October 13, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[4:51] Thursday October 13th and welcome to the special meeting of the Boulder City Council I'm Rachel friend I'm filling in for mayor Brockett tonight and next week

[5:00] so um buckle up and have a little fun with this and we're going to start with a few announcements um and I believe we have slides great thanks uh so first is covid-19 testing and vaccinations for information on covid-19 either getting tested or getting free vaccines you can go to boco.org covet testing and we are still doing drive-through at stazio Drive in Boulder seven days a week eight to six so please get tested if you need it and then next slide Juni we all heard that yawn this is gonna be a long night lady I feel your pain um okay the next slide is um we are returning to council chambers we welcomed um community members back last week for the first time so we will be in Chambers on the first and third Thursdays for our business meetings so for example next week we will be in Chambers and with the public being back

[6:01] in Chambers we wanted to remind you that we are now offering the public to participate both virtually and in person as options and either way you need to sign up in advance and there will be no in-person sign ups available during the meeting so that's a little bit changed from or that has changed from from prior to the coveted protocol so you need to sign up in advance even if you're in Chambers you will be asked to indicate on the open comment and public hearing sign up forms if you will be speaking virtually or in person and in-person speakers will go first and virtual speakers will go next um all speakers will be listed in the order in which they signed up and you can change your location preference if you need to by emailing Elisha our city clerk at city clerk's office at Boulder colorado.gov anytime before the start of the meeting and I think that's it for announcements so with that Elisha call the order and roll call yes ma'am thank you and good evening

[7:00] everyone we'll start this roll call with councilmember Benjamin present councilmember falkerts president mayor Pro tem friend here councilmember Joseph president spear present Wallach right here Winer here and games virtually present and for the record mayor Brockett is absent so mayor Pro tem we have our quorum thanks Delicia um next I was going to ask for an a motion to agend and amend the agenda um to add item 5A but I would like to withdraw that request to avoid some um kind of process drama so can I just strike the request no motion to move on might be a question to the city attorney's office yes uh Aaron Poe Deputy City attorney yes if you'd like

[8:00] to strike that we could move on okay striking so I think that takes us to consent agenda that is correct ma'am tonight's consistent excuse me consent agenda consists of one item two a and that is the consideration of a motion to approve resolution 1318 indicating the city of Boulder's support for 1A 1B 1C and 3A measures appearing on the 2022 November City ballot thanks Elisha Bob you have a question yeah I just um not so much of a question just have a maybe a comment or a statement or a suggestion um I know we took a straw poll on this a week or two ago and and I respect that straw poll and I don't want to relitigate or revisit that um there's a couple things that have happened since then however I just wanted to call it everyone's attention um the kind of Commissioners I think met on Tuesday if I remember correctly and um decided with with one exception not

[9:00] to endorse City ballot measures um they did endorse our climate tax which I was happy about but they did not endorse other City ballot measures and then I understand that the school board met I think last night and they decided not to um endorse the library tax Library District um so there's kind of some cross jurisdictional endorsements that are happening or in this case not happening actually um as I said before we took our struggle last week I don't think that cross jurisdictional endorsements are particularly helpful or good um I think we should kind of stay in our own lanes and put forward what we're going to put forward and support those things um and let the other governmental entities support their things and so I just wanted to in light of those things that happened this week I just wanted to maybe revisit with my colleagues on Council whether we still want to do this if people want someone to do it that's fine I think there's going to be some abstentions tonight I will certainly hope stain from taking a position one or the other on these County and School Board measures but in light of the developments for the last two days I want to just kind of check in with

[10:01] people to see if they still want to do these things I think I predict that that um endorsements if they happen are going to be somewhat um less than unanimous and and maybe less helpful than than unanimous endorsements and so I just want to focus to reflect on that thanks thanks Bob um is it okay if I ask um Chris if we have a staff presentation on this and and then we'll get to maybe a a straw poll for interest in in voting on this still will that work for you for your request Bob yeah that'd be great thanks so much all right Chris is our presentation on us and Rachel no we do not have a presentation on this item all right thanks so and it's on consent agenda so um ordinarily there would not be uh discussion unless someone asked for it it would be my understanding um so maybe let's just go right then to to Bob's um kind of straw poll show of hands or would anyone like to uh

[11:01] have more comment before we do that looks like markwood yeah um as a individual member of the city council I I do support these but I'm troubled by taking official positions on it I would prefer uh if we could express our views as individual members as opposed to as a body um so I think I'm probably going to abstain as well although making note of the fact that I do support these on an individual basis thanks Nicole um yeah I was just gonna say since we already had sort of discussed this I wonder if just kind of going to the vote is the appropriate way to move forward here I appreciate that I think what Bob's suggesting this maybe been a change in circumstance by actions taken by uh County and school board that that elevates this to wanting another check-in is that about it Bob

[12:01] let's summarize it yeah it's a bill of counsel if if folks want to just go to a vote that's fine that the chips will fall where they may I just wanted folks to have a sense of of how um the ultimate vote might go there was about if if it doesn't matter to people you know how many affirmative votes or negative votes or obsessions there are then that's perfectly fine I just wanted to I didn't want anybody to be um uh blindsided yeah that's fair um Tara I just wanted to agree with Mark I I when I abstain I don't want people to think it's not because I don't think that these are great ballot measures but more because I don't feel like um I feel like people can ask me personally but I don't I'm not that excited about having accounts and majority about these things that are out of our purview okay Junior and then I have a question for um city attorney's office thank you I just have a comment to make I think we everybody know s

[13:01] you may not fully understand what you're thinking about can everybody else your Junior maybe elaborate Gina you're kind of maybe um take the video off and see if we can hear you better yeah no thank you I think what happened on the school board is something that you know maybe not everyone who's watching here tonight is aware of so maybe elaborating a little bit more would be helpful thank you thanks um Matt and then a quick question Aaron and then maybe Bob you can um kind of give Junie some more information uh well I I think this is this is leadership this is where we as elected leaders lead we should be advocating has a body let with it let the crumbs fall where they may in terms of who votes for what but this is where we lead this is where we show our leadership to the community about where we find these

[14:01] synergies and connection points between issues that are between us or the county or or bvsd we are one large you know symbiotic ecosystem we have to be able to do that and and and and play in the abstain and not not weighing in I I think is an abdication of our responsibility to to to actually weigh in I mean otherwise doing the one-off thing to me that just it it's not why we're here we're here to advocate for what's better for our community and and if there's things like at bdsd in the county that are better for our community then we should be advocating as such and do so as a body thanks Matt um Aaron when if I've heard several people mention abstention can you tell how that will work in this context of a consent agenda what will that vote convert to under the charter section 16 uh should any council member being present refuse to vote on any measure said members vote should be recorded in the affirmative so

