamed of and have to balance competing priorities they could not have found the number of things the average american needs to remember and remember to do every day is simply unimaginable in previous eras most difficult of all is the constant effort to balance our immediate needs against longer term goals for many of us keeping bills paid

[58:00] families cared for and our homes intact is a more than full-time job so it's no wonder many of us feel a pinch of guilt when we think about the things which are important to us but simply don't get the time they deserve in our daily schedule fighting the climate crisis spending quality time with the people we love or volunteering with organizations that improve our communities low voter participation is a universally lamented problem in america and i believe it reflects exactly the challenge i just described folks do care and the increase in voter participation when jurisdictions switch to even your elections shows this but life is complicated and so is voting even in a state like colorado we must track election cycles candidates and issues understand deadlines for registration address changes and ballot return all that without neglecting any of our other responsibilities switching to even year elections allows people to consolidate this process with the national election cycle while also

[59:01] reducing the likelihood of confusion around calendar dates our opportunities are incredible and incredibly complicated it just doesn't make sense not to simplify everything we can let's switch boulder to even your elections and make all our lives a tiny bit less complicated thank you thank you lana next katie farning kevin mcwilliams and jill grano thank you my name is katie farnan i support the even year election measure for increasing voter turnout washington post march 13 2021 headline arizona gop lawmaker says the quality of a vote matters critics say that's straight out of jim crow arizona gop state rep john kavanagh is quoted as follows not everybody wants to vote and if somebody is uninterested in voting that probably means they're totally uninformed on the issues

[60:00] quantity is important but we have to look at quality of the votes as well national review april 6 2021 headline why not fewer voters conservative political commentator kevin d williamson is quoted as follows why should we believe that having more people vote is a good thing why shouldn't we believe the opposite that the republic would be better served by having fewer but better voters newsweek april 7th 2021 headline concerns about uninformed voters smack of jim crow mississippi gop secretary of state mike watson is quoted as follows think of all those woke college university students now who will automatically be registered to vote whether they want to or not you've got an uninformed citizen who may not be prepared and ready to vote so serious question to the council what the heck is a quality vote is it voter age or education is it housing status is it race

[61:00] what is it is it a vote that's aged like fine wine or cheese what's the answer and who's in charge of this quality control anyway i have questions the folks who oppose increasing increasing voter participation here have used the quality vote argument and i really think they should define it i think people want to know what that is thanks thank you katie next we have kevin mcwilliams joe grano and steve whitaker hello my name is kevin mcwilliams i'm a 20-year resident of boulder hello i'm kevin mcwilliams i'm a 20-year resident of boulder thanks for giving me an opportunity to speak tonight in support of moving municipal elections to even years democracy in america is under threat today in ways that it has not been since the civil war and public trust in the government and the democratic process is it really a dangerous low at this time

[62:00] uh last year when i was canvassing for boulder city elections i had one really common reaction from voters i spoke to about the 2021 election which was surprise and disappointment that the city chooses to have city council elections on odd years as others have said election data shows that turnout in odd year local elections is up to 50 percent lower than in even your national elections many voters including myself perceive that this is intended actually as a backdoor way to cut out all but the most committed voters from the process and exclude them from having an influence on city policies that directly affect their daily lives i think it's very important that every voter in boulder can feel that their voice is heard and that they are provided a fair chance to participate conducting local elections in odd years is directly contradictory to that goal because it relies on the voters having to go out of their way to make sure that they are registered at their current address and then to engage politically outside of the normal even year election cycle having separate elections for city council on low turnout years

[63:01] makes boulder city government less representative of boulder as a whole and many voters are discouraged from participating or taking part in city governance by this particular policy you know more voters being engaged in the process means more of the public engaged with what the city is doing and generally a more healthy democracy i think we can all agree that having the greatest number of bolder voters participating in city elections is better for democracy and that goal is most directly aided by moving city council elections to even years thank you i appreciate your time uh thanks very much kevin appreciate that i understand jill grant was not in the meeting so next we have steve whitaker lisa sweeney moran and theater coming mayor and members of council i am steve whitaker and a boulder resident i'm here to speak in support of putting the new cap tax on the ballot i'd like to point out that in a recent city survey city-funded survey of nearly

[64:00] 1200 residents asking for a ranking of issues in order of importance it showed respondents ranked addressing climate change impacts well ahead of all other issues including affordable housing crime prevention and homelessness we are lucky to have a capable and dedicated team in the climate initiatives department and it's important to provide them with the resources they need to be successful however passage of a new climate action tax is not the end of the process to achieving our climate goals the climate initiatives department can't just do it for us the evaluation of the impact on climate and our climate goals needs to permeate all the city's decisions to create a coordinated and effective approach to climate action

[65:00] it's sad to see us fund projects that reduce greenhouse gases on one hand and on the other hand fun projects such as the cu cell annexation that can't help but increase greenhouse gas production within the city it's like running the furnace and air conditioner at the same time all it does is unnecessarily increase costs of older taxpayers while undoing some of the good work we are doing to reduce greenhouse gases thank you okay thanks very much steve and i understand actually that jill grano is in the meeting she's identified as boulder chamber so we could bring her in hi guys i'm so sorry about that i need to change that uh boulder chamber chamber i served as the interim senior director of policy programs for the boulder chamber recently and i'm on my

[66:02] phone in virginia so i can't seem to change it from here but my name is joel grano i am a former boulder city councilwoman former director of community affairs for congressman jonah goose i am currently one of your housing commissioners and i'm also the proud chairwoman of the people for voter turnout campaign um you know i came to voter to politics really to local community work through getting out the vote through new era colorado i served for five years of war as a board member and we asked ourselves every single day the one simple question how can we get more people voting is it through more ballot drop boxes is it through easier registration and you know is it through uh trick-or-treating and instead of asking for candy telling people to vote getting out the vote engaging more people in our democracy i believe is the number one thing that we can do um to to better our our elected officials that we have and uh you know the people's engagement

[67:01] in in policy work you know some have said that they think that this will take away from you know that local issues are unique and that uh somehow moving them to even years will will take away from the local conversation but as a city councilwoman and as the front line for congressman the goose i really saw that people don't silo issues um from what's a local issue what's a state what's a federal they think about issues in terms of what affects them so whether it was jonah goose or myself as a city councilwoman the questions they would ask is how are you going to you know change homelessness how are we going to be safer what are you going to do about transportation what's housing going to look like how are we going to protect protect reproductive rights and so all the time congressman august would have joint meetings with local officials state officials and himself because we knew that questions would come in that would be local state and federal and we could bounce them off you know what aaron mayor brockett take that one steve fenberg take that one jill i hate to

[68:00] interrupt but your time is up sorry okay thank you so much for your testimony and feel free to email any remaining comments to us and absolutely mayor brockett has stepped away for a minute so i'm gonna uh slide in here i believe our next speaker is lisa sweeney mirren and uh on deck will be theodore conan hi all lisa sweeney moran vice president of the boulder valley school board i'm speaking today in an individual capacity about my strong support for moving to even year elections at the city level and potentially at the school district level as well in the near future i'm hopeful that boulder will implement this change and increase voter participation in so doing boulder's role as a leader in the state will pave the way for other municipalities to follow and for school districts to advocate at the state level for the autonomy to do the same the status quo isn't working at both the city level and the district level we know that we are not getting

[69:01] the participation in our elections that we need nor are we getting participation that is representative of our community we want city councils and school boards that are made up of passionate committed people who meaningfully represent their community the more participation that we have the stronger our candidates and our mandates will be even your elections will make us each work harder dig deeper and connect even more closely with the people we serve people care about what is happening in our city people care about what is happening in our schools people want to have their voice heard it's our job to figure out how to help them do that how to make voting easier and more accessible we were each elected to represent everyone in our communities and this is an opportunity for us to do just that i'm very excited about how this small change can have an enormous impact on the work we all do and i appreciate the support you've shown for it so far thanks so much thanks so much lisa next up is theodore koenig and ondeck will be kathy joyner and thomas wells

[70:05] good evening members of council on the public i'm ted koenig and i'm calling from beijing china i lived in boulder for nine years and i continue to vote there it's easy to vote in colorado and i'm proud to report that our state makes voting internationally much easier than in most states still i don't typically receive voter guides or the like until the election is well passed and while i get an email reminder or two it's quite easy to miss that election day is coming i imagine many voters in boulder experience the same when they change address of the like i think that might have happened to me in my first few years in boulder as well having local elections in the same even years as large elections will make it much easier to remember when election day is coming and that's often the first step to looking at the issues and deciding how to vote i've heard a counterpoint that state and federal elections deprive local issues of attention and coverage but i have trouble imagining how much information i need as a voter that i couldn't still guess i can still track down information in a voter guide and find an article or two in the camera of the weekly or the beat i can't imagine that wouldn't they wouldn't run at least a few articles and

[71:01] editorials on local issues how much more do we as voters really need to make a decision i was pretty engaged in local issues when i lived in colorado and i'm honestly not sure whether i made me a better voter rather than just more plugged in my distance here gives me some perspective and more information isn't always better what's needed is the right information to make a choice i hope my comment was helpful in this regard thanks so much ted especially for being up what had to be very early or very late uh next up kathy joyner then thomas falls and kristen eller good evening council thank you for this opportunity my name is kathy joyner and i'm a member of the south boulder creek action group which has been advocating for flood mitigation for almost nine years since the 2013 floods i'm speaking to the referendum related to cu south tonight

[72:02] when the flood waters overtopped us 36 creating a flash flood situation in 2013 none of us could have imagined what was about to happen to our homes or our lives speaking as only one of many residents affected i had nine feet of water in my house on koala drive to this day almost nine years later many of my neighbors have not felt confident enough to restore their properties to pre-flood condition but an even more significant consideration is the risk to human life when one of these events occurs and as we know this type of significant flooding of south boulder creek has occurred repeatedly in the past and will again evacuation and access to the area is almost impossible in one of these events and major highways in this case us 36 and foothills are rendered impassable the continuing danger this leaves residents in is known and significant after years of hard work by the city significant process is being made in

[73:00] mitigating the potential for devastating future impacts to residents safety and property i've spoken before council numerous times over the past nine years and want to thank you the city boards and staff for the outstanding job they have done in expertly moving this critical project along lastly as you know there are thousands of people currently living at considerable risk of south boulder crete flooding and your ongoing support has been greatly appreciated by all of us thank you thanks kathy next up thomas wells then kristen eller and kurt nor back greetings everyone this is thomas wells first i want to say thank you to staff and council members for taking time to work on the issue of even your elections i support putting this issue before the voters this fall as many studies and local data have shown even your elections greatly increase voter turnout there are many reasons to be excited about greater voter turnout but one

[74:01] that is compelling to me is that it reduces the power and influence of small groups when fewer people vote it's easier for a small group to influence influence the majority of voters when more people vote we take away power from those small groups and return it to the greater populace as we've seen recently on the national stage relinquishing power is often uncomfortable but it is a requirement for effective democracy shifting power from the hands of those who currently have it to those who don't won't be easy but to quote the mandalorian this is the way almost by definition the people you will hear from tonight are those who align with some local politically interested group or another myself included increasing voter turnout will make our jobs more difficult we will have to convince more people of the merits of our cause we'll have to engage with more voters and spend more time educating them on the issues this will be hard work but it's worth it in listening to our voices tonight please consider who do you hear fighting to retain power and who do you hear enthusiastically

[75:00] offering to share it thank you all right so i'm back thanks uh mayor protem friend for taking over there you're welcome and just one uh heads up it's it looks like maybe uh kurt nordback is not present and we're wondering if if uh kristen nordbach is and if they're using the same zoom accounts maybe we could have them clarify that great if you all could respond in the chat if you're here and i believe it is kristin eller our next speaker hi yes thank you so much so my name is kristen eller and i'm here to support moving city council elections to even years because i support voter representation i support democracy and ensuring that our elected officials represent the people that they govern so there's a significant reduction in the number of active voters in all your elections in

[76:00] comparison to even your elections this is known it's shown and it's really no surprise because even your elections have national media coverage they have national politics and they also really expensive get out the vote campaigns that we just can't counter on the local level and these get out the vote campaigns really assist voters so obviously don't have this which directly impacts voter turnout so to ensure we're electing council members that represent the people boulder that means we have to increase voter turnout therefore easy answer i support democracy and i hope as elected officials that represent the people boulder you would also support democracy and for any that don't i just question who you're representing and why you don't want to be elected by more bolder voters which is why i support moving to even your elections thank you

[77:00] mr christine okay we're not seeing kurt in uh in the list but we do see krista so uh christopher can you go next please hi this is kristen ortvec can you hear me yes oh great um first thank you all for your tireless work on council i believe in democracy as i know you do too and in that spirit i'm really strongly in favor of the ballot issue to move municipal elections to even years this will encourage more participation and strengthen our democracy the more people vote in local elections the more they feel part of our community and the better they are represented as we learned with mail-in ballots here in colorado the easier we make it to participate in elections the more people will vote this results in policies more reflective of and responsive to the people please put moving municipal elections to even years on the ballot for november thank you and kurt is here um

[78:01] it's are you seeing him yet i think he's logging in uh not yet we'll come back to him as soon as he pops up okay thanks thank you thanks krista next we have uh sherry hack evan rabbits and linda quickly hi i'm a 22 year boulder resident i do not support even you're changing our city council elections to even year cycle you know what this looks like it looks like a sneaky move for some of you to extend your terms and if you were really serious about this why not do it in 2020 instead of 2024 what a fantasy that would be to be able to vote some of you out this year and what about members who don't want to serve an extra year what's the cost of taxpayers for special special elections to fill the unused terms we don't want to orphan school board elections we want to be able to focus adequately on our local elections and