[15:01] I believe that's the section that would apply okay so I just wanted to clarify for I think for people who abstain that's going to convert to a yes vote um so for what that's worth um and then are we still okay with uh will you let me know Aaron if if this if we're doing something uh out of bounds for consent by through discussion continuing yes okay it's unusual but not prohibited okay great um okay so um Juni had asked if someone could explain what happened at the school board I cannot I don't know if um a staff member knows or if that if that's Bob's to answer I did not watch the school board proceedings I was just reported that it was a four to three vote and they decided not so somebody made a motion to endorse the library district um ballot measure which I think is 6C and on a four three vote the school district um School Board rather um voted not to sustain it and um but I don't have all

[16:01] the details about what each of the school um board members said you know in response to Matt you know I get I get what you're saying about as far as leadership um but we are we are drawing smart official lines I guess we're going by the county lines because there's a whole bunch of State ballot measures that we're not weighing in on um you know there's a lot of um races at the state level of governor and state legislatures in some sorts we I just don't know where we draw the line it seems to me that because we're Boulder City Council we draw the line of the boulder State limits and we start going out to school board and then we go out to to the county and then maybe we should do this date or maybe we shouldn't do this date and it it seems to me it's a little bit arbitrary there and so um I'd rather I'd rather focus on the issues that are City issues and let the school board advocate for their issues and the County advocate for their issues and the state advocate for their issues that's just the we're just wrong we don't disagree we're just Drawing the Line in a different place thanks Bob um

[17:00] including state state um ballot measures not individual races but ballot measures so um I'm I'm comfortable doing so because I think that um often the community does look to elected leadership to to sort of signal um where they are and help to interpret the different ballot measures so with that if there's no uh although Bob I appreciate your dead consistent on this at all times um so um with that let's do a I think straw poll for who would like to um take a vote on the consent agenda and can and as scheduled vote on the County ballot measures show hands I've got Nicole Lauren me Matt juny's at a hand up I think yes um and I and so it's that's five that's a majority and I will say that uh mayor Brockett had emailed uh ahead of time

[18:01] his support as well so it's kind of five plus um so with that I think we would need a motion for the consent agenda foreign agenda second thanks Alicia I think this is a roll call that is correct ma'am we'll start this roll call tonight um for the consent agenda with council member fogerts yes made pro tem friend yes council member Joseph yes yes spear yes Wallach trying to abstain whiner

[19:05] Terry you're on mute yeah okay thanks foreign yes the consent agenda item 2A is hereby approved thanks Alicia thanks everyone for um giving me a rocky start to my first two weeks Dent here is sub mayor really appreciate that you did help Rachel and thank you for commentating me I appreciate it no problem Bob um okay so with that I believe we're on to our public hearings but back over to Elisha thank you ma'am tonight's uh item number three on the agenda is our public hearings item three a is the input on proposed 2023 policy statement on

[20:02] regional state and federal issues and I'm happy to introduce our chief policy advisor Carl Castillo uh and Laura Witt assistant City attorney and they are going to kick off this annual conversation that we have on our policy statement so Carl take it away great thank you Chris I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and I began a PowerPoints give me one moment here okay great are you all seeing the slide okay great well good evening uh mayor Pro tem friend and City Council Members um as Chris said I'm Carl Castillo Chief policy advisor for the city of voter and I enjoying this evening by this assistant City attorney Laurel Witt

[21:04] um this evening we're going to give you a presentation and the goals of it will be to propose the revisions to the 2022 policy statement and uh or the changes from 2022 to 2023 specifically there'll be principles positions and priorities that we're proposing and I'll be talking about those here shortly we'll be looking for direction to finalize a 2023 policy statement and ultimately we're preparing Council to participate in regional state and federal advocacy in 2023 one example of an advocacy opportunity that the entire Council will have is the legislative breakfast that's scheduled for December 13th so in terms of the purpose of the policy statement um you all know but I'll go over it anyway it's to inform the city's actions

[22:02] on specific policy proposals as they go forward it allows the city to have a quick response the shape policy before the government's where decisions are being made and to be nimble in doing so and then in terms of the governments that we will actually be advocating before its Regional governments such as Dr cogg RTD and the Rocky Point Stewardship Council it's the state both the executive branch and the general assembly and it's the federal government both executive legislative and judicial in terms of amicus briefs which we we are grouping amicus briefs more under the advocacy side advocacy side rather than um a purely legal matter so I want to introduce the advocacy team so it is Laurel and myself it is also Adam mikeberg and will Coyne from Headwater strategies are not able

[23:01] to be here tonight I think most of you've seen them and heard of their presentation before it also includes our federal lobbyist Brett Carson and Christian Chen and ultimately it's it's our Council so it's all of you um so this is um kind of the core advocacy team that is going to be advocating for what is included in the policy statement it also includes many departments and I was almost tempted to put in the individual names of the people who are very actively involved but I did include the Departments who are mostly involved in advocacy and this this really is a substantial amount of work in terms of uh using their expertise to conduct analysis drafting Coalition work testifying so when you think of the policy statement and who's who's behind it it's always helpful to think about

[24:01] this as being very much a team effort my job is to coordinate it and try to be the the center of the Hub in terms of communications but it's a lot of people and there's a lot of expertise um so that's just something I wanted to mention likewise we are not uh just advocating on our own we are members of many intergovernmental organizations such as the ones that are listed here on your screen and each one of them is a force on their own in fact they're more forceful because they are made up of a variety of local governments and so as members and active members of these organizations we often have the opportunity to help shape the agenda of these organizations and most of them have their advocacy team and lobbyists so it allows us to really leverage uh basically our positions and to to use these coalitions to work with these

[25:00] coalitions to really Advance our agenda in as effective of a way as we can so um in terms of the recommended changes there are um as I mentioned there's principles which is a new category I'll describe that there's there's 15 position changes that I'll be recommending I won't cover them all I'll just cover the highlights and then there is the state policy priorities and the federal policy priorities which are the perhaps most important ones that you should focus on in terms of what you all should expect to see um accomplished by the end of the year so let me start off with policy principles and these are these are new to the policy statement I I would see these as overarching tenants or values that inform all the cities in our governmental advocacy efforts and our first one is equity in racial Justice this was previously

[26:01] worded as a policy position but frankly it applies to everything we do so we thought it was important to move it to a principle I wanted to make number one because we we know that this is incredibly important for the sitting for the city council so the wording that you have here um was proposed and was run by the intergovernmental Affairs committee and uh supported we also um at the at the direction of the intergovernmental Affairs committee ran it by our community connectors they were very happy with it but they asked that we add this language so with that language I'll read what it what it would read now which is acknowledge and seek to dismantle institutional and systemic racism and prioritize voices experiences interests and needs of communities that have been historically excluded I recognize that this is short but that's kind of the way as you'll see these policy princes principles are

[27:01] being worded um the second one is a recognition that when we engage in advocacy we are doing so with recognition that we are part of a um a team of local governments that we will work with for a long time and we would like to support them when we can this is something that's come up in the past where at times there's been a bill where the city had limited interests um but our Council said it was very important that they be seen as being a regional player so collaboration is something that I know that I always try to uh make parent Paramount in the advocacy efforts is is to make sure that we're we're playing the long game and maintaining the relationships and enhancing them as we need to local control is an important one again this was the position and this is one that many of you have asked about um generally speaking as a as a matter of default

[28:00] um we seek to protect local control and home of authority this is kind of of a given that our city council would like to retain the ability to make decisions for the city of Boulder and not yield that Authority however there have certainly been times when our Council has said that they would like to yield the authority and perhaps the one perhaps one of the best examples is in the area of climate change where we um we of course recognize that climate change does not recognize local borders and that it's essential that there be perhaps a floor if not a ceiling at the state and federal level so that's what this position is about what's important to note here is while we're indicating support for local control it also indicates that if there's any other place in the policy statement or any other position that Council has made known that is Inc that is in inconsistent with protecting local control uh staff and the advocacy team

[29:01] will always yield to that and so in other words we're not going to be dogmatic about protecting local control we'll always recognize there are times that we need to yield and finally this just should go without saying but the city will support uh seeking resources for local programs um and uh so when we apply for federal funding or state funding or help advocate for a bill that creates new sources of funding the one caveat is that we have always said that we will not be advocating for new funding if it's merely just shifting funding away from K-12 pre-k through 12 higher ed things like that that are just as important to the city so we don't want to engage in that game or undermining our very important Regional partners so those are the proposed policy principles all of them are new and what's in red as I said is is suggested change from what was in your memo

[30:00] um the first um policy position change that I want to highlight has to do with urban forestry we've spoken about this before it's part of an existing position the main change that you see is to indicate that we were successful in getting funding for the U.S forest Service in fact we have gotten uh 1.5 billion dollars that have been included in the inflation reduction act specifically for urban forestry which is a huge success and we all know that Urban forests are probably the most impactful things that cities can do to build resilience in the face of climate change and extreme temperatures trees can lower Urban temperatures by 10 degrees so what we propose to change this position is to indicate that now the goal is to secure this funding and to make sure that we do so in a way that is um

[31:00] is is recognizing that that we can just be one city among many in the U.S that is seeking funding for urban forestry or we can be a leader which um I can tell you Brett can Karen from the climate admissions Department very much as leading an effort here to make sure that we coordinate among our local government Partners to do so to find out what the best trees are to plant so that we can do that in a coordinated and informed way and make sure there's applied research that informs that effort and to make sure that there is a um an equity-centered Workforce program where we can have people that essentially and the economies of scale of having a program that is not just unique to the city but one that perhaps is throughout the Front Range that provides jobs and that recognizes that Equity needs to be at the Forefront of both who gets a job as well as where we plant these trees so

[32:03] we know that people who are who do not have the advantage of going into an air-conditioned office or an air-conditioned home or have to be outside for extended periods of times these are the folks that need to make sure that we have Urban canopies in their neighborhoods where they reside where they spend time so that is when I think about Equity centered um part of the how we would hope to get there um this is one of our prior proposed priorities I thought it was important to policy art and explain that with a little bit of detail the next policy position change is just to recognize that there have been numerous attempts to prevent local governments from prohibiting or otherwise trying to strengthen our communities or our ability of our community to shift away from the use of natural gas we all know that natural gas is a potent greenhouse gas and

[33:01] ultimately we will need to make this shift there's a lot of uh issues we will have to wrestle with there but we think that they are ones that local government should be able to wrestle with and not have any prohibition from the state government um so for this next one I'd like to turn it over to Laurel Witt and Laurel if you've had a chance to unmute your microphone if you could explain these changes great thank you so much Carl um hopefully you guys can hear me uh just wanted to talk a little bit about um policy position number 22 which is on page 36 of your packet um this particular policy statement was not very Broad and didn't have a lot of um helpful stuff for things like funding so we thought this position statement could be expanded a little bit to include some things that you see here on this screen including increased funding for Supportive Services and permanent housing options these are things that the city has tried to do in the past and so it seems like something that we should memorialize in this policy statement

[34:01] additionally you'll see some proposals to address those who often use our services frequently if those proposals provide Broad and systematically beneficial changes and that brought in systematic medical changes is something that we talked about about a little bit in our in our committee meeting just to talk about making sure that this covers all of those who need services and I will hand it back to you Carl for the next all right thank you Laurel uh so moving on to the next one let's see if my there we go um so I know Council and the city are engaged in a uh exploration it's more than an exploration it's we're beginning the uh a pilot program a guaranteed income and I had an opportunity to speak with Elizabeth Crowe and she mentioned that one of the challenges with doing so is that by providing this guaranteed income to individuals there are times when we

[35:01] could actually cause them to lose current benefits and of course we want to design this to supplement not replace existing benefits and the benefit that comes to mind is snap or not otherwise previously known as food stamps so the position that is being proposed here above all else is that we make sure by seeking waivers on the income ceiling eligibility for any basic needs Assistance programs and it's important to note that I believe Denver and uh it's not just Denver I'm sure other cities as well are pursuing this so we're hoping to find a coalition of local governments uh that can work at the state level I think this might be something that could be done administratively if not it will be legislatively and if it needs a federal action we would uh seek that as well but we think ultimately that there should be a way for the city to work with helping people with this

[36:02] guaranteed income without causing them to lose benefits it also indicates a support for the federal expanded child of tax credit which existed in 2021 it was lifted as um I gotta apologize my little my little windows are overlapping what I'm trying to read on the screen here um it was lifted and um before doing so it was it had helped an estimated four million people out of poverty so hugely beneficial and inconsistent consistent with um a local cash assistance program so that's why we put it there um Laurel I'll turn it back to you to speak about gun violence great so earlier this year as you all know Council adopted several measures related to the Friendship of gun violence and this particular policy statement needed to be or position needed to be updated to reflect some of those changes

[37:02] um this position statement is divided into two like subsections the first one is things that we would support the state doing and then things that we would oppose to stay doing so the changes we made were in the supporting category here as you can see one of the things that Council adopted in the list of ordinances related to open carry prohibition so we went ahead and mirrored that in positions that we or at the city May support related to gun violence prevention which is open carry prohibitions um so you'll see that change reflected here thanks Laurel uh so the next one here is coin air restoring queen air to Colorado a huge priority for Council I would say for everybody in Colorado and uh this was something that we had before but we wanted to expand on it and um decided that this is long enough that I would take the time to create some animated arrows here to focus one by one the first example of how we would like to pursue