[79:00] not be distracted by midterm and presidential elections a lot of people don't have the bandwidth for that no one is disenfranchised from voting here everyone gets a mail-in ballot to say it's undemocratic to have on your elections is just ridiculous local issues will be drowned out by national issues if we switch also i believe we're going to need more signatures on petitions the citizens of boulder need to be able to focus on local issues and keep the election cycle as it is and more informed voters need time to focus on local issues versus national issues and we want more informed voters not just more voters um in addition i support putting um to the on the ballot to repeal see yourself

[80:01] and also regarding your climate tax i don't support a climate tax while you support building 750 000 square feet in a wetlands foresee you south and you do nothing about cleaning up the trash and the plastic and the human excrement in this in the boulder creek thank you sherry all right uh evan ravitz is with drawns we've got linda quigley and then we'll come back to kurtner hey city council this is linda quigley and again i want to thank all of you for your service to boulder um today honestly i have to agree with the previous speaker and ask you to stop with the idea of switching the elections really really really with the current polarization there could not be a worse time to lose the details and

[81:00] significant significance of our local issues and why on earth would we ever want to do so since colorado mails ballots out to absolutely everyone who registers and everyone can mail or drop them back to city clerk's office why do this there aren't votes that are being suppressed i understand that the person in charge of our elections is counseling our council not to proceed with this idea i'm having trouble imagining why you would want to do that when the benefits are so clear 98 of the other cities in our country are having local elections on these even numbered years so how is it that we're suppressing anyone and i'm trying not to get frustrated here i don't think the residents of boulder

[82:00] want this election switch um finally i will work hard to encourage residents to vote yes to set aside the annexation plan agreed to on a sham emergency basis by council i've never had more reason to not believe in my city government building in a wetlands is heresy during catastrophic climate change and a sixth grade extinction event especially by a university that fires the climate scientist who's measuring the pollutants in our front range atmosphere i thank you for your time in the staff of boulder city thank you thanks linda and i believe we have uh kurt norm back in the meeting now if we can go to him and then after kurt will be um judd valesky and jennifer uh jacob [Music] uh thank you i apologize for the uh for being late you guys are even more

[83:00] efficient than i expected a big part of america's story has been the halting but long-term trend towards expansion of the electorate it hasn't been a smooth journey but as voters have become a larger and larger portion of the population our democracy has become stronger fairer more resilient more just at the beginning of our country voting was generally limited to white male property owners then perhaps surprisingly president andrew jackson worked to expand suffrage for non-property owners in 1870 the 15th amendment nominally gave black men the vote but in practice jim crow took this right away from them for close to a century the snyder act of 1924 gave all native americans citizenship and therefore the right to vote but state level restrictions continued to limit indigenous people's suffrage for decades women finally won the vote uh the vote with the 19th amendment almost 80 years after lucretia ma and elizabeth katie

[84:02] stanton started the women's suffrage movement in this country we got the voting rights act in 1965 and the 26th amendment lowering the voting age to 18 in 1971. today most adult citizens have the legal right to vote with notable exceptions including those in prison and convicted felons unfortunately we've seen renewed efforts in voter suppression around the country the struggle continues but what's clear is that democracy is stronger when more people vote voting engages citizens and increases our investment in government and our democracy it gives us a voice it makes politicians pay attention it brings pride it shows that we matter that's why i urge you to put the voter turnout measure on the ballot do your part to help make our reunion more perfect thank you thank you kurt next we have judd valesky and then jennifer cashnow is withdrawn so then we have rebecca davies and lisa

[85:01] spalding hi there do you can hear me yes great thanks thanks for the time um i am here to speak about uh against the idea of moving to even year elections i don't have my thoughts terribly formed here but i i'd love to just uh take sherry hack's comments previously she uh put it in words much better than into words much better than i can here um but to try to pull a couple of saline points out of there um it's pretty unclear to me how the existing uh citizenry here is is having its votes suppressed when we fully support mail and ballot dynamics so there's a functional issue there that i see with a lot of the arguments being

[86:00] made but perhaps more importantly to me personally is is alignment with even years throws us into the manipulated chaos of national elections you know the i i am very fearful of showing up on an even year and deal dealing with presidential and and broader congressional uh issues and legislation that has had the full force of billions and billions of dollars behind special interest groups driving agendas i've i've always felt that the odd year election cycle that we've been in here in boulder has has shielded us from a lot of that chaos and increasingly over the past handful of elections so the idea that we're suddenly caught up in that uh would just be terribly sad to me

[87:02] anyway that's all i had to say against the move to even your elections thanks for the time take care thanks jen uh rebecca davies lisa spaulding and leslie barrett hello thanks so much for the time um i'm rebecca davies and um i'm 35 and a very consistent voter but i've actually never been to a polling booth i grew up in oregon and by the time i turned 18 oregon already had vote by mail for all elections as it was the first state to do so um so i haven't experienced the uh the polling booth voting um and i often take it for granted that i can can you continue to vote by mail in colorado but i really shouldn't because many people in the us don't have access to that form of expanded democracy i'm grateful to the people who worked hard to put vote by mail in place in

[88:01] both states with the recognition that it would help people like me participate in elections consistently much more consistently than i frankly would have otherwise i see even your elections as similarly a clear step towards further facilitating voter participation which has been demonstrated by multiple examples around the country and the data from elections within our own city participation is much higher in even your elections the electorate is more diverse and voters really really like it which is why they've passed measures to implement even your elections in large numbers elsewhere boulder has many ambitious goals also around diversity and equity and supporting even your elections is a way to take meaningful action towards those goals i'm eager for boulder to build upon the good work done by others to increase voter participation in our elections and i'm grateful that city council is considering this measure for the november ballot i'm confident that the boulder electorate will support moving to even your elections if given the

[89:01] chance thank you thank you rebecca now we have lisa spaulding leslie barrett and andy saylor not to place even your voting on the ballot this november you would be far better off increasing outreach to those groups that do not commonly vote in our municipal elections than spending a large sum of money on the elaborate revisions needed to enact this change in our voting schedule if it passes people vote because they have an interest in something in the case of elections for city council members people vote because they care about the future of our city some people who are here temporarily for study or jobs may not vote in odd years because they know they will be moving on the large number of older people who vote regularly that brian keegan refers to in his recent daily camera guest opinion proves that people who live in

[90:01] boulder long term vote and continue to vote because they care about the future of our city i would however question mr keegan's assertion that many of these regular voters are not just old but wealthy too any analysis of property values in areas where students live will show rental houses that are valued at less than the houses kept up by permanent residents be they renters or owners mr keegan's analysis would benefit from a further question do even your voters vote only for presidents and congress people or all the way down the ballot a well-planned outreach program for idea elections would benefit boulder by involving more people in both municipal and school board matters on a level that far exceeds possible cursory votes for city council members in even years please take a long-range view of this issue and embark on a constructive plan to increase inclusivity in a meaningful way rather than supporting a reactive approach with unforeseen consequences

[91:02] thank you thank you lisa actually uh leslie barrett actually is now in the meeting we'll keep on if they come back uh we have andy saylor rj boyle and rosemary hegarty good evening my name is andy saylor and i'm a resident of north boulder i'm speaking this evening in favor of allowing our community to vote on moving council elections to even years we stand at a significant moment in our nation's history our democracy is under assault at every level and its survival is far from guaranteed at the federal level we have current and former leaders who are actively working to delegitimize our elections in many states we are facing laws aimed to limit and discourage who can vote and at the local level we must contend with election schedules that significantly suppress voter turnout in all these cases the aim is the same to win power by controlling who votes rather than by having the most popular ideas as mr norbuck mentioned these issues are not new our nation's founders were big fans of this idea of voter

[92:00] quality after all they wrote a constitution where only white men could vote and decided that a significant portion of our population only counted as three-fifths of a person we have spent the past 235 years working to correct these laws even as the republican party seeks to expand and exploit them if we wish to keep our democracy if we wish to uphold the principle that our society is strongest when all constituents have a voice we must fight to preserve these principles in boulder we have an opportunity to do our part moving local elections to even years brings many more voices into the conversation it makes voting easier for everyone it ensures that all members of our community are represented and not just the white i mean right ones it will ensure we select council candidates on the basis of the popularity of their ideas rather than on the basis of who turns out to vote our work to correct our flawed democracy is far from done and more critical than ever allowing the people to vote on moving to even your elections supports these efforts in our own small local way thank you for your time and i encourage everyone to support improving our

[93:00] democracy and moving to even your local elections thanks mandy rj boyle rosemary hegerty and mike marsh good evening um my name is rj boyle and i was a former co-lead of boulders for people which was a campaign on the 2021 election dedicated to creating a pro-people boulder welcome to all particularly all voices that need to participate in our democratic processes for the very same reasons i supported boulders for people i'm here to support even your elections for the city of boulder data shows that from 2018 to 2021 turnout in even years is in the 75 to 85 percent range contrasting with odd year elections where turnout is only in the 48 to 50 percent range more than twice as many voters turn out in even your elections because of the critical vote votes boulder rights are casting at that time um we understand more that participating in local politics can be more important than doing so at the national level

[94:00] however local elections should be taking place and even years alongside these national elections to encourage turnout in greater numbers and in a way that more accurately includes and represents all people that make up its this city for those who assume that those who are not quote staying here long enough think that the people who are choosing to show up in half as many numbers in odd year elections are leaving out the idea that people are voting simply out of convenience if someone's voting for the president on the way out they might pick their next mayor or their next school board director although that's not part of this or their next city council representative with audio elections boulder's most underrepresented electorates suffer the greatest it's been demonstrated that people like renters people of color lower income people and young people are consistently underrepresented not because they don't live here long but because they don't have the chance to be here when their voices need to be heard moving even your elections can close turnout discrepancies for everyone but critically for places where boulder has the greatest diversity by moving to even

[95:01] your elections we protect democracy and improve the reliability of our city's policy making because we open civic engagement to the widest slot of people and welcome every voice possible in the conversation please support this important measure and thanks wow thanks rj rosemary hegerty mike marsh and david glover hi my name is rosemary hegarty i live in south boulder and i just don't get it on that moving you know the pros of moving this um our elections from awe to even years i don't i i don't really feel like you know 90 or more of the people that are pro moving the election seem to think that i am somehow anti-democratic by voting in an odd year that somehow i am suppressing voters ability to vote even though they have a ballot mailed to their house

[96:01] i just don't get it and um and you know i feel like i really want to keep my elections for my local issues separate from the national issue so that i can actually focus on those and i certainly will not have time to volunteer for a local election if i am also volunteering on a national election i just don't have time to do that so what sort of suffering is going to happen to elections if we're dividing that up or having everything happen at the same time i also don't understand when people are are saying that there's so many positive aspects when it's changed when 98 of the cities in the united states have odd year local elections so where is the statistics proving this unbelievable

[97:00] benefit to changing it i'm also very opposed to the fact that some of you are going to be handed a five-year term i think that needs to be taken off the table it is not fair to give yourself and matt you can shake your head all you want i'm totally opposed to it i'm also opposed to this i'm really happy to get a chance to vote against your cu south decision thank you thanks rosemary and i'll just say that if people have questions for the speaker that's fine but i think we might save responses until the end um so okay thanks uh all right moving on we have um mike marsh david glover and paul coleman i'm mike marsh speaking in support of keeping our local elections on odd-numbered years i strongly support higher voter turnout but our goal should be increasing voter turnout in odd years

[98:01] every registered boulder voter receives a ballot in odd-numbered years these mail-in ballots don't require time off work to vote every boulder voter is fully enfranchised to vote in odd-numbered years nearly all u.s cities hold their municipal elections in odd-numbered years and i read that no colorado city of significant size does local elections in even years why pure cities realize local elections are important enough that they deserve their own day in the sun when voters have the bandwidth and time to really focus on local issues and candidates and give them the attention they deserve without the competition from national and state races but some propose we put local races at the tail end page 10 or 11 of incredibly long ballots in even years ballot fatigue is a real thing voters are repelled by ballots that go on forever and many will skip the down ballot section national and state races are typically simple and binary democrat versus

[99:01] republican you select one typically by your party in contrast city council elections require voters to select five candidates from a crowded pool of up to 16 they don't run as republicans or democrats instead voters must study each candidate's nuanced positions on dozens of important local issues ditto for complex local ballot measures the devils in the details in local elections and odd-numbered years allow voters and local media unfettered space to drill into those details with the sufficient editorial and community bandwidth for robust thorough local conversations i believe this will be lost if local elections are combined with national and state i urge you to regard local elections as important enough to have their own time in their own election year thank you thanks mike next have david glover paul coleman and lori call

[100:02] can you hear me yes hello city council my name is david glover thank you for your time i am speaking in support of moving to even your elections many of the opponents of even your elections are speaking as if we are deciding this right now we are simply putting this measure on the ballot for the people of boulder to decide we should allow the people of boulder to make the decision that is best for them the opponents also like to point out that most cities do odd year elections when has boulder ever wanted to be like most cities we want to be exceptional we want to be trailblazers we want to do things that work for us and we should not use an outdated standard that other cities use to propel us forward other people in support of audio elections have echoed the fact that voter turnout is higher voter turnout is more diverse voter turnout is more balanced why spend extra money to try to reach um voters who don't typically vote on odd years when we can do one efficient

[101:00] measure to increase voter turnout in a fell swoop daddy's data shows states with audio elections end up spending millions more as opposed to states that line up their elections with the typical national elections no data shows that odd year voters are more informed in fact data shows odd year elections favor special interest groups and if i mean for me i want boulder to be run and decided by the people of boulder not special exclusionary interest groups local elections have a major impact they empower people to speak on the issues that matter to them most and affect them the most and i believe that by moving to uh even your elections we will have a huge impact thank you for your time and again put this on the ballot so the people of boulder can choose for themselves thank you david now we have paul coleman lori call and jennifer banyan

[102:01] all right good evening council and staff my name is paul coleman i live in south boulder um we talk about ordinance 85 42 the climate action plan tax um i want to slip in a congratulations to jonathan cohen on being appointed to director of climate initiatives um and just as council needs support from us the people council your staff need support from council and i really want you to think about in terms of climate change don't just put this on autopilot you need to tell your climate initiatives director and staff and and nuria also our city manager that you really care about climate change and you really want this work done we need to look at proportionality of the problem it seems like the amount of the tax was pretty arbitrarily decided

[103:00] on and i'm worried that we're not going to reach our climate goals based on this level of financing so it's something you as council really need to keep an eye on that we are making the progress we need to make towards our climate goals and i listened to all this talk about the the election cycle um there seems to be something missed here is that the odd year elections are not going away we are still every registered boulder county voter is going to get a ballot every year these the election's not going away we may move races from one election to another but we still need to turn out in the odd year elections and i hope these people who are so passionate about even your elections will put some of that passion and to turn out on the odd years i personally don't see any point in moving the election out of the races to the even years but

[104:00] you know i'll vote either way i think probably it'll be more name recognition if we go to even years oh i'm afraid your time is up but i appreciate your testimony thank you all thanks uh next we have laurie call jennifer banyan and christian kerr hi i'm lori kaul assistant vice chancellor for local government and community engagement at the university of colorado boulder i want to address the cu boulder south referendum this evening the university purchased this property in 1996 from a mining company based on future needs since then engineering studies identified this area as the best place for a flood mitigation system to protect 2 300 downstream residents in 2021 after many years of thoughtful collaboration in a thorough engagement process boulder city council voted to annex u-boulder south into the city limits we now have important flood protection

[105:01] efforts underway that will safeguard thousands of people in 1100 homes the annexation also allows us to address another pressing community challenge the availability of housing it will enable a portion of the land that lies outside the floodplain to become attainable housing for cu faculty staff and students we want those who work and study in boulder to be able to live here it also dedicates five acres of land to the community for affordable housing open to those who qualify based on income level finally it's important for people to know that 119 acres nearly 40 percent of the property will be designated permanently protected city of boulder open space with public access this legally binding agreement represents a strong partnership between the university and the city that provides significant benefits and protections for our community overturning the annexation of seaboulder south would compromise the critical progress currently underway

[106:01] thank you thank you lori now we have jennifer um except i think that jennifer bandian is not here so not jennifer christian kerr max hollingsworth and kristen s christian you're unmuted you just need to open your mic christian we're not hearing you krishna it looks like you're unmuted but we are unable to hear you guys why don't we move on we'll come back to christian a little bit so that that gives us max hollingsworth

[107:14] make sure your mic is open and it looks like you are unmuted please feel free to begin speaking actually not hearing you they seem to be cursed all of a sudden all right um let's see let's let's move on again uh let's try kristen hess next and then rosie fabian we'll come back to these folks am i unmuted yes we can hear you okay great um hello thank you for giving me the chance to speak tonight my name is christian hess and i've been a boulder resident for eight years i support the even year elections

[108:03] i've found that boulder works to make mail-in voting as easy as possible and i really appreciate the opportunity to fill out my ballot home on my own time from talking with my friends we have all benefited from mail-in ballots one reason i prefer mail-in ballots is that i can take the time to learn about the measures and candidates i'm voting on i may be drawn into voting by issues that make national news headlines but filling out my ballot has given me the chance to learn about vote and become more engaged in local politics i have a hard time blindly filling in the bubbles on my ballot and i know i'm not alone so i turn to the internet and google candidates and measures and find out more about them before filling out and dropping off or mailing in my ballot since many of my friends have done the same we then find ourselves talking about what we've learned as we filled out our ballots or asked questions to finish filling out our ballots i think this unplanned process has made me more connected to boulder

[109:00] over the years i've become more active voter but i will admit that i have a few gaps in my voting record mostly due to audio election mostly during audio elections i've been motivated to vote when i hear about national issues but then i have had an opportunity to learn more about key issues impacting my community when i research and vote on local candidates and measures i'm really excited about this even year election measure to keep me and other voters like me more engaged and informed about the community we live in we have this opportunity to make it a little easier for bolder residents to learn about and vote on local politics i think this measure is a step in the right direction and i'm excited to support it thank you kristen now we have rosie vivian celeste landry and lisa harris hi there can you hear me yes

[110:00] great my name is rosie vivian i live in table mesa and i support moving city council election to even years voter participation is a passion of mine in my first election when i was 18 years old i registered and voted against ronald reagan i was passionate and informed about voting and even chose to vote differently than my parents did and believe me i felt like my vote mattered i hope people will reflect on their first time voting and how it shaped them fast forward to the 2016 election and i spent a lot of time volunteering at voter registration events and became an election judge in boulder county in 2018 and in the primary this year my interest in voter participation has also led me to run this year as pcp and precinct 855 table mesa these experiences over my lifetime have led me to believe that every vote matters every voice should be heard i'm flabbergasted that i have to say this in light of recent propaganda floating around but lest we forget and for those community members that could not be here tonight a vote is a vote

[111:01] one person's vote is as valuable as another person's vote a renter's vote is equal to a homeowner's vote a vote from someone who moved here yesterday is equal to a vote from someone born here a young person's vote is equal to a senior citizen's vote it's much more difficult to vote here in odd years especially if you just arrived or rent or move from time to time or if it's your first time voting there are fewer open polling centers and hours of operation even years and the people i assisted in the polling centers their votes matter very few election judges are even needed in odd years and just coming off working as an adjudication judge in the primary we had a much lower turnout than expected the voter turnout data makes it clear more people vote than even years let's hear the voices of our whole community this should be an easy victory in boulder i also strongly support a no vote on the ballot measure regarding cu

[112:00] south and remember speaking in favor of the annexation previously thank you thank you rosie now we have celeste landry lisa harris and emily reynolds so can you hear me yes great um i'm here to talk about ordinance 8540 on the new mayoral election i would like to ask about the thinking behind not allowing someone to be a candidate for both mayor and council simultaneously i recall hearing from staff at a council meeting that dual candidacy doesn't really work with the city's campaign finance rules maybe it was matching funds but we are a home rule city so we can take care of that problem democracy is better when voters have more candidates and a better voting method so we don't end up splitting the vote boulder will have a better voting method instant runoff ranked voting

[113:01] but we may not have more candidates because we will prohibit people from running for both offices simultaneously boulder would be going backwards up to now people have been able to run for council and then immediately upon winning run for mayor if changes to the city's campaign finance rules are in code rather than in city charter council could change ordinance 8540 on its second page line four to read a person may be a candidate for both mayor and council member at any regular municipal election i also have a second point i'd like to make i'm fine with continuing council members running for mayor winning and the city suddenly electing in addition to the regular four council members a fifth council candidate to fill the new mayor's unexpired two years left on their council term what i'm not so excited about is that we'd elect five council members but voters would only get to weigh in on their ballot by

[114:02] marking four last night i sent an email to council members benjamin and spear detailing three better alternatives so i hope you'll consider those as you adopt um ordnance 85-40 and i want to say thank you to council member friend for bringing up the issue on what to do if nobody runs for mayor thanks thanks celeste lisa harrison emily reynolds and then we're going to come back to christian kerr and max hollandsworth hi it's lisa harris i'm speaking in favor of keeping local elections in odd years because i think it's really important that boulder decides our local elections not big money not big parties i say this as a precinct leader since 2009 and i care very very deeply about voter turnout every year even in odd i deliver voter guides to every door of a

[115:00] registered democrat independent and unaffiliated no there's not a party represented there but i just i have gotten it done with volunteers and without um in some years it was completely up to me to make these deliveries and to get these calls out i've also worked on municipal ballot measures and council campaigns in colorado every voter has a ballot mailed to their door every year voting here is truly a right that can be easily exercised and as someone who feels very competitive about my voter turnout numbers every year i strive for high turnout every year the answer is not to move council elections to even years the effectiveness of odd year council elections that we have had in place for so long and like so many other municipalities is going to be hard to replace here's why no major political parties are involved to muddy the waters my own party included because boulder is one of the few cities who has put in place campaign finance reform city council candidates have to stand on

[116:00] an unprecedented even field in odd years the second you move those elections to an even year it becomes just another down ballot race with lots of dollars spent and the equality disappears in an odd year we have forums interviews journalists to hold our council candidates afford accountable i love that if i'm given a choice between working on a council campaign or a senate campaign or a presidential campaign or watching a debate for senator president what am i going to do um you know we can have 10 to 20 candidates run for council and that's super cool will voters take the time to hear from each of them in an even year thank you let's be more thoughtful about this thanks lisa we have emily reynolds and christian curran max hollingsworth thank you good evening council i wanted to speak this evening about uh elections and even years ordinance

[117:02] 85-46 i'm opposed to changing boulder's tradition of odd-year city council elections a system that continues to be used by the vast majority of cities nationwide and throughout colorado moving local elections to even years when local issues and candidates can be radical relegated to a distant third place behind state and national races risks local issues getting lost in the shuffle the advantages of local elections in odd years when there's no competition for the community's political discussion media focus campaign volunteers means we can have more in-depth community conversations on local issues and more informed local decisions i'm also opposed to reducing the terms of the council members elected in 2023 and 2025

[118:03] to three years a heavy-handed approach that is unfair to candidates in our next two local elections when something isn't broken there's no need to fix it relegating local issues and candidates to the end of a long ballot is not going to increase voter participation if anything more people may neglect local elections because of ballot fatigue i ask you to allow boulder voters to continue to be able to make informed decisions on local elections by maintaining boulder's tradition of odd-year city council elections where we can give local politics the attention it deserves thank you thank you emily we have um christian kerr max hollingsworth and i understand juan marcano is not present so we'll move to chris nicholson

[119:03] can you hear me this time yes we can great thanks um i am uh also speaking about um the item of moving voting to even years as opposed to odd um to me it seems an odd choice as the issues that we face locally really often have very little overlap with national issues national issues take up a lot of oxygen and are often very heated and partisan local issues are often more nuanced granular and really deserve their own time and space within voters minds the whole idea of voter suppression or racism behind

[120:01] um voting in eve or odd years really rings false to me because everybody has ballots mailed to them every year so the voting the voting is there it's accessible it's available to all um what this issue really comes down to for me is giving every issue and vote it's due consideration it's important it's an important role that we have and i feel like giving giving time to local issues is vital to uh the success of this community that's all i got thanks everybody thanks christian all right now we're gonna give max hollingsworth another try and then chris nicholson and sean roth all right all right can you hear me this time yes we can oh great that's great okay hi my name is max hollinsworth i live in

[121:01] boulder and i support moving to even-year city elections the first thing i want to say is that this is really exciting for me and for all democrats we live in a country where every day republicans are trying to make it harder to vote but here in boulder we have the opportunity to do just the opposite we get to expand democracy here increase participation and make it a little bit easier for more people in our boulder community to participate and that's pretty cool and we're not the first city to move to even your elections we're joined in a long list of cities like pasadena college station ann arbor and when people voted on it there it always won by a lot turns out this is a really popular idea so i'm excited that in a time when republicans are doing away with things that are supported by an overwhelming majority like access to abortion like ease of voting we get a chance to show that democracy still works here in boulder and that popular ideas can prevail

[122:01] all right another reason i came to speak is i'd like to share my experience of volunteering around last year's odd year election i did get off the boat door knocking and on campus events and here's what i saw lots of young people in their 20s and 30s both students and non-students didn't have up-to-date home addresses why because from year to year we change neighborhoods leases end jobs change we have different roommates it's just a reality for some you know look i love mail-in ballots i wouldn't give those up for anything but if you're moving around yearly it takes a lot of extra foresight to make sure that your ballot ends up at the right place at the right time and in even years we have the institutions the registration drives the outreach to take care of that problem so i'm excited that we're going to move to even years we're facilitating a healthy democracy and i think that's great thanks next

[123:01] uh chris nicholson sean rupp and chelsea castellano i want to read you something that i came across a couple days ago quote while i don't recommend including this in your talking points the fact is while even numbered election years will pull in thousands more voters many such voters don't pay attention to local issues because they're short-term residents whether it's beneficial for such voters to decide long-term issues and tax increases that long-term residents will have to live with for decades is an open question we know from voter turnout data that even numbered election years see an 80 percent increase in student voters in some precincts so we'll have a decidedly more pro-cu electorate in human years with major implications for current issues with cu remember less than a thousand votes typically