[38:01] Queen and era in Colorado through policy change is to make sure that the state strengthens its regulations and permitting and enforcement of high polluters um CD PhD the Colorado Department of Public Health and environments did receive money to do justice uh in in the session that earlier this this year so now it's a question of making sure that they Implement um and use that money to actually um uh engage and that kind of enforcement so that's the first priority or maybe I shouldn't say priority but it's the first example of how we would like to get the queen error secondly we'd like to eliminate air pollution from uh combustion appliances in billions which uh I did not know I knew that it was an indoor air quality show on but apparently it is also a significant contributor to poor outdoor air quality here we're talking about ozone and apparently the natural gas um not surprisingly eventually leaks

[39:00] from your house and it contributes to outdoor air quality and the terrible ozone that we're facing here in the Front Range the next one is we'd like to strengthen the regulations over motor vehicle exhaust um so what I'm understanding is that there's a lot of vehicles that are poorly maintained they might pass the emission test but between the emission tests whether it's one or two years or whatever period of time that they're given to not have to go there they may be um uh out of compliance and that it's it can cause quite a bit of a problem for especially neighbors that live along uh major corridors which again that tends to avoid tends to be our marginalized communities which is uh most vulnerable one of the things that exists is a mobile pollution screening unit that has been used in places um we think that something like that

[40:00] that could basically detect whether your vehicle is is polluting um and maybe not actually send you a penalty but at the very least send you a requirement to get your vehicle tested is one way to make sure that kind of a year-round way of making sure that vehicles are meeting basic standards and I want to pause on this one because there was a a piece of legislation that was discussed at the Colorado Municipal league on Friday that was closely related to this which had to do with them vehicles that don't have mufflers and increasing the penalties and increasing the ability to require them during inspections and I was surprised to learn that Mufflers are not required in the state of Colorado so um I think that this all falls under the general category of tampering with your emissions and so the same things that may cause uh nuisance issues Some Noise will often lead to air pollution concerns so we would like to support

[41:00] legislative changes or regulatory changes that lead to that address these concerns and then finally um again recognizing that a lot of people have to be outdoors and when we're getting to these hundred plus degree days we need to make sure that there are some safe indoor Sheltering and some health services and sure we can do some of this at the local level but this ultimately is going to require quite the coordinated uh effort and ultimately it's going to require the state and federal government to help us out so that we can make sure that people are not dying because they have no choice we're having to go into a home that is just as warm the next category again I'm going to cover this with a little bit of a detail only because this this too is a priority and I should have mentioned it um and I'll I'll Circle back at this at the end but but air quality is definitely a priority Focus for us at least what we'd like to propose is a priority uh Wildfire uh prevention is is

[42:00] a proposed priority and um what we know is that control of burns is perhaps one of the most effective things that land managers can do of course the city owns quite a bit of open space I've been told and I am understanding that we have very limited days that we can actually engage in these controlled bronze either because it's too dry it's too windy it's a poor air quality day a variety of hurdles are there that really prevent us from doing what could most prevent out of control wildlifiers from occurring we have begun conversations with the CD CD phe the C what regulatory barriers might be lifted we've also begun to speak with uh our legislative delegation to to explore the possibility of legislation like was introduced in Oregon that would recognize that sure poor air quality days have to be

[43:00] respected by not having you know more or error added because the control burns but of course if we don't have control burns it's going to be you know 10 100 times worse and worse in terms of air quality so given the new realities we need to find um a new way to balance these uh somewhat competing interests and to provide the flexibility that we need um we also need to make sure that a very complicated ownership structure that exists along ditches where a lot of brush will tend to gather we have private ditch owners ditch owner interests we have public and private properties that are joining we have neighbors that sometimes come to think of these ditches and the trees that are there as provided in shade and they don't want change bottom line it's very complex and what we don't have is State resources and funding to help mitigate the fuel that's loading up there I understand that during the Marshall fire that the ditches were a major conduit

[44:01] for the fire that was that that was roaring to the east so we'd like to engage the state in helping us find out how we can help coordinate with this complicated um ownership structure and to make sure that these ditches are being mitigated um as I mentioned uh before we want to mention when we engage in both Wildfire mitigation you know thinning of trees or whether it's Urban canopy we want to make sure that we do so in a coordinated fashion and that we create and we take leadership as a city to work on a regional if not a Statewide effort to create a equity-centered Workforce where people can be working on this and the model that is being proposed out of climate initiatives is a climate Conservation Corps so kind of a take on the conservation uh Civilian Conservation Corps from um that was a

[45:02] post uh post-depression era um and also one that there's Congressman de goose is very supportive of but at this point I understand that there's not really been any advancement of it in Colorado we'd like to see if boner can be a champion of making sure that one is create dated as council member Matt Benjamin had brought up to my attention um a few months ago when there was a potential I think it was called a uh oh I think it was called a fire honk and the question was you know where should these firefighting resources be located we'd like to make sure that we have a position right here that says the city with yes we'd like to have it in our backyard or as near as possible first of all we think that the Front Range is um very much in ground zero for a lot of wildfire concerns um and we'd like to make sure that we have firefighting resources at our disposal as necessary also recognizing that overhead power

[46:03] lines and unsanctioned campfires are a problem in terms of an ignition source for wildfires and again we think that we we will probably need the state and uh the region to help us uh combat these concerns uh we'd like to make sure that we have resources to conduct fuel mitigation on residential lands uh resources to address Forest help and strategic location of Water Resource infrastructure for firefighting purposes I understand that there's been conversation uh by certain elected officials to make sure that the water is available to our firefighters when they arrive at the site that's not always been the case and there's been some limitations there so all these things we think are essential for the city to be advocating for to be at the table we are certainly affected by the lack of these resources um lastly so so that concludes the

[47:01] changes that we're making we're proposing to the uh policy positions um one change that we have not proposed yet and we were going to bring up to the intergovernmental Affairs committee but we weren't able to convene them because of the change of the council meeting discussion on this prevented us from doing it uh but uh councilmember spear um had brought up that position 47 which has to do with Health Care was somewhat Limited in its use um you you can see it right here the key language is the city encourages lawmakers to determine which approach can provide the greatest access to affordable quality health care for the greatest number of people at the lowest costs so it can vary these very important values and goals that the city would like to reach it doesn't identify whether we want a Single Payer or a multi-payer or what have you and and the reason we did identify that when we first put this in here a couple years ago is because we knew that we had a lot

[48:00] of our own elected officials that had different views in it and we also recognized that as a since we were not a public health agency um like the county that we didn't have the expertise to recommend any changes nonetheless Council may very well want to revisit this so I wanted to just bring this to your attention since councilmember spirited asked us to uh make make room for this to be Revisited so now I want to talk about our state and federal policy priorities and I want to mention again that these were developed in coordination with the councils in our governmental Affairs committee and I'm going to start talking about different priorities and um they are a packaging of one or more of the policy positions that already exist so we have like 60 plus positions the policy priorities package one or two of them together to be something that we should focus on they might even call to attention to certain aspect of of what a