[124:00] determine the winners in city council races but again these arguments won't play well at the public hearing you'll be labeled anti-student anti-democracy anti-voting etc so i recommend limiting comments to the advantages of local elections in odd years when there's no competition for the community's political bandwidth that is what one of the opponents of even-year elections emailed out to their group letting others know what they believed but did not want said at this hearing that they oppose this measure because they don't like who would be voting thank you that's chris now we have sean rock chelsea castellano and judy maglin

[125:01] hi my name is sean rep and i'm a resident of north boulder i'm speaking tonight in support of moving city council elections to even years i moved to boulder in the summer of 2015 and i say that not because it matters how long i've been here but just to point out that it was right before a nod year election i remember voting in that local election that year but um i'll be honest i don't think i really knew much about the candidates or about the issues i did try to learn though i remember reading candidate profiles daily camera articles ballot explainers but it was really hard to differentiate between candidates based on some big platitudes on campaign websites i didn't really feel like there was an easy way to learn about the local issues and i don't remember a ton of engagement from either candidates or my fellow voters it's been shown in other cities that moving local elections to even years leads to greater voter turnout for those elections this greater turnout means that candidates would need to engage the

[126:00] community a lot more to advocate for their ideas perfectly or personally i think that's a huge benefit it would have the effect of engaging more people on local politics and increasing awareness of local issues if you're a candidate for city council and you truly believe that your ideas are beneficial for the city and all of its residents then you should love the idea of more people voting you get to engage more voters and advocate for your ideas you have the opportunity to convince voters that your ideas will make our community stronger that seems like a huge win to me i believe that moving municipal elections to even years would be a great way to let more voices be heard and local issues i strongly support this measure and i hope that you will too thanks for your time i'm sean now we have chelsea castellano judy mobley and our last speaker will be laura tyler hello my name is chelsea castellano and i'm here tonight to both thank and support the council majority that will

[127:01] vote to protect and strengthen our democracy as one of the most highly educated communities in the country our first inclination when trying to understand an issue is to look at the research and the research here could not be more clear off your elections cause low voter turnout and shifting the timing of elections to align with state and federal elections is the singular most effective election reform that can significantly increase participation in our democracy sultan hajnal a respected scholar on u.s politics and policy has stated that quote every published study on election timing and voter turnout shows that combining local elections with state and federal elections is the single most important change that local governments can undertake to increase turnout most studies show that turnout doubles compared to off-cycle elections and quote other cities and states have listened and learned ann arbor pasadena college station texas are among the many cities that have recently passed moving their elections to even years

[128:01] these measures have passed with up to 83 support these measures win because they are popular these measures win because expanding access to voting has always been and will always be the right thing to do equipped with all the knowledge that this change will make our democracy stronger it is now both our responsibility and opportunity to take what we know and act this fall boulder has the chance to be a leader a beacon of light in what has been a dark and disturbing chapter for democracy across our nation i believe that our democracy is strongest when we welcome people in not when we shut people out and i am proud to live in a place that will pass this significant of an election reform in november thank thank you chelsea now we have our state representative judy mobley and then laura tyler hi my name is julia mobile and i'm the

[129:01] state rep for colorado house district 13 but i'm here today as a city of boulder resident we all like to say how long we have lived in in boulder when we come to these things so for the record i've been here for 47 years but i don't think those 47 years mean that my vote has more value or more legitimacy and i don't think that it guarantees that i'm a more thoughtful or more high quality voter and so i want us to put that aside for a minute we have heard a lot of reasons tonight to vote no on this change and i know that change is hard it's scary but in my 47 years here in boulder a lot of things have changed and we can't stop change from happening because we have to change to meet the moment it's clear we need to take the next step

[130:00] to enfranchise more people to get more people engaged to get more people voting in our elections it will get more newer residents younger people people with less resources to vote and it will cause us to change what we work on what policies we advance and how we work on those policies and that i think is going to be a good thing so i encourage you to vote yes for this change and let's get more people voting and let's get more people who haven't been voting to engage in our city politics thanks a lot thank you judy all right our last speaker is laura tyler good evening everyone thanks for this opportunity to speak my name is laura tyler and for many years i served as co-director of south boulder creek action group it was a year ago

[131:01] right now that i felt the weight of the world was on my shoulders because i was organizing testimony for your annexation hearing i just my heart is so filled with gratitude and relief that you supported annexation as a council and i want to extend my thanks to so many of you who spoke tonight just so many people in this community involved in moving this project across the finish line and then city staff as well it was just an enormous enormous effort and the reason why i'm here tonight um is to let you know that i oppose the current cu south referendum and the reason why i oppose it there are two reasons i know it needs to go on the ballot however we did vote on this exact same

[132:00] thing last year and it was voted down by about a 14 point margin so i want to thank the community as well and i don't support the referendum because it would undo so much work just years and years of efforts compromises conversations meetings it was just a very meaningful process and that is it thank you very much thank you laura and we have confirmed that all of the missing speakers from before are still missing so that will bring our public hearing to a close uh so do we have any uh responses or questions as a follow-up from the from the testimony we've heard tonight uh matt thanks aaron so i i have a couple questions for for staff to help sort of clarify i heard a few misconceptions about things and

[133:01] and since we're in sort of in the process of trying to pass some things and voter education is really important um so so one of them i've heard from a from a few folks and we got some emails quite recently about it is is regards to uh ordinance um 85 i think it's 85 46 with regards to even your elections um just to be clear maybe this is for teresa and kathy are we extending anybody's terms um with this new uh ordinance that we're looking to perhaps pass on on second reading tonight no you're not okay um and so i just wanted to clarify that the the other one has to do um with regards to you know our the individual that we get our election advice from i presume they maybe met our county clerk um and if i recall from when she was visiting with us helping us navigate this question i think she did she had didn't she have a preference that um the solution we end on she would prefer is if we kept the mayoral rank choice

[134:00] voting election in 2023 as it's currently written um into the curtin ordinance is that correct i i really hesitate to speak for somebody else or put words in their mouth i don't want to put words in her mouth i believe that that was her preference so that boulder would have the that boulder county would have the opportunity to have the experience and help um form the stuff that's happening at the state level because of last year's bill i appreciate the kathy the last one i wanted to sort of clarify was with sort of the idea of undue expense and just sort of clarify i i i'm not sure where that sort of came from but i thought that was with regards to whether we um had moved around the ranked choice voting part and really it's the ranked choice voting that carries a large expense in our upcoming elections not necessarily anything to do with even year is is that a fair characterization of where the expenses really reside in any of our

[135:01] changes yes okay all right appreciate it those are the those are the questions and clarifications i had to try to make sure that you know everyone listening and and the people out there are are hearing the facts as as they are so i appreciate that thank you thanks and thanks folks for uh reserving your comments uh here to the end that was my mayoral intervention to do that just to only ask questions during the testimony would say uh comments or responses for the end i appreciate you working with me on that we got nicole rachel junie and lauren thank you thanks to everybody who spoke up in public comment too just a couple of questions um around the climate tax um i think one of the commenters mentioned that it was sort of an arbitrary amount that we were putting in place for the climate tax um my understanding is that this was actually quite a thoughtful and lengthy process on staffspark to get to that amount and i was just wondering if staff could

[136:00] clarify that for us just basically to the amount that we're going to be raising and and spending sure i think jonathan hasn't been able to join us so i will take that again i'm carolyn i'm a senior manager in our climate initiatives department um so i think as we outlined in our packet we've been collecting just um shy of four million dollars a year from our our two previous taxes and we thought very clearly about um what would be a reasonable increase in that as well as how we could manage the um impacts um from an equity perspective on those who would experience an increase in tax and so we'd originally recommended a one million dollar increase through our response to surveys as well as further discussion we further recommended um to go to the 6.5 million dollar level to really advance our wildfire mitigation and resiliency work and so i think we were very thoughtful about that i do know and i think i heard very clearly from our community member

[137:00] mr cullen you know we're in a climate emergency and there's often a desire to to spend as much as we can to advance our work um this is really why we recommended the inclusion of bonding capacity within the ballot measure so we can advance funding um against future year taxes to really accelerate that work so that was the thought process behind our our recommended strategy of the 6.5 million dollar level great thank you so much and just one other question while we have you carolyn um this is around the measurements and sort of outcomes that some folks were referring to and i was just wondering if you could speak to whether any of the money that will be generated by the climate tax would allow us to do more of that kind of reporting on how we're progressing and how we're doing yes definitely and i i always appreciate this classroom's um emphasis and challenge to us to to really make sure we're measuring progress and and definitely i all of our work is going to be aligned with two objectives that's

[138:00] either mitigating our carbon emissions where we very clearly track that through annual reporting we do look at our various programs and what they're contributing as well as enhancing our community resilience and so really focusing on that and will be very transparent um in those those numbers and and we'll definitely be measuring continuing to measure progress and effectiveness of our dollars great thank you so much and then sorry folks just one more question i think this one's for kathy uh this is in relation to some of the questions about the mayoral cleanup um can you just clarify why uh why we have this um uh kind of clarification in place that folks can't run for two seats at the same time sure i can try um and it's not a matter of um you know whether we can or can't draft to make changes because we can but i think the important part is to keep the purposes of what both the matching funds and the campaign finance limitations were for

[139:00] um and the you have the question of matching funds if people are running for two different offices do they get double the potential matching funds then you've got all the campaign finance restrictions like a candidate has a maximum of 100 contributions that they can accept from various individuals if they're running for two offices do you split that do you double it do you split it 50 50 75 25 how do you do that and and how do you make it so it's not an opportunity for somebody to take two bites at the apple in their campaigning when we are trying to limit the cost of campaigns by doing matching funds and having contribution limits for candidate committees there's also the thing of that um with campaign disclosures the committees are supposed to be completely separate but a person can't split himself or herself from the one running from there for the one running from council so

[140:00] that's my initial list all right thank you and just one question i'm in the discussions that i know the committee talked about this a lot uh when you mentioned two bites of the apple i mean what i sort of envisioned right as if when whenever you're running you're getting your name out there a lot right now as we heard some folks say tonight sometimes you're just voting by name recognition um so presumably if you were going new campaigns at the same time that could potentially give you an advantage in one or the other as well is that anything the committee talked to or spoke to we didn't talk about that directly i'm talking about the part that would be for the city and thinking of the two bytes of the apple i mean i think you're raising a very legitimate point on the side of the candidates from the city's perspective we're looking at how do we figure out what's a hundred dollar limit is it per candidate position is it per person is it whatever and then the communications and then the matching funds okay thank you so much

[141:01] thanks uh rachel jimmy lauren then i'll call myself okay a couple questions um number one eric budd testified about some statistics um around moving to even your elections and that the statistics really only held true if the elections occurred uh in november at the same time as federal and state versus if you had like a may election as i understand it those statistics don't add up so i think what we're trying to do is increase voter turnout so we're not looking to create an even year election at a special election in the spring because that doesn't really arrive at the same end point so do we have that covered is there a change that we can make i understand that uh we can't change language that would somehow mean that we would be advocating in the language that we use but is there language that needs to be added or is his concern already addressed in the language that would ensure that what we're doing is

[142:00] uh having an even year election at the time that voter turnout is expected to be higher for the other reasons which is state and federal elections even if we can't use those words and yes it is covered and i just grabbed the wrong one um no it didn't um yes here it is um that in ordinance 8546 the amendment to section 22 that's on page 24 of your packet it says we're moving the um the regular municipal election from no the first or tuesday in november when there's state ballot issues to the tuesday in i'm sorry we are changing it from the tuesday in november that there are state ballot issues and odd years to the tuesday in november where there are state elections and even years so it's got the november in there and it's got that you know one's not on the first tuesday of the month and the other one

[143:00] on the first tuesday following a monday on a month they are the same tuesday as the state elections okay thank you um second question there was um an early speaker who talked about some assumptions made at sea south i don't know if joe teducci might be on the call um that nuri is giving me a look like maybe not okay i am looking but maybe not or anyone else um you know that an assertion is made that we're proceeding under the assumption that we can only work with cu to get flood mitigation done and then if you know there there would be a different way that we would not have to disrupt wetlands and i just wanted someone to maybe speak to um the fact that most of the wetlands that are going to be impacted are the ones where the actual flood walls going that'll be the city using that land not not see you developing that land um but i hope that somebody could could clarify whether that is an accurate

[144:00] assumption um i i think it what the speaker talked about was was not accurate and so just wondering if if that could could be uh directed and then also is is it um true that where c is developing is primarily in a mined out former gravel pit and any wetlands which are i think quite minimal there would have to be mitigated and restored with new wetlands elsewhere on the property if not i would i will uh say we can we can come back to that at another time i will oh sorry i will see and i will see if we can confirm i want to make sure that my understanding is absolutely correct as we do this and we'll see if there is someone who's been more involved than technical boundaries okay thanks um and then i think back to kathy haddock just

[145:00] there were a couple questions up front that i had asked like that health and safety language did we pin down whether that's required to be in there or can we change that it's not required it's not one of the things that's required to be in an ordinance in the charter um there are legal cases when it's required when you're adopting laws so you will continue to see it but we teresa and i talked well virtually talk during the meeting and we can substitute it for something like this ordinance is adopted to place this measure on the ballot as required by article 5 section 1 of the colorado constitution and article 4 of the city charter does that meet your that sounds uh good to me as long as there's no legal risk to doing so yeah i don't think there's any legal risk to do it okay great and then any returns about that uh you know if no one runs for mayor do we need to make any changes for that situation to ensure you know boulder's charter doesn't address if there's no one to run for mayor or if they're not enough candidates to run for