[49:00] more position and they are ones that we think we can make a difference uh that we want to use our political capital and our limited resources recognizing that we can't go after everything in the policy statement um and there is the reason these are being proposed is because there is political interests that would indicate that we can make progress on these what I'm not going to be able to do is is actually share details or sponsors because it's premature to do so and frankly um it's not in the interest of The Advocates to share information before they're they have their uh their package ready their their bill ready but I did want you to know that this isn't just a wish list this is based on Research that we've done and people we've spoken about that these priorities are ones that we can actually move on and we want to make sure that we influence them if not lead on them um it's not just legislation it can also

[50:01] be regulatory and it could be just a question of securing resources so it's not really even a policy matter it could be just making sure that we're sick that we're pursuing a grant or or seeking the funding through other means through authorization um so for 2023 staff is proposing four state policy priorities and three federal policy priorities um first one here I'd like to turn it over to Laurel uh actually what honorable I'm going to save you time here because really this is kind of reiterating what Laura has already explained so this is basically what she described it for as our position on homelessness making sure that this is identified as a priority in fact our number one priority uh number two is division zero and this is one that we didn't talk about yet but um of course protecting the safety of the users of our streets of our sidewalks is Paramount and we've seen too many injuries and too many deaths over over

[51:01] the years and we want to make sure that we convey to our state legislators that a priority is to address this and the the way that we believe can be uh that something could be accomplished in 2023 is through expanding the use of local of of photo radar which is basically those cameras on the side of the road in a van where you have a sign in advance and if you go over the speed limit uh you get a ticket there's actually significant limitations in where these cameras can be placed has to be in a residential Zone um close to a school next to a school or close to a park or a construction area there's quite a bit of areas including our arterials where most of the accidents occur where these cannot be used it requires Vans to actually have a person inside them which is somewhat defeating the the purpose of the efficiency that

[52:00] this technology creates part of the goal is to make sure we free the ability of our police officers to engage in in other work that uh maybe um equally if not more important it limits the amount of penalties that we can assess and ultimately the the currents value that we can um and that we can impose [Music] um so for those reasons we'd like to make that a priority to expand local control to use photo radar we also although not mentioned here but I I do think there may be some um some progress uh or I should I should say I do think the distracted driving bill that prevents um adults from using um cell phones that are not hands-free while driving I think that may be reintroduced and if so um we would like to again be part of the campaign to advocate for that and that would fit under this priority as well

[53:00] um so this third priority is really a combination of what I've already spoken about in terms of mitigating climate risk of wildfire and extreme heat through Forest race Solutions so whether it's planting trees or thinning trees we want to make sure that um we're securing the substantial funding that has been made available by the federal government under the inflation reduction act that we're doing it in a coordinated and informed way with the best science and that we're using a um an equity centered Workforce program and a campaign that allows us to really do so in a way that benefits as many people as possible and then lastly in the state priorities we are wanted to make clean air priority once again this was already discussed so I don't need to discuss it again but we think that these four state policy priorities reflect councils priorities um you can let us know otherwise I will say that there is no limitation of how

[54:00] many priorities we can add because it really comes down to resources and again these priorities were tied to um doing some homework to make sure that they had the ability to uh to pass this year um so moving on to Federal priorities the exact same thing that we want to do at the federal at the state level we want to do at the federal level so securing money from the um from the U.S forest Service is going to require working with U.S forest Service um pursuing a a climate Conservation Corps is going to require us to work with Congress and the goose he has been the champion of this idea so it's both a state and federal priority and it's been identified as such for that reason secondly we'd like to uh again as we always do make a priority to pursue congressionally directed spending requests otherwise known as earmarks we were successful in fiscal year 2022 and

[55:01] getting um just under a quarter million for an expansion of the existing Crisis Intervention response team for fiscal year 2023 we are in the running we are it's not finalized and it won't be till the end of the year but it looks like we are going to be uh likely to get half a million for the city's affordable housing modular Factory and um 20 million in an authorization Under the Water Resources development act that would allow us to address a lot of Water Resource needs so for fiscal year 2024 we haven't identified what we'd like to submit but we'd like to get council's blessing that you uh your directing us to go pursue that funding and we'll find what could be most viable and we always try to pursue projects that are consistent with council's priorities and lastly under Federal priorities is the Northwest area Mobility study

[56:02] project so as many of you know this was a study that identified how in addition to building the rail which is going to take a long time how we can make sure Mobility is improved as we wait for the rail it includes supporting the Braille and so as described here it's basically making it a priority especially when we work with a Northwest Mayors and Commissioners Coalition and Dr Cog where a lot of this funding comes from that we're trying to secure funding for both the rail to the front through the Front Range passenger rail system which is being proposed which has some possibility of making the Northwest rail a possibility and State Highway 119 which is um a project as you know that we we want to get some multimodal improvements there's been substantial work and and the design and funding that's been secured but we're still looking for some federal uh

[57:00] Direct Federal support which we have not gotten so we want to make that the final of the three Federal priorities so I also want to mention that one of the things that we discuss in the memo is that we want to introduce Equity considerations well I what I should say is we want to be enhancing how we formally introduce Equity into consideration of our policy advocacy efforts and the first approach to doing that as I described is to have a policy principle that describes equity and we propose that to you we want to make sure that when we propose changes to the policy statement that we evaluate the changes to make sure that we're consistent with this principle and in your packet under each proposed change we attempted to have a um uh some comments about how we thought that it was in compliance and this is not to say that we're going to always say that every chain every proposed

[58:00] policy position is in compliance would uh furthering racial Equity but if it's not we want to bring that to your attention so that you can be intentional about deciding whether a policy is worth pursuing if it has any conflict or if it raises any inconsistencies with furthering racial equity um this is perhaps what I think is one of the most important parts is that those of us who are engaged in advocating for policy changes at the regional state and federal level we need to do a better job of reaching out to the groups that represent of a lot of the um the people that um uh are not being heard from the conventional mainstream policy Advocates that are at the Capitol and there are some groups that we have been working with like nine to five and Circ we've worked with them on some mobile home legislation cclp we work with them on some fiscal matters

[59:01] Colorado fiscal Institute but there's many that we have not reached out to um like the NAACP and green Latinos and ACLU and Center for people with disabilities we want to create a um a more consistent relationship where we're not going to them on any specific bill but we're developing relationships where we're checking with the end with them um occasionally basically a relationship where we're asking them what's on your radar what are the Bills what are the policies what are the regulations that you have some interest in and where what concerns that you have this is not to suggest that they would then tell us something that we're going to automatically do it but it raises an awareness that is all too often not existed in the policy advocacy work so this would allow us to then when we recommend something to you or when we actually take a position and ask you to like let us know do you want to revisit it that we're able to say here's what