[146:01] the empty council seats and it's a situation that's never happened there are provisions in state law because it happened in the small towns i used to represent all the time so if you want us to go to we can draft another ballot measure for you that would deal with that if you want to i wouldn't suggest amending one of these because it's i imagine adding a new section yeah so if it's already not there for council i don't think we need to look at it for this year for mayor either thanks that's my opinion if any if anyone wants to make a bet on whether there will ever be an empty mayoral election i'm i'm happy to put a lot of money down on that particular question attorneys plan for the worst aaron raising the issue rachel while rachel's asking questions can i follow up on one other one she had yes that we also addressed that you asked about the um indentured servitude language which i had taken out of one paragraph and then

[147:01] added in here i can't believe i did that so the the sentence currently says in ordinance 8546 that the term of the mayor i'm sorry that the mayor shall serve until the successor is elected and qualified i'd suggest that that should be changed to the term of the mayor shall extend until a successor is duly chosen and qualified and the language is to keep it if you know that when the election happens and votes are counted there's still time before swearing in and make it clear that the mayor serves even though the elections happened until somebody comes in and the exact same language is in for council members already so we can take care of that question too great thanks kathy junior and lauren than myself thank you aaron i just had a one question i think uh you answered it earlier but i just want to clarify so you're saying that for the even though we're going to even ear

[148:01] the campaign finance laws remain the same they remain as is is that correct correct we are not making any changes to it thank you that's it thank you aaron i appreciate it thanks jimmy lauren thank you um i had a question that celeste landry brought up regarding um you know if a council member was elected to mayor um we had talked about that then from the council candidates we would elect five instead of four candidates but i thought she brought up a great point of um but people are only voting for candidates and i was just wondering um if we had looked at any examples of where that happens in other cities or if you guys had discussed that um [Music] at all i agree that it's

[149:01] a legitimate concern um i'm at least so far i think it's one without a potentially good solution um that if we don't have this language in the charter and this is not language we are adding this is language that the voters approved it when they made the direct election of mayor in 2020 believe we're just moving it to a different place maybe we're not even doing that so just so you know that part um and the the um boulder charter requires vacancies to be filled by election so if we don't do it this way the alternative is to have to call another election um and and have a special election or wait until the following november to to fill the vacancy that's created um i guess you could say that well i'm thinking out loud and i probably shouldn't do that i mean if you want to put in that if somebody's running for mayor that they that

[150:01] that people get a vote for five council candidates you don't have ranked choice voting for candidate or for council candidates so that might skew things if people can vote for five rather than four anticipating that there might be a vacancy um otherwise i i mean i don't think there's an easy solution to it can i call liqui on that given i led the our mirror our choice campaign and so i can maybe speak to the motives do you mind lauren okay um so the the motive behind um not allowing some or why we put in the ballot language not to have someone run for council simultaneously running for mayor when their council term ends at that same uh election cycle was to give the greatest deference to the electorate and potential candidates um because if someone's hold if someone is or if someone's in that state

[151:02] you don't know if that person's running for re-election it like right i mean they're not they're they're running as an incumbent for council and running for a new seat often times a lot of decisions and for those of us that recently ran and those that have previously sometimes based on knowing who is or isn't running for a seat changes your calculus of whether you choose to run or not and so by holding a seat sort of uh held as an incumbent you might change the calculus of a number of candidates that may want to actually throw their name in the hat because they feel there's maybe a better shot if that seat is vacant versus being held by an incumbent so making an individual choose which seat they are actually going to seek and choosing one provides clarity not just to the potential candidates but also to the voters so we don't run into an issue where they're maybe voting for four but then a fifth slips in um so so i think there's that that's sort of the reason why we did that was to sort of keep it clean and keep it in in a most transparent manner for both voters and potential

[152:00] candidates and also we just don't want to make elisha's work any more complex or hard than it already is and trying to manage that uh that potential chaos so uh that was just sort of perspective on our motives for why we had that in the language for uh 2020. that's that lauren you want to finish up or did you have more no i'm good thank you okay great thanks okay i'd uh i had a couple questions um one is i wanted to come check in on the question of the number of signatures we've talked about this a little bit before but i just wanted to just check in on it one more time so our current requirement for the number of signatures uh you to like get get an initiative on the ballot and recall council members and such they're based on the percent of votes cast in a previous election and and so that will stay true correct like that we're not changing those

[153:00] percentage thresholds correct and and do i remember correctly it's that it's the last two municipal elections that it's based on yes so there have been some concerns raised about that might get too high just as so we're understanding where that might occur if this if even years pass you know we're hoping and expecting those of us who are interested in this approach to get higher turnout because of the higher turnout and even your elections so that first one would be 2026 so the first election that might have increased signature thresholds would be going into the 2028 election would that be correct if because 2026 potentially has higher numbers and then it would apply to 2028 right and and just to correct something i said so that i mean you were making the calculation right it's the past two municipal candidate elections so we're looking at the even year election so

[154:00] you're calculating it correctly right thanks that's what i meant so thanks for for correcting so it would in 2028 it would be based on the uh 2026 and 2025 elections at that point right yes got it okay so i and i'll so i will well we're asking questions here but um thanks for answering that i'll say something about this a little bit later the other one so we're doing a couple things related to the library district uh tonight which is not fundamentally putting the library district on the ballot because that was being done by petition but some kind of associated measures in in case that does pass um can i ask do we have anything scheduled right now for uh talking about what we might do with funds that that would be available at the library district is successful mary that might be a good question uh yes and i apologize as i was typing something i realized my mic was open um we do i think that we are

[155:01] thinking of that and working to schedule that with fsc uh soon i believe um it will be we haven't scheduled it yet but we were looking at late september october-ish um to talk about that but we currently um need to figure out what else we have going on in our calendar so that's the financial strategies committee do we have a sense of when it might come to council to check in on that oh i do not believe we have gotten that far we'll see what the financial strategies committee uh says but um we knew uh that odds are we would probably wait until um after november to see that before thanks for clarify bob do you did you want to weigh in on this before i finish yeah uh you you prompted me thanks for that aaron you probably questioned my mind and so maybe i'll ask maria if if um the library district question passes at the county level in november it was my understanding from

[156:00] earlier presentations that the city wouldn't um wouldn't have the benefit of of of the money that it currently spends in the library for a year or two i think because it would take the library district that long to get up and running and start collecting the property tax we'd have to kind of loan the city would kind of loan money to the library district for for a couple of years is that do i remember that correctly i believe that was kind of the um the thought as we were moving forward there the library district has to constitute itself and until it does um we would be in that position of supporting the library district as that moves forward but that's where we're going to continue to have those conversations and in that conversation about how to potentially reallocate the money we would be thinking about the dates in which that would happen right so that wouldn't implicate for example the 2023 budget because i think presumably we're going to approve the 23 budget under the assumption that the city would have to uh pay for the library expenses regardless of whether the ballot measure

[157:01] passes or not is that for 2023 at least is that right that is correct it would not impact uh next year's budget and i believe it really wouldn't come into play for the next to the following year the 2024. okay thanks juicy do you want to follow up on that uh no nuria covered it well thank you okay great thanks thanks for answering that you know i i may send in a request to cac around that that discussion but that's that's not a topic for tonight so thanks for answering that question okay so i think we've gotten all our questions answered so we can move into deliberations of course we've talked about all these ballot measures in the past so we don't necessarily need to have a long argument about this one way or the other or extol the virtues or negatives of all of them but if people want to put a couple of comments out there maybe even a motion you know let's move forward who wants to start nicole i'll start

[158:00] um so yeah i just wanted to um to mention just a couple of things about the different measures um you all have heard me speak about the importance of social infrastructure before so i'm really excited to move forward with prioritizing our libraries um i think they can sometimes seem fine on the surface but one thing i've learned getting a little bit deeper into it is that we really need a lot more investment in our libraries than the city has been able to give and i'm really eager to see us set our libraries free from city budget constraints i know it's not technically our ballot measure but i'm still excited for it i just want to commend staff for doing a really great job of finding the balance between meeting our needs and making sure that we aren't putting an excessive burden on residents energy bills um if the climate tax passes i really look forward to our work to find more equitable ways of generating revenue for climate resilience and i'm furthering this work and i also am really looking forward to having measurements of progress that community members can use to see how their investments are helping us um be

[159:02] more resilient um i'm not going to speak to the cu south referendum tonight given i work at the university um but for even your elections um when i brought this up at the retreat as a work plan priority i suspected it would be a really hard issue for a community because it does require a leap of faith from all of us just like ranked choice voting moving our city council elections to even years to increase voter turnout is untested in colorado so we're going to be the first and it's always stressful to try something new and i hear that stress coming from some members of our community but already other city councils along the front range are having these same conversations because we started them and that's really good for democracy and i think it's really cool for boulder too um i just the other the other thing that i'm noticing about the some of the dialogue that i'm seeing around even your elections in the past couple of months and i think this is going to be a harder leap of faith with this ballot measure and it's that even your elections considering it is really requiring us to

[160:02] act on our stated commitments to equity there is no doubt that the people who are not voting in off-cycle elections are disproportionately people of color renters and lower-income residents some of the commenters brought up that they didn't feel like it was racist to have um even your or to have off-cycle elections but i just want to note for us we've all learned this in our racial equity training racism and classism don't just show up in the explicit actions that we're taking to uphold our privilege they also show up in the actions that we don't take when we know there are disparities by race and class and when we fail to take action to correct them it's really easy for us to talk about our desire to be a community where everyone's voices are equally valued but moving that talk into action is hard and what i hear people saying some folks who are opposed to this change is that candidates are going to have to run differently and will need to work harder to reach more voters among the noise of

[161:00] the federal and state elections and i think that that's a really a very valid concern so if this measure passes i hope that we'll consider increasing the amount that council candidates can raise and that the city will match so candidates can do more voter outreach but anybody all of us who run council campaigns know that making sure candidates can reach more voters in an even year election is a much easier problem to solve than turning out 17 000 more voters and just to the folks who are concerned about not having enough time to research candidates um i know that those of us who are political insiders are very used to having time to watch all the candidate things to read every questionnaire and i hope that we can keep in mind that that experience is not necessarily representative of how most of our candida our community experiences um even your elections even in odd years a lot of voters don't have a lot of extra time to watch all of these things and go to all these events many of them are filling out their ballot just a couple

[162:00] days before the election calling their friends talking to neighbors doing a quick google search um they don't follow local issues as deeply as some of us do and so i think for a majority of voters their experience isn't going to change but one thing that i truly hope as we head into election season is that we can avoid making character judgments about the 17 000 voters who are not typically voting in off-cycle elections they aren't more or less uninformed than those of us who vote in odd years their parents their hourly workers their retirees and renters and students and their valued members of our community who deserve a voice so as we're moving into election season i really hope we'll remember that in a democracy when it comes to voting quantity is quality and we can just make sure that we are treating all voters with the respect they deserve and that is that is everything that i wanted to say in response to the comments so um thank you to everybody who who spoke up tonight really appreciate it um and i'm really looking forward to um voting on

[163:01] these erin can i make a motion or well actually i i don't want to make the motion because i've just abstained from one of the votes so i will go hold off on doing that that might be best then um okay thanks nicole uh rachel and then juni and i'll mark and i'll call him myself okay turns out i actually have a couple more questions so i'm sorry to be a little bit out of order here but before somebody makes the motion if we do want to get that language changed for the cu south annexation per you know paragraph five how does that does that go into tonight's vote yes and then we'll put we'll yes and when you do next reading we'll have it will say that so it might be helpful in advance and maybe uh mayor brackett would like to do a straw poll to see if we even want to make that change um at some time i didn't mean to make you turn your camera back on but if that happens if somebody's

[164:00] whoever's gonna make the motion i'm happy to make it at the right time or happy not to if somebody could put the language up on the screen that might be helpful to get us through it if we're making some changes um and the second question i have i'm supportive of putting that i guess i'll just go through them one at a time on 85 34 and see south annexation reluctantly supportive of putting that on the ballot because we have to do that because the signatures were gathered not that i support the petition i'm a i'm a no on that but yes i'm putting it on the ballot um i'm very supportive of us putting the library district question up there 8539 my next question is for 85.40 supportive of the mayoral cleanup going on the ballot but i am still worried about the concern that lauren brought up which is what happens if somebody in midway if i understand the issue midway through a term so has two years left runs for mayor and wins so we have an extra council seat open and people we don't have rank choice voting yet for those seats i don't know if we ever will

[165:01] but we don't know wouldn't we want in that scenario as kathy i think suggested that we say if a current council member's running let's vote for you know sort of an incase number five or if four council members are running in that scenario let's write you know let's vote is that no only one could win let's vote for one extra right thank you that the math was slow i am sorry so i don't know if if there's interest in talking through that anymore but it does seem like we'd rather have um people vote on a fifth than not um and then i'm very supportive of putting even year elections on the ballot one you know one of the concerns that we're hearing over and over tonight that's 85 46 uh is sort of the notion that there are certain voters who are quality and others who are not and and i find that um frankly offensive every every vote is a is a worthy vote and so i hope that as

[166:02] we work through this as a community we can shy away from language like that um you know it was it was the same thing like during the the um movement for women's suffrage like uh women didn't people didn't think that they would be informed voters uh same thing with um literacy tests that you know people were trying to you know claim that that black voters would not um be able to to be quality voters so we we really i think need to get really far away from implying that anyone's vote is not a quality vote we are all quality voters and votes um and and not trying to stifle people's first amendment rights just saying that that um that hits there's just poorly um and then on i think it's 8542 climate tax i'm excited to get that on the ballot and i hope uh that the community supports it

[167:00] thanks thanks rachel uh ginny mark matt then i'll go thank you aaron i support putting it all on the ballot as well and just want to thank staff for all the work and i look forward to hearing from community and also i just want to say thank you so much to nicole for constantly reminding us of the importance of diversity equity and inclusion and thank you for for bringing that forward in shedding a light thank you so much thanks jenny mark matt aaron okay thank you i'm going to speak in opposition to ordinance 8546 but i want to start by taking an extreme issue with the comments of one of my colleagues who suggests that opposition to 8546

[168:00] is in some way racist that suggestion is both untrue and inappropriate this is a policy matter i have a different view of the policy and it is not based on racism and the reasons i oppose it is that this measure which i'm obviously going to vote against represents ad hoc governance of the worst kind there's been little community engagement we've conducted only a bare-bones analysis of the merits of taking this step and we've ignored the value of the current election system which provides for a deep and involved conversation between those running for council and those who would elect them with respect to community engagement we've done no polling we've done no mailings we've published no digital or paper questionnaires to determine the will of the community and we have conducted no stakeholders or open public houses on the subject we don't need to none is needed when we have assumed the conclusion and the idea that the pros and cons of this proposal

[169:02] is quite frankly laughable we know that a minuscule number of cities have moved in this direction apparently the largest of which is baltimore if i recall correctly so is baltimore now the load star that we follow in making our policy decisions and how many thousands of cities have declined to take this step do we even know that answer i doubt we do on a practical level no one is going to care about local issues and the views of council candidates in a year in which we elect a president senator congressman colorado house and senate representatives and a mayor who is going to host and who's going to attend any forum for council candidates these elections and the discussion of issues of local consequence will become functionally irrelevant this referendum is being put on the ballot by the council majority not because it is fully analyzed and vetted the proposal but because it can

[170:00] this is the opposite of careful thoughtful governance it is merely an exercise of power and nothing more than that i hope that the voters of boulder will be more thoughtful thank you thanks mark matt and me uh thanks aaron uh sorry i'll march through kind of one by one um yeah i will uh i'll support uh 85 34 getting on the ballot um that's what we have to do so i i don't like it but it's what we have to do um and i'll also support um getting on the ballot and say yes to the 85 39 you know at the end of the day i i support our library district so this is a this is a no-brainer to me it is just fundamental that we give our libraries an opportunity to thrive um and we get them out of the the table scraps of our budget process um so so i think the the libraries deserve that opportunity with regards to 8540 uh i support that one going forward and i i think you know

[171:02] some of the i you know as kathy said there's no great solution to the uh issue the best solution is actually if we move to single transferable vote proportional representation uh which is basically an rcv for council that that's how we solve almost all those issues along with some of the great uh solutions that come with the mayor election that we'll be doing next year so uh if we want to leave that hanging then maybe we go through rcv for all of council and we just make sure we have a fully equitable election system across the board um but but uh but i'll i'll say with that one with regards to 8546 um i i i want to see this go through actually i'll just skip i'll come back to that because that'll take a second and then certainly with regards to 85 42 and the occupation tax this is just good for us it's good for the environment it's good for our community as a whole and it allows us to plan for some of the unforeseen climate impacts that we're going to have and build a more resilient community community so these are just win-win options so i think this is a great starting place and um this is a

[172:00] good investment for our community so back to 85 46 um you know this is not a question of mechanics uh this is a very simple question about whether you feel or the voters feel or we on council feel that more people should vote that's really all it is uh the mechanics and how we get there the path is irrelevant it's the destination that matters the destination is do we want to lift up the voices of roughly 20 000 people who by the way do vote in our municipal elections because we trust their votes on things like the muni things like the sugary beverage tax things like armor our choice we've trusted their votes for years and even years so why not trust them to make the same decisions with regards to our council and so i think that's a fair um thing for us to do these aren't people that are just out of left field don't pay attention and we're trying to bring them in they do pay attention and they vote in extremely consequential issues for our community um and so i think it's time that we allow them the same right

[173:01] um with regards to voting for council and eventually for mayor um so so i will see that uh love to see that go forward um so so i'm a yes all the way through um one thing i would want to just you know toss out there is just and maybe there's a straw poll opportunity for aaron is is a language uh question and modification i know we've talked a little bit some of us have with teresa and kathy on this but it is really just a question of consistency since we do define in article 3 section 22 of the charter that regular municipal elections shall be held on the same tuesday in november as the state ballot issue elections we already define it with regards to state elections and so i'm wondering why we don't have similar con self-consistent language written into the question itself so that the people voting on this without question understand exactly what we're asking of them that this is going to be

[174:00] an election at the same time as the state election so that the question is as explicit as possible especially given we define it as such in our charter and so um it's not extemporaneous or or pro con language because our charter says it which isn't pro con by definition um so i just wanted to throw that out there as something that that i would love us to perhaps consider um and maybe there's a straw poll for it and if there's pros and cons happy that but but i'd love to just see if that's something anyone who's willing to entertain thank you what's that so i got myself keyed up and then nicole if you don't mind i'll let lauren go next and we'll come to you after other people have had a chance to speak each once in turn so i'll just be i won't take too long and go through here really quick uh 84 30 85 34 about the two south annexation we're required to do it um 85 39 on the library district i'm just thrilled that the petitioners were able to get that on the ballot i'm looking forward to supporting that and getting a sustainable source of funding for our

[175:00] library it's exciting prospect um 85 40 is this is really charter cleanup stuff and i think just makes sense um so that's great um 85 46 is our even year elections and and i'll just say a couple of words here just we've had some folks calling in saying well if it's not broke you know why are we trying to fix it and i'll just say that this is an attempt to make our local elections uh more inclusive with more people voting and it's really it's really purely and simply about making a change that has been shown in you know at least a couple three dozen other cities across the country to dramatically increase voting numbers in local elections and you know i thought our representative um judy mobley said it really well that you know each each vote matters equally you know so i i don't feel like there's one vote that mattered more than another vote the power of our democracy to me is stronger when we have more people voting so

[176:00] to me that's really all it comes down to it's not about any nefarious motives or or strategies or what have you it's really just about uh to me more people voting um is just an inherently positive thing so i'll just leave that at that um and then uh so and also just you know we're we're not taking any unilateral moves here we're putting something on the ballot for the voters to consider right so this is not a change that we're making on our own it's a change that we're asking our voters to consider and um i generally um trust our voters i think they they show very good instincts so we'll see what they think of this measure um and then uh finally on the 8542 which is about the climate action plan tax i mean we know we all know the existential crisis that climate change presents to us right now in the recent fires marshall fire and such made that incredibly clear so it's this is a really good move to provide a more stable funding source and

[177:00] a little bit of a higher funding source to make progress on that at the local level and then just also call out that it does include 1.5 million dollars for wildfire mitigation and that's the kind of climate resilience move that we need to be making um and it will work i think really well in conjunction with this um a new 0.1 uh wildfire mitigation tax that the county is putting on the ballot as well so hopefully we can make some some real progress on on that and keep all of our community members safe with that measure and i will leave it there oh no actually i did want to mention on a couple other things on leaving your elections um one was just about you know there's been some concern about the the signature thresholds um and and i'll just say that i i don't know how we would accurately change the signature thresholds now to kind of change over time as potentially higher as higher voting numbers kicked in over the years so um i i think that that's a good thing if this passes that people

[178:00] should sharpen their pencils and come up with a proposed you know alteration to those things that we might put on about a couple years or something like that to keep the signature numbers scaled to um to get roughly similar numbers required once this fully phases in so i think we can come back to that if that measure is successful and the other thing is i appreciate people raising that kind of concern over well if the mayor gets elected from council and and then they're um we take the fifth vote getter how does that work out personally i think it's fine you know people would have only voted for four council members but anybody who didn't pick magically the top four vote getters you know their their their their votes would still roll into picking the fifth person um you know i i think it'll it'll work out fine i don't think people need to vote cast a conditional fifth vote in case there's um there's a fifth person taken on put onto the council seeks in all your votes will kind of tally up to ranked people um in their order and then

[179:01] per matt's point um ideally uh you know we could shift to a different form of voting entirely it would resolve all these issues at some future point but i think until we get there it'll work out fine that'd be my um my bid on that and then once people have had a chance to speak i'll do a straw poll for um rachel's proposed language change on the cu south um annexation measure and anything else anybody wants to bring up thanks for bearing with me uh we got uh lauren and then bob and and i think everybody will spoken if i'm not missing anybody and we'll come back thanks aaron um so for 85 34 like many i will vote yes um because it's our job um and but i would also suppose support the changes that rachel brought up regarding um the modification to the language um for 85 39 i would vote yes for having that and i

[180:00] look forward to voting for the library district for 85.40 um yes i look forward to having that clean up language on the ballot um i guess i was just wondering if there are any downsides to having five to having to allowing people to vote for five seats if one of the if council members are running for mayor um it's not a make or break in terms of my support on that but um i'm just curious if if there's a reason that we shouldn't go that direction um 85-42 yes i am excited to see the climate change and wildfire mitigation tax on the ballot and 85 46. um

[181:01] yes i'm excited to have it us put even year um elections on the ballot and i would also support um the language change that matt suggested um and sort of rachel brought up as well and eric about um having the language match our charter and being really clear that because again i don't think that the goal right is to have elections on even years the really the nature of the goal is to align with state and federal elections and that really seems like what the intention is for the ballot so that would make sense to me thank you thanks bob nicole um i guess we're going through all these i'll do the same thing i'll follow suit with my colleagues uh so starting in the top 80 um 85 30 for the cu south one we are again as we've discussed are obligated to put that on the ballot i do support rachel's

[182:01] change to section five and i hope the straw poll supports that as well which means that probably goes to third reading which is fine we've got time 85 39 is the library district this is not the library district question of course that's put on by the county this is just clean up if the library district i don't want to be very clear to listeners this is not the the question about library district this is the question of if the library district which is accounting measure passes does the city want to clean up then what things we would have to clean up for example get rid of the library commission so obviously uh that cleanup is important and necessary uh regardless of well if the voters on the county measure past that so that's a fine one that's just administrative 8540 um relating to um coordination with the mayoral election i think that's fine it's clarification matt well knows this was what it was supposed to say back in 2020 so we're finally getting around to to saying what what i think matt's team had wanted it to say but scrivener's heir uh excluded that uh two years ago so we're cleaning that up i think that um i don't want to lose track of the fact that i think that

[183:01] kathy had a proposed change in that language so when we get to voting and amending i'd like to have kathy put forward her change that was kind of the uh indentured servitude language that i think she wanted to get cleaned up there um 85 46 i'll be voting against as i've said before i want to enunciate my reasons here for that i've said that i've said my reasons many many times i thought mark did a good job of of enunciating uh good reasons and i support what he said i do want however to commend my council colleagues the majority that will pass 85 46 for making a change in the transition a few weeks ago i i think the original version of this um in the spring had some transition uh provisions that i think were we're gonna make people very very uncomfortable things like extending the term and and so and so forth and postponing the mayor election so i really want to commend you all for for kind of listening to to to our constituents as they wrote to us and spoke to us and making it better i'm still going to vote against 85 46 but i

[184:01] think what you're putting forward is a better ballot measure than what was originally being discussed in the spring so good job particularly to rachel for for bringing that change forward and then 85 42 i agree with all my counsel colleagues this is an important thing to address not only climate action but also fire mitigation the original version of this had the tax being about the same this is kind of an extension of two taxes and combining them into one having about the same slightly lower for residents slightly higher for for businesses and then of course we've realized uh that we need to do some more work on wildfire mitigation so there will be a slight tax increase here and the nice thing about living in colorado is tax increases are only by by the voters and i would support it both if you put it on the ballot but also i will personally vote in favor of of this tax because i think the things that will be done with the money both on wildfire and climate action are super super important so i'll be voting a yes on on four of the five and voting no on 85 46 for reasons previously stated thanks bob um okay i've gone through

[185:00] everybody's nicole you want to put in something additional yeah i just uh had a kind of a follow-up to my previous comments into some comments that smothers made i just want to be sure that when we're talking about issues that have racial disparities we can understand that we're not engaging in personal attacks by calling attention to those racial disparities anybody who's talked to me about racial equity knows that i am the first person to admit that i have racial bias and they will often hear me even call myself a racist we're all steeped in racism since well before we're born it permeates our society and it has for 400 years none of us here supports racism and it's a fact that many systems in our country were set up to make sure that white people would always maintain power over people of color and when we see big differences in anything between white people and people of color whether it's incomes or homeownership or voting turnout that's

[186:00] like a blinking red light calling our attention to the fact that racism is likely involved in creating that discrepancy so we don't always have to make racial equity the basis of our decisions i do but i don't expect that others will look too we talked last month about how we can and we should disagree on issues because it's healthy and it makes us come up with good decisions and as a city that values racial equity we also have to be able to talk about those places where racial disparities exist and i hope that you all realize that when i'm talking about those racial disparities i'm not judging any of our characters i'm just trying to help us see that there's a potential equity problem that we really need to be paying attention to so i hope that clarifies my intentions a little bit i really do have a lot of respect for all of you i do not think anybody is out there intentionally trying to perpetuate racism in our community or anything like that i really just think it's important that we're able to have these conversations um and point out these