[60:00] we're hearing from a variety of organizations that might have different perspectives and let you make a decision uh on whether or not it's worth the trade-off hopefully everything we're doing is in furtherance of uh racial equity and I should say Equity uh more General more generally speaking but if not these these relationships would allow us to raise our or or IQ on these issues or EQ perhaps um finally when we one of the benefits of our policy statement is that it allows us to move really quickly when a Bill gets introduced when an amendment is being proposed a representative that can call me and ask me right away and I could say yes Council has given us Direction I know for sure they would support us go for it so we'd like being able to be quick but at the same time we always should have the time to conduct an equity analysis of the position that we're advocating

[61:00] and so what we're committing to do is to do just that it would be documented it won't necessarily be shared you know bill by Bill would counsel but it's something that we'll have there so if anybody asks did you answer did you ask the question did you even consider um equity and before you took a position on this policy matter that way you can say yes in fact we're required to and we've had we haven't documented and we can we can dig it out and and we can um we can share it with however we need to or we can frankly it really should be at the top uh top of our mind tip of our tongues um so hopefully it's not just something that's lost in the file um I want to just conclude this last slide about what to expect in 2023 and overall I guess I'll start by saying forecasting is dangerous business um it's really difficult especially given the high turnover I heard that there may be as much as 60 percent

[62:01] turnover and the legislators um at the Capitol so we just don't know who's going to be there um we don't know whether the Democrats are going to retain the senate or whether they're going to retain the significant majority they've had in the house um but what we have heard and these are some rumors and I'm not going to go into detail either because I don't have that detail or because it's not appropriate for me to share um what I what I was given in confidence um this first one is uh one that I would like to ask Laurel to cover yeah absolutely thanks Carl um so this first one um is something that we're hearing from the governor's office just generally that the governor has expressed interest in land use manners to address affordable housing and he's not his best interested in exactly what that will look like we've heard some rumors but we don't know the the full extent of what that looks like um but if this does turn into a bill I think this is something that we want to

[63:02] discuss further when we see a bill because there's a balancing act here between local control which we've talked about and wanting to have authority over our land use codes and the importance of affordable housing and so this could potentially go into things like our comprehensive plan or other matters um that we deal with on a daily basis so it's something that we're just not sure what this will look like it's something that we want to bring forward at some point again again affordable housing is a really important thing to the city of course but this is something that we're just not sure what it'll look like but it's something that we're starting to hear about and then rent control that's the next one that girl hold up thanks Carl um rent control is something that's been discussed in the past um It's Something That We're hearing again that maybe there's a new discussion from rent control and what that will look like um most recently we've seen some incentives with rent control being able to use rent controls in a positive way or in in trying to help get more affordable housing but um the governor has expressed disinterest in rent control in the past

[64:00] for local governments to be able to do this so I don't know how far this discussion will get but it is something that we're starting to see a little bit is this idea of right control again going back to affordable housing and some of those important topics that we talk about thank you Laurel um we're also hearing about a bill that would create a State Building Code board to create minimum standards for the Willy the Wildland Urban interface it would actually Define what the Wildland Urban interface is of course that has changed quite a bit uh over the last uh year um we are expecting legislation that addresses the bray problematic concerns but under insurance and the fact that people didn't know they were uninsured and that a lot of insurance companies have have gone out of their way to not make it Easy by not providing transparency and using different databases on what it would cost to rebuild and just bottom line it's not the guarantee that somebody who secures uh

[65:00] insurance is fully covered but that they have the ability to know perhaps on an annual basis what it takes to be fully insured and they can make an informed decision so that we can expect some legislation in that regard um so of course Colorado allows abortion abortions but there's many other aspects of policy that may still need to be addressed especially with cross jurisdictional um needs and travel and liability for doctors so we're expecting some more policies to come forward in that regard and we do by the way have a policy statement position that would allow us to support bills that would further abortion rights um the right to rest I think all of you have heard of this but in case you haven't it's essentially a bill that in some variation would prevent um cities I actually should have let Laurels think about this because this is under your topic but I'll go ahead and finish just because

[66:01] um it it would um prevent um cities from Banning camping some variations of it have basically said unless the city had provides a certain minimum standards um for uh homeless services uh so this is something that we recognize Council um would like to look into further so so if this was to come up we'll bring it to your attention we're not going to go advocating on it without bringing it to your attention and looking at the specifics generally speaking we have a position to oppose taking away the right the ban camping but if if it gets more complex than that and it it creates some sort of balancing act about um you know minimum standards that cities may need to meet uh that would be a situation that we would certainly bring it back the intergovernmental Affairs committee if not the full Council um expect something on geothermal electricity production um creation of a clean hydrogen Hub in

[67:01] Colorado especially for hard to decarbonize sectors a bill was introduced last year that would require EB charging requirements and pre-wiring for multi-family and commercial buildings we expect that to come back and we think that this time it may be brought back in a way that is um uh likely to get the support from the governor uh this was the bill that I believe passed and was ultimately vetoed um I think the uh the thinking was that it was it was to the the cost that they would impose on both the uh the homeowner the owner of the building and the construction industry was too high so the question is how to do this in a way that wouldn't create that cost so with that I'd like to conclude my presentation but I am really excited to shift it now um and uh Jacob and Anita if you haven't already you might want to turn on your cameras um I want to shift it over to uh two

[68:01] very good friends uh Jacob Smith and Anita sites both of them as it turns out were Mayors Anita was the mayor in Westminster Jacob was a mayor in Golden they both have a quite uh impressive resume in policy advocacy and right now they are leaders for the Colorado communities for climate action which is an organization that Jacob will tell you about and I'll leave it with that and I'll turn it over and start the PowerPoint so Jacob when you're ready hi everyone um I'm actually going to kick it off first Carl um my name is Anita site um and I am the advocacy director for cc4ca I actually joined the team mid legislative session um but I have had a long relationship with cc4ca as Carl mentioned I did serve on the Westminster city council for eight years and during that time I worked very closely with cc4ca I was

[69:02] actually the very first president of the organization during that time I had the privilege of working and learning and collaborating closely with older team members and I just really feel I owe I have a debt of gratitude Carl Castillo and Jonathan Cohen both really helped me quite a bit as a new local elected or wonderful Regional partners and helped Propel my communities ability to meaningfully participate in climate action and in addition to that I am a boulder High School grad so go Panthers I'm going to turn it over to Jacob Smith our executive director to introduce himself in our organization great thank you Anita and good evening mayor Pro tem and Council and staff and really thrilled to be here uh we we as Anita said we work closely with your staff a lot and it's a great relationship we're very grateful to the

[70:01] support and the working relationships and have also had the chance to work with some of you individually the mayor and some of you on Council and really appreciate those opportunities as well Carl you can go to the next slide if you're still there I'm still there give me one second thank you all right well so we thought we would give you an overview of cc4ca it's a good it's a good follow-up to the conversation you just had with Carl his presentation we are we are fundamentally an advocacy organization and Boulder played Boulder was one of the founding jurisdictions Boulder and a small group of other jurisdictions about uh 2016 got together and had had grappled with the realization that as an individual jurisdiction it's very difficult to accomplish much at the state level when you all are at the state legislature testifying the only legislators that care what you think hopefully are your own State reps and state senators hopefully at least they

[71:00] do and the rest of the legislation is true for every jurisdiction doesn't much care if you've got some of the jurisdiction and and the realization was on some issues where you really need a bigger voice than a single jurisdiction can bring a coalition of jurisdictions speaking with one voice can be a really powerful tool and it has turned out to be exactly that I joined about two years later 2018 I think so I've been with the organization for five or so four or five years now and and we've grown every year the foundation that that Boulder was part of creating has I stepped into an organization that unlike certainly unlike some executive director new executive director roles there was no crisis to fix there were no no big problems to unwind you all you and the other jurisdictions that have begun the organization have done a fantastic job of the foundation building and so we've just been able to continue on that same trajectory since then cz4ca fundamentally an advocacy group so we our job is amplify the voices of local governments and local elected officials in these State and to some extent

[72:02] federal policy making venues and that is our almost exclusive Focus there are lots of other needs and opportunities and groups that provide some services and benefits to local governments but our job really is this advocacy role we do a little bit and so that's really the important thing to emphasize here and we work in all the same venues that Carl referred to certainly at the legislature with the governor's office and his agencies in the regulatory Arenas like the puc and the air quality control commission we also do a little bit of work at the federal level that's really been around where they're where we think we can have a real impact on outcomes so the the investment or rather the inflation production Act is a good example of where Senator Hickenlooper hearing constantly from local elected officials and local governments about how important that was was as far as we can tell part of why he was motivated to work as hard as he did to win over Senator manchin's support and get something passed so that's an example of where federally will engage

[73:01] where we think we can actually make a difference on the outcome we also do some other resource providing to local governments and capacity building work we do trainings and workshops and briefings and provide lots of information to you to all of our members about what's happening on the policy Arena what's happening on the science side and so on and so those are things we do when we can to to provide value to you all to enable you all to be more effective as advocates on climate but our core at heart we are about the advocacy work Carl next slide thank you this is a list of the members 39 members across the state half of those are West slope two-thirds are rural we represent about a quarter of the state's population so it's this is a far cry from the half dozen jurisdictions that six years ago got together and started the thing one of the most interesting shifts over time last couple of years especially is the number of of communities are really

[74:00] purple or have historically been purple that have become members and I think that's partly a reflection of just the politics in Colorado have started to shift some or are continuing to shift some and Carl you probably saw that you you switched off our our display I'm sure you can okay I'm sorry about that I was trying to move I was trying to move this bar and somehow it uh is that working out Jacob nope it's still the we're I think we're seeing your screen on on PowerPoint okay it's all good I'll keep talking for that uh yeah you keep speaking I'll go let us know Carl if we need to have the clerk's office take it over for you thank you Nadia I think I can handle it'll give me a second so yeah that's the important point I wanted to flag there is the membership has grown from the communities you would expect to be and have historically been Leading Edge on climate like Boulder and Boulder County Pitkin County to include a bunch of communities that that's just not been the case historically well even like Anita and Anita's case Westminster but also communities like North Glenn

[75:00] and Avon Edgewater joined recently Wheat Ridge is a is I think the newest member and those are all communities that historically have been much more purple and so the fact that they are joining is a reflection of the political shift overall but also just the growing awareness of the very real impacts that local communities are experiencing because of climate change Tech slide come on the only thing I want to mention here is just to flag that the the Coalition the organization is governed by a board of directors like a ordinary non-profit and every jurisdiction has a seat on the board so one of the organizing principles here is no every member has an equal voice nobody it doesn't matter your size or your political theft every jurisdiction is at the table equally and that's a big part of I think why we've been able to grow the way we have a lot of jurisdictions really small ones in particular tend to be leery of coalitions like this where they are concerned their voice make each round

[76:01] out and the fact that we treat everybody equally around the table is a I think a big part of why we continue to grow the way we do there are also lots of opportunities to engage for you all as members of the council and for your staff and Anita will talk about that a little bit later but the the Committees represent on the on the on the screen here just some examples of those opportunities Carl the next slide please but the the board is really the point I wanted to flag I wanted to talk a little bit about the legislative session and I'll talk about some of the other Regulatory and policy successes of the past year or so this is just a high level summary of the session from our perspective focused on climate specifically and you get a sense of just the scale of the work that we're doing it varies by Bill as you can imagine some bills have tons and tons of groups and we're one of many that are at the table trying to figure out how to either get the thing done get it over the line or make sure that it's adjusted in ways that are going to work for from our perspective as a climate advocacy organization but but the voice of local

[77:01] governments in the climate space and then sometimes it's individ small bills that we run or we are one of the lead groups running where it's really a local government kind of issue and nobody else is going to pick it up and run it but we think it's important enough to do that we do that and a good example A couple of years ago we ran a bill to create I mean last year to create a grant fund for local governments to do natural Hazard Medicaid Nation like a lot of the work that Carl was talking about around fire and fuels but to leave it wider so it's not just about fire and fuels but natural hazards that are Amplified by climate that was a gap in the network of programs out there and and that's a good example where we stepped up and actually ran a bill to to add some capacity and resources to local governments next slide Carl I wanted to highlight just a few of the what for us were the biggest wins legislatively on climate I won't there's six here three on this and three in the next slide I won't talk about all of them but off like a couple of them one at the bottom there's the air quality Investments Carl did make some reference

[78:01] to that the 47 million dollars listed there for air pollution control division a lot of that is for enforcement enforcement has been underfunded for a very long time we continue to improve the regulations on air quality air pollution and what the rules are and the thresholds what's permissible but the enforcement pieces lag far behind and the result is even though the regs are better we still have many cases uh pollution levels that are far in excess of what the regs themselves ought to allow so that funding is a big part of how we should make progress there and that was one of the bigger wins last session and then that very top bullet the producer responsibility bill I don't know how much you all followed that but I want to mention it because it's it's transformative and immensely powerful it essentially says it creates a system where producers have to pay a fee based on the packaging the environmental footprint of the packaging they use for their products and so basically products that are not recyclable or use lower

[79:01] content of recycled content of the materials themselves are a lower amount of recycled content those packaging choices are going to result in higher fees for the producers so it's basically created a market mechanism that builds those choices into the builds those those cost considerations into the choices from the very almost the very top of of the supply chain and that's been so important because those costs as you all certainly know have been externalized to all of us in our local governments and our community members for forever this is basically taking those costs and internalizing them into the cost of the product so the ideas that will have a huge impact should have a huge impact over time on those packaging choices and then that money money it we turn around and that money gets distributed out to local governments to pay for the recycling programs that that local governments offer if you of a local government actually provides the recycling service or pays for it then that money will go to compensate or reimburse the local governments for those costs and for

[80:01] local governments that don't but their residents pay for it that money will go to offset the cost of the residence the the vision is that every every Coloradan should have recycling access that is as good or better than their their current uh waste hauling service and this is you know these kinds of programs are great they're very new in the US but they have been well established in other parts of the world and we have a lot of confidence that that is going to both transform how we think about waste in at least this one piece of the economy and then also help use those dollars to actually pay for the recycling programs that that our our members including you all certainly value as much as they do next slide girl please these are just three other of what for us where the some of the biggest highlights of the session I won't go into them now but I'm happy to talk about any of these later at the end if you have any questions or thoughts about any of them the next slide Carl and then I'll talk a little bit about the Regulatory and policy side it's been

[81:00] a I'd say comparable from from the regulatory side compared to the legislative side just a huge number of proceedings and some outcomes there that are transformative a lot of these are they will take time to materialize so for example last year the bill that I'm that I wanted to mention is if this is from the year before set the puc on the path to consider joining a regional transmission organization or creating one for Colorado and if you're not a wonk about the energy grid the simple version is just to say that is the way that we connect Colorado Colorado Spirit to other nearby grids we're basically disconnected now which is makes intermittent sources of energy work a whole lot better for providing grid reliability if the sun isn't shining in Colorado it is probably shining somewhere else across that much larger geographic area and that because the RTO gets built out laterally across the U.S it means we're covering multiple time zones so Peak use on in the Mountain Time Zone is an hour off from Peak use

[82:02] in the next time zone over in either direction and all of that means we're a whole lot better able to maintain grid reliability and stability the even being heavily dependent on intermittent sources like wind and solar so this is a good example of this is going to fundamentally transform Colorado's Grid it's going to take some time but the wheels are now in motion and that's a that's a legislative outcome a lot of the regulatory proceedings now that's the the PC is now doing the RTO work the analysis to figure out what does that look like in what are the pros and cons and so that's a good example of where their legislative work plays out right in a regulatory fashion for the past year or so the ones I particularly want to call out certainly the making the coal plant retirement's enforceable federally enforceable now is a huge deal that was late last year as part of the ozone step the state of limitation plan and uh the regional Haze Sip and that means these plants really are going to be retired and on this time

[83:00] frame which is of enormous consequence again you all Boulder City Council knows more about these things than than most and you certainly get the implications of that and then Tri-State which is not as relevant to Boulders directly but is hugely relevant from a greenhouse gas footprint standpoint I would say inconceivable even two or three years ago Tri-State is now committed to 80 reduction by 2030 which is just it's hard to imagine Tri-State which has really been the laggard across the utility sector stepping up the way they have so these are some of the examples of on the regulatory side proceedings with huge implications for greenhouse gas submissions and and for the work that you all do I'm going to hand it over to Anita the next slide please Carl but I just want to emphasize that part of why cc4ca part of why you Boulder and others brought us into existence and part of why we have been as effective as we've been and are so important to our members as we are our members mostly if not all have local goals and run into barriers at the state

[84:01] level you want to accomplish a certain kind of pollution reduction at greenhouse gas emission reduction or an increase in transit services or something like that and and local governments often are running into barriers at the state level that just prohibit them from doing more than they want to do some of those those issues that Carl was talking about are good examples of that and we that's a huge part of what we focus on what are the barriers that are preventing or impeding your ability to get things done around your climate plan your greenhouse gas plan and we go after those and figure out how do we change them or remove them or at least tweak them in ways that make it easier for you to do the work you want to do and that's married to so much again as you all certainly know so much of climate change advocacy the levers are higher than the local local level and things like how do we run the grid things like ozone pollution ozone which is a huge health hazard but also as a greenhouse gas us and also the win OZO when the ozone precursors are emitted we

[85:01] end up with other greenhouse gases that are also almost always emitted at the same time so reducing ozone has huge health benefits but also huge rain has gas benefits and ozone is just not a that's not a challenge that local governments can take on at the local level you can you can nip away at bits and pieces and that's hugely important but if the real levers are at this at the state level and that's that's the work that we do how do we make sure you get accomplish your goals and locally and make sure we're moving the levers in the right way at the state level for these larger scale goals Anita I will throw it over to you thank you so much Jacob um so the slide you have in front of you um shows some pretty impressive levels of participation from our member local elected officials and from staff and I would say this is the real power of our Coalition um we are an example of just the sum being greater than our parts um CC forces our advocacy team works really hard to make engagement easy for

[86:00] our members so we will hold your hand through the process we work directly with Carl if any of you are ever interested in engaging on a specific topic let Carl know but once it gets handed over to us we really do try to provide you as much detail and support to make it a a pretty seamless process and and the reason that that's so important and the reason that we are so effective is your voices matter as local government we have a very deep bench of talent and knowledge and lived experience within our member communities and we leverage this Collective knowledge to impactfully engage with our state legislature and and the agencies so definitely let us know if you're interested in being part of these numbers in the future and we have really benefited from your involvement throughout the years that we've existed as an organization

[87:01] um next slide please so there's a lot of different ways to engage we don't just work uh you know during the legislative session um as Jacob went through we've been very busy with every single agency and this has been a particularly busy year um so providing public comments or written comments in both of those venues is something that we can support you with um also though some people like op-eds and letters to the editors and we can help you get those placed and walk you through those processes and then we've had multiple meetings with our both Federal and our state delegation walking through and really trying to make people understand the impact that climate change has on local governments our current president um Matt sure he he says when they joined cc4ca they saw climate change as an

[88:01] imminent threat that it was something they knew was on the horizon and was going to change the livability of his campti um he's an Eagle County Commissioner he says now the house is on fire um the the impact of our work could not be more critical and we have a great track record but really our our power is our members um and leveraging them is is how we get stuff done Jacob great thank you Anita next slide girl just uh we're at the very end just a couple of thoughts about what's coming up Carl did a great job of of a rundown on the legislative session coming up so I won't repeat any of that ex I'll just I'll just mention that a lot of your priorities are overlapping with ours that's not surprising because you all are at the table when we craft our priorities so a lot of the work we'll be doing is going to tap into things that Carl talked about like around air quality certainly around

[89:01] wildfire and Wildfire mitigation natural gas is another one we're fighting a fight now at the puc to eliminate a subsidy there currently is a subsidy for developers who want to build new gas lines to new developments and we're maybe on the cusp of eliminating that subsidy where every other ratepayer pays to build new gas lines new development which is crazy so the legislative side a lot of our work is going to line up to the work you do we work closely of course with your staff and and our lobbyists all know each other and work well together so I will talk more about that on the on the regulatory side in the programmatic side there's a certainly a ton of funding that is either flowing now through what people now call the bipartisan infrastructure law from the fall of last year and now the the IRA the inflation reduction act tons of dollars are flowing or are close to flowing and we're putting a lot of effort into making sure we can curate