[187:00] places where disparities exist so that we can further our racial equity goals and i'm happy to talk offline with anybody who would like to talk a little bit more or anybody who is just feeling a little bit hurt by what i said earlier thank you okay thanks nicole for clarifying um let's see do teresa do we need i'm seeing something in the chat about maybe we need some clarification about it could you weigh in please yes i'm i'm happy to mayor so as as council is probably aware there's a a go dark period that's triggered once once we take the vote to put these things on the ballot and so to align those dates um i think there are a couple things that need to happen tonight i think anything that is going to be unchanged we want to continue to a future meeting anything that you want to see amended it would be helpful for us to have clear direction so a vote to amend would um a motion and vote to amend would be really helpful so

[188:02] that we can bring those items back to you uh when the others are continued so let me see if i understand what you're saying is that you're saying that we need to do final adoption of all of the ballot measures on the same day so that we have a the same go dark period for all of them and and in order to do that the ones that are getting no modifications we should continue because otherwise they go into effect immediately right now and the ones that need amending we should go ahead and amend on second reading and then bring them back for a third reading at the same time we would consider the continuation the ones that are not being changed you got that exactly right does that make sense to folks i've seen some some a little bit but so i think what it comes down to is if we're going to amend any of these let's get a vote to pass them as amended tonight if if there are any that we are not going to amend um let's just continue

[189:02] i'm sorry mayor of clarification um i i don't think we want to pass them as amended uh i think we just want to know what those amendments are so let me just ask don't we need or you could provide or you could provide direction about how you want them amended i suppose so if we aren't passing them as amended would you bring them back on consent in a week because we still need two more readings right if we're amending them is it two more readings or just one well you need to pass them as as amended and then come back for yet another third reading you know ten days or more later my mistake thank you yeah you'd have that right um yes i'm not the expert on that but i think you all you all are saying it right um and you know what we often do for ballot measures is just bring them for by emergency at the

[190:01] last meeting anyhow just because we run into this and we run into you know people wanting to keep perfecting so we can handle it any way you want to we do have a way to get across the finish line no matter how easy is to set it up now so if you just want to continue them all with directions for what you want changed we will make sure they all are effective when they're supposed to be thanks for clarifying i you know i would i would just say personally i would prefer to not pass things on emergency if we don't need to sometimes have feel differently to community members when you pass things on emergency if it's something they don't agree with so i might i would hope that we could do it in such a way that we that we don't have to do that would be my opinion i think we have time um junior and bob i just have a question or comment again i'm still worried about community and how they're gonna perceive

[191:00] some of the changes that we're making tonight and i think i heard earlier from kathy that the current language in the cu south referendum matches the language in our charter so the changes that we will be making today will they be in line so that's something that i'm concerned with because we can make changes but if it's not something that is supported by the charter then what are we doing here tonight as well right and i'm sorry if i was confusing because i think maybe two concepts were mixed up in there the change that we're talking about making in the ordinance about the cu ballot language is just to the reasons why council is putting this on the ballot so it's section five of the ordinance and i did want to double check to see if the charter required specific language and it does require specific language and ordinances but this is not one of the things so that's why i propose that you can change it rather

[192:01] than public health safety and welfare you're doing it because of constitutional provisions and the charter the other part of your question may be if i'm understanding it right that the actual language that will appear on the ballot we took precisely from the referendum petitions not from the charter okay thank you thanks for clarifying bob yeah aaron i just wanted to agree with you i think what you suggest is the right process i think we should amend tonight anything that's going to be amended um and that way we've kind of button everything down and everyone's kind of where they're going to be and then we'll bring back and i agree with you also on emergency i don't think that's necessary here if we were running out of time emergency might be necessary but i don't think that's the case then we bring all five of these back um at some date in late august or early september when whenever the county clerk says she needs to have this stuff done to us presumably it's all done by consent and i trust my council colleagues that we won't fiddle with these anything anymore after tonight i

[193:00] think we've done a good job of talking these things through and uh rachel and kathy had some good suggestions on some changes i think we're gonna talk about one from matt and let's just get the stuff buttoned down tonight park it come back to it in a couple of weeks and then we'll be done with it thanks bob that makes sense to me mary yeah uh council and so i appreciate the conversations i just wanted to make a couple clarifications i hear from our clerk that ballot items are affected immediately so they do not require to be passed on emergency um and perhaps uh what i would say is we're thinking about the timeline if it seems that there is one um ordinance that that uh particularly the cu south language that is wanting to be amended if you give us direction on that we could perhaps not vote on that we'll continue that second reading on august 18th we have time set aside for that and then do a third reading on september 1st um and then we can uh we can move forward in that direction

[194:00] because we have those 10 days between august 18th and september 1st to come back thanks for that mary just to clarify while while you don't well it won't go into effect immediately you would still need a third reading if you had amended it on second reading right so and the only way around that is to pass by emergency but i think so i think so we still need to allow a past second reading and then 10 days to elapse and then pass on third reading i believe yep if you vote on the amended language tonight though then i think that we can just do that third reading on this on september 1st right or or to your just the point you just made you could bring the language back on consent on the 18th for second reading amended second reading and then we'd still have two weeks before september 1st when we could pass it on third reading it would go into effect immediately and still comply with each other exactly so so this this would be the the suggestion then that i would make to my colleagues um tonight is that we we do

[195:00] a straw poll for um amendments that we would like to see for any particular measures give that direction to staff on those particular ones have them bring back the amended versions and the unamended versions in a week on the 18th on consent because we'll talked it all through tonight we can vote for all of them and you can vote no on the ones you you really don't want to pass through but we we can do it on consent you can pick which ones to go yes or no on and then we would still have two weeks for it to come back for final third readings for the ones that have been amended on september first does that work for everybody okay okay great i'm getting i'm getting odds i'm not seeing any thumbs down so then then let's let's move to can we just get the specific proposals uh for the amendments if we can get those back out on the table for the people who propose them and we'll then we'll straw pull them and rachel will turn to you because you have the first one i believe you want me to pitch my straw poll item

[196:01] just describe it i think maybe a couple sentences and support okay so i'm gonna pull this language back up give me one second um on the ordinance on cu south um i want us to change the language that currently says this ordinance is necessary to protect the public health safety and welfare of the residents of the city and covers matters of local concern to be edited you can leave we would maybe leave in that last clause it sure does cover matters of local concern but insert instead uh language as cathy has suggested that it is a a requirement for us to place it on the ballot or whatever the best language is there kathy do you want to repeat you had good words i think before what those were i did this ordinance is adopted to place this measure on the ballot as required by article 5 section 1 of the colorado constitution and article four of the city charter

[197:01] and covers matters of local concern i just i hadn't read that before just added it for rachel thanks so we take out what's there and substitute what i just read i like it did i need to give any more i think it's good it feels fairly you know self-explanatory to me so let's do a show of hands for people who would like to pursue that amendment right i'm seeing most people almost everybody seven so kathy if you wouldn't mind crafting that amendment for next time okay thank you and and then the next one was i believe kathy you mentioned that you think there needs to be some language changed to correctly get the no indentured servitude right and what it is is changing the last sentence of section 14 and actually maybe i think i might have been disabled you want to see it would it be easier to see it sure if you can specify which ordinance you're talking about please okay i have to first pick the right screen

[198:01] um it's it's 8546 um and it's um on what's on the screen so the one i just read for 85 34. nothing's on your screen yet right no we're seeing it you are oh okay i just can't see that you're seeing it okay so aidan ordinance 8534 is the one that we just did with rachel the change to ordinance 8546 about the indentured servitude is to say that the term of the mayor shall extend until a successor is duly chosen and qualified great so so that's to be clear that it's the term that has to be um that will extend not the person and so the person is not bound to serve the term exactly all right uh show fans for all who'd like to see this change oh lost everybody there that's everybody i think so or almost everybody

[199:02] strong majority anyway um i think the last one was was matt you you were i think you put some language in the chat you want to talk to what you were suggesting uh yes um let's see uh let me share it with kathy and then it can get up there too um i love being able to see it that's the good stuff versus talking through the language right email or what it is coming through the chat so it's just straight off the top boom okay there it is um so i'll just sort of describe um as was sort of described earlier in article 3 section 22 we define um regular municipal elections um as um you know basically uh as being aligned with state ballot elections and so since we define it as such i feel that in the current language it's

[200:00] helped to be really clear to the voter that we're not just changing to any part of the even year now granted in the ordinance it states that but it's better to be as explicit in the question rather than letting them have to read further to know what exactly they're getting so instead of just any time in an even year we're stating very explicitly that it is aligning with um the state and federal and i know i want to be conscious about any sort of extemporaneous and sort of other types of language and that's why this was sort of crafted not to do that and so the way it is the way i was really adapting it was to say uh shall sections 5 14 and 24 of the homeworld charter be amended to change the regular municipal election to align with the state and federal election dates beginning in 2026 and then effectively leave the language pretty much as is i mean i was using the word shorten kathy was saying implemented the transition by reducing the terms that stuff to me is is mostly the same the important part was getting rid of specifically saying even years

[201:01] and saying that no no we're this is to align with state and federal which implicitly is even years um and so that way it's a lot more clear to the electorate um but also consistent with how we define regular municipal elections in our charter so kathy interested you do want to thanks for that matt appreciate you explaining it cathy interested you want to weigh in on on that at all thoughts on that we have brought up that are concerned that well one we're not we're not going along with the federal election dates um they are at the same time but we're doing we're specifically saying and the reason for this is it used to be that some charters said that elections are the first tuesday in november and a lot of other places it said they're the first tuesday after the first monday so there are some years where those were two different dates so it was very confusing so that's why we're saying it the same date as the state ballot issue so that if we ever

[202:00] have you know the first of the month on a wednesday that we have everybody's having their election on the same tuesday in november even though it's not the first tuesday after the first monday so that's why we did that language so we can change it to say that we're the date we're changing it to is the same date as the state ballot issue election can't say we're doing it i i'm concerned that saying because of it or in order to or anything else gets to the arguments for or against so that was our concern that by saying we are doing this for the purpose of getting to the same estate or federal is an argument for or against so if you want to say we're doing it on the same date as a state ballot issue so we don't have numbers elections on two tuesdays in november we can do that so kathy if i can respond there so you're saying that

[203:00] you would feel comfortable if you said should we something on the order should we change it to the same november date as the state elections right just yeah exactly the same way that it is in the charter amendment itself matt what do you feel about that particular approach oh i mean it gets it gets us closer um i i don't i i'm not a lawyer so i i using the word align to me seems pretty a line seems benign uh pardon the rhyme there um i know yeah it's 9 19. i gotta have a little levity um so so i i if that's somehow a pro con word so be it i don't see how it could possibly be construed as much other than its shock talking about functionally what it is it's alignment um so i so yeah i would be okay if we found something along those lines just so that we made sure we were connecting the dots on that i'd love to get some thoughts of other colleagues that were interested in this kind of modification with what

[204:01] they feel on it but i think that does get us closer to being clear to the voters if we can state that that's aligned with state um the federal has to be stripped out because of some funky definition so be it uh nicole and then i'll i'll call him myself yeah i was just i was just gonna say that um the language that kathy is suggesting um sounds sounds just fine to me i think just making it you know crystal clear we're talking about the same tuesday as the state um elections so anyway just wanted to give give support to what kathy is saying here yeah i'll call on myself here that matt i i appreciate where you're going so i think it's good to go in that direction i would i would use the the language the roughly the language that kathy would propose to make sure we're following along with the guidelines see generally some nodding so matt are you okay if we modify your proposal as as kathleen suggested

[205:01] yeah i i trust the the professional wordsmiths to figure out the right way as long as you know we add sort of where we're headed i'd love to sort of see how that gets massaged in place so i know word sniffing alive is always fraught with trouble so um i'll trust teresa and gaffy to figure out the right way to make that work so thank you great uh ginny yeah no i i just wanted to add a thought that these amendments are coming back anyway right next next week next thursday so none of them are final so we're just given knots to go forward bringing you know not to staff to make these amendments but bring both versions back so maybe next tuesday we might look at it and change our minds and go back to the original exactly thanks for clarifying ginny yep that's right very good which is the i think the good thing about the approach that we're taking so i appreciate that and tris and others guiding us to this uh approach so uh so all all in let's do a straw poll here then uh all in favor of the change

[206:01] mat is suggesting as as as altered by captain with her proposed approach all right we've got seven i think there for that so good support for that too all right did um did anybody have any other proposed changes to these all right lauren and we i don't know exactly how this fits in but the yeah just the change around potentially doing allowing people to vote for five seats if a city council member was running for the mayoral seat as part of eight eight five four zero but if that adds a new section or causes too much complication at this point in the process um

[207:02] so lauren if you don't mind me just responding the the concern i would have about doing that now is that that might have implications for the county clerk and how they make the balance so that they might say oh sure that's no problem or they might say oh whoa that's a big problem so i would worry about moving that forward without betting it with the counterpart that's fair i'm not trying to suppress your idea i'm just that's can i kind of call it qui a little bit um somewhat related is there's there's a few items that have are kind of left on the table regarding election stuff that that we we will probably in some form have to come back to down the road and so i think it's i'd certainly love to just ask my council colleagues if there's an interest in the next year or so lifting up another an election committee to kind of address some of those right we talked

[208:00] about a blue ribbon for fair pay i think we will have to address this perhaps some of this uh balanced signature pieces um when we get there so so i i and this might be a piece certainly with nicole or sorry with lauren's point that that's maybe something with a little bit more review might be worth considering down the road and certainly maybe if you're interested in proportional representations i think there's a slurry of things that i think might be helpful to get a a group together to really help um give us some some insight and so i just want to make sure for everybody that there's a way we can package some of these pieces that aren't to be dealt with tonight but can certainly be shifted into sort of a large package of asks from a working group to help give us some guidance thanks i guess i just turned to murray a little bit like i think that sounds like a great idea but we probably aren't making that decision tonight i would hope not i think that's one of those decisions that i would say is not on the work plan and depending on what the scope we would come back and have a an appropriate nod but i certainly take

[209:01] note of it and i i believe that we can talk about it in the future in that vein i know i'm the i'm the downer of it all right nicole the voice of reality nuria thank you um i just wanted to say i i think for right now i'm not supportive of making um that kind of change um at almost 9 30 at night not not sort of having really thought about it all that much i i do think you know this is something it's future councils can take a whack at this too right if we head down a path and it's just not not working um anyway this feels like it's it's in good shape to me lauren are you all right if we come back to this at some future day rather than moving forward tonight yeah okay thanks all right well so we're i think we're about done here it's a little bit underwhelming because we're not actually going to vote

[210:00] on anything tonight um but just to be clear again here's what we're looking at we've got three of these items that have minor amendments that will be coming back to us in a week with specific language to implement those minor amendments we will at that time vote they'll come back on consent because we've all talked it through already if we if we think the amendments weren't quite done right we can bring it up and talk it through at that time if they just look great we'll vote on those on the consent agenda and again if for those council members who do not like any one of those they can vote no on the consent agenda on those items at that time then two weeks after that on september 1st all of the ballot measures will come back to us for final adoption um and just in time uh not by emergency just in time to move them on to the county clerk in a timely fashion and again you'll have the opportunity to vote now if you so choose on any of them does that work for everybody

[211:02] great cheerson mayor um i would suggest that this time you entertain a motion to continue the okay we got a motion in a second um all in favor just raise your hands for this one i think yeah is that right alicia yeah it'll be a roll call when we get there but continuation is to show that okay thanks for um well let me just say i really appreciate all the community members coming to speak to us about this and all the people who helped shape this policy as we move it forward and that was a very productive discussion everyone and that got a little complicated at the end and i admire how you all moved through it productively so big thanks to everybody all right we have one other thing so um rachel you had sent something out on email it was it was past cac so we didn't amend the agenda i don't know if

[212:00] we have an action item here but if you want to um just mention what you're thinking we can talk about we'll make another pitch um so at the retreat we gave as one of our work plan items to [Music] develop a day shelter and day services for the city of boulder for people experiencing homelessness and as part of that we um greenlit doing engagement with stakeholders and at the time um i had asked that we maybe include one to two council members as participants in that stakeholder work group and and i just found out over the weekend that that work group was coming together and already scheduling meetings so um i talked to kurt a bit about you know how would we maybe include council members and i see vicky's got her camera off but knowing that the dates are i want to say like two weeks out and maybe maybe not during work days i just wanted to flag it and see what we wanted to do for

[213:02] getting people assigned from council to that i don't know i don't know if it's a subcommittee i don't know what the formal i'd probably turn to theresa for that question what the formal mechanism is but i think that it would be open to the public and anybody could watch but in terms of participants i think we need to um designate probably by another five or a vote i forget so if it's yeah who would who would be participating in that and i'm hoping vicky can tell us the dates and we can see who's even available and who's interested great and so let me say as i'm gonna go to vicky for a quick status update and then i'm gonna check in on what we're allowed to do tonight without a formal agenda item so um so vicky if you don't want to give us a success and thank you for staying with us tonight for to weigh in on us i really appreciate it thank you um good late evening um vic gibner hhs senior operations manager um thank you rachel for bringing that to the forefront um

[214:01] we are moving ahead with a consultant um the consultant is doing a matrix of services that help us gather stakeholder input there are two of that matrix there there are two meetings that are geared toward a variety of stakeholders um and they will be open to the public and so the the consultant has two dates identified and we would love to know uh which council members would like to be invited to those meetings the first one is on the 24th of august from 5 to 6 15 and the second one is on the 25th of august from 12 p.m to 1 15 p.m thanks for that vicki and and then um i think we can talk this through a little bit tonight but maybe teresa could weigh in like are we allowed to designate anybody tonight given that

[215:00] this wasn't a formal agenda item or how would this work or maybe nuria whoever's the right person to address that um i'll defer to teresa i mean my thought is these are meetings that are open to the public the question is if there are one or two council members and and frankly rachel this is a a great reminder as we're now tracking some of the items that have come up um we had this was an oversight on our part as we were thinking about it post-retreat so appreciate you bringing it to our attention and thinking about if there are uh one or two council members who want to be formally invited to participate i don't know what you've done in the past in terms of taking a vote or if that's a nod of of uh five to move that forward the way it's been um it's been entitled i don't know that we

[216:00] need a formal subcommittee um to form it versus who are the one or two members who want to move forward in participating in if you do have two members i think it automatically becomes a subcommittee which means that any meeting at which you are coming forward then that becomes a designated public meeting that needs to be noticed and so i want to note that as well although and then procedurally i'll just add that in our council procedure rules under agenda items matters from the mayor and members of council um include appointments of boards and commissions uh and so i would i would say that that this falls in line with those sorts of things so you all can take formal action great okay and i'll just say that like in i think in the past when when council members have been invited to attend by

[217:01] staff that has been deemed not the formation of a formal subcommittee um so i think that's a little bit different if it takes that form anyway so maybe what we could do rachel is look and see if one or two council members are interested in participating because i for one would welcome council members getting involved if they would like to so does anybody want to raise a hand and say they're interested yeah i got rachel and i got nicole we got matt uh okay so we got we got three people um and then i'll say to i'll turn to vicky i think if we're if we're dead i feel i think if we designate two people i think we're going to need open meetings here is do you feel like that would be an impediment to the work that you're doing on that committee to have it you know on a zoom meeting versus you know that's publicly noticed you know i i think that there are i mentioned there was a matrix of

[218:00] different things that we're doing there are some separate meetings that are really targeted to the service providers that are likely to be providing these services um and those are really focused on on the components of any kind of sheltering um any kind of services um and in that it's it's a bit of a controlled population on that one um and then there's also a lot of work that's being done to get the voice of people who with lived experience separate from a meeting situation so there's lots of surveys and interviews that are happening and so i think these two particular meetings if they're open for public um even if you go through a notice process i don't necessarily think that it would harm the overall product and i i certainly would love to see the business these sorts of things done in public regardless i'm glad to hear that we've got rachel and nicole yeah i'm just gonna say um i i strongly support public no matter the outcome as

[219:02] well um and a question i um was told that the time was something different that the some of the providers had different times it would than what you stated vicki so i just want to make sure that we're doing um apples to apples i i wrote down from what you said august 24th 5 to 6 15 but other i think some people were told august 24th 2 to 3 15 so i want to make sure that we i don't know if that's like uh that's the service provider meeting that i was talking about that it organizations such as um mother house or any other particular sheltering type of organization um or service providers that might be housed within the service center um have been invited to those meetings the the times i gave you were specific to the public stakeholder meetings okay i guess i would think that we would want to be included because those are

[220:00] those are you know stakeholder meetings where they're going to be talking about some nuts and bolts and i would i would have thought that whoever participates would be involved in those too so maybe that's a uh i don't know if it's a question for us are you and kurt um yeah so i'll just add this i mean just to think about and again we although it's coming up soon um we can have further conversation of it the consultant i believe has advised that the provider meetings really be private that they provide some space um for the provider community to really and vicki correct me if i'm wrong in this um to really have some candid conversations of what that's moving forward and that would be preferable as we move that forward if we have council members on it we just need to know that that then becomes public and that will change what our consultant has as well as this moving forward there are broader conversations to be had with community and certainly council members can participate in their

[221:01] individual capacity as well although it still has the same rules it would be considered a public meeting and so um vicki just let me know if i've gotten anything wrong in that now i think that that's right the the consultant wanted some targeted meetings really to take advantage of the expertise of some of these service providers they know what the gaps are in the community they know what their staffs are capable of taking on um and and so really wanted to have some of those focused meetings okay okay um council participation only in the ones that are sort of recommended to be public uh i mean maybe um i also wonder if we could just get you know information on all the you know all the times it might be relevant and then it would be like people who are interested could block it off on their

[222:00] calendars and then we could um notice this for next week as something that we're going to decide on because then tara would be back too and i have a feeling she she might be a fourth that would raise her hand and we wouldn't be excluding her from this discussion vicky you're muted i presume i was toggling between screens um i was just going to say that i presume that we can offer up all the the timeline and the kind of meetings that we're going to have and what that looks like um so that we can have a different kind of conversation next week absolutely and of course everything that's coming out of these sessions we will be uh putting together in a report uh we where our goal is the september first meeting uh with our annual homelessness update obviously we'll be a little premature to have a formal report but we can at least provide council with some of the feedback that we've gotten and then the consultant will be putting together a

[223:00] full report with all of the information that's included that we'll make sure that council receives great thanks so i'm hearing an updated request to get get all the exact times and dates and things like that and then all of us we could check back in on this again next week with that additional information to finish this out is that right rachel great um nicole did chips and else there yeah um i just had just a couple questions and which is first of all a comment that um if i'm remembering from our january discussion at the retreat um i think when we had talked about this we really had envisioned a council member or two being present um throughout the meetings um and i think the other thing we were looking for was the list of the providers who were going to be um participating um in this but i think what i'm mostly interested in at this point is what are the providers interested in you know would they like to have a discussion that that's just them because if that's the case then i i kind of feel like it

[224:00] may be good for us to stay out of it i'm also just thinking about meetings that i've been in where there's been kind of a a group discussion and then some other folks kind of come in at the end so just as another alternative for how this you know could potentially be done if the providers would like to be there and the consultants saying no no it really needs to be just a provider conversation um anyway and then i think my other question was if there's just one of us there does it have to be public still no if it's just one then it doesn't have to be public at all and so um i i would be you know i trust you all i would be willing to um step out and and not be present um if that could help the uh help it be a little bit better but i think um when we had talked about it at least i had not sort of envisioned this as like we would be actively participating in the discussion um just more sort of present so that one of us would have the information um that's that's being discussed so i don't know if that made it clear or not but

[225:00] other alternatives and me just offering to step back if that can help make um make it be not public thanks rachel um i appreciate those points nicole i you know i guess it seems to me like it's going to be i always like things to be transparent in public so generally that's going to be better and we're also going to get better buy-in if people don't feel like we are having secret meetings so i would i would just encourage us to to be public and also just sort of in in stepping back a little bit and and i'm just hearing for the first time sort of how siloed some of this sounds and i don't know if that's a harsh word or not but want to make sure that individuals with lived experiences will be inside each of those silos so the consultants talk to some of the different outreach people and based on some of their previous experience felt that it would be

[226:01] way more comfortable for people experiencing lift experience to not be in a group situation not to be put on the spot in front in a major public meeting they thought that it would be easier for the people with lived experience to be participatory in a series of interviews and surveys and real genuine one-on-one conversations but and i i can get that but there maybe could still be a representative of you know someone with lived experience at like the providers meetings i would have to double check but i believe one of the providers meetings has a service provider who has also happens to have some lived experience included okay matt and then maybe super wrapped up here i just since i had raised my hand in

[227:01] interest but i will i i want to clearly defer to the uh knowledge and expertise uh and full trust in nicole and rachel to handle whether it's two or one um my pulling my name out doesn't change my life my interest in this i is still very much there but very capable hand so you don't need to know to worry about filling two with three people it's between the two of them and we can sort that out going forward so just want to be clear on that thanks man got a bunch of team players here you love to see it okay well so i guess we will hear more next week get some or maybe some information in the interim and then touch back to it can i just say mayor and i and i don't want to um i don't want to belabor the point i don't want to abscribe um uh ill um or or erroneous um intent in in saying this but i just want to be very clear that the intent is not to be not

[228:01] transparent honestly the intent is to provide a avenue and a forum for candor on issues that are [Music] complex and difficult and are often very personal as we move forward and we are [Music] certainly open to continuing conversations with providers continuing certainly conversations with those with living experience and with our consultant to make sure that we're trying to create a forum and an environment for good dialogue and conversation it is never an intent to have lack of transparency or background meetings and so i just um i just want to say that out loud because i don't want folks to go away with the notion that we're trying to hide anything as much as really thinking about um how do we get the most open expression of what is happening and i realize that we may all differ on how that moves forward and that there is also

[229:00] power in shedding light and and opening meetings and we try to do that very much as a city but we also want to be paying particular attention to um perhaps some of the comments from our consultant and our provider community who have expressed that they'd like an opportunity to engage um in not so much of a public setting or an and or as that goes forward in the future understood all right thanks for clarifying but yeah i don't think anybody thought anyone was trying to hide things but it's important to clarify okay uh so i think that brings us to the end of our agenda and our plus one agenda item uh alicia we have anything else we need to address no sir that's a wrap good any final comments from anybody seeing none i'll go ahead and gavel us close at 9 45 p.m have a good night everybody thanks for being here everyone good night

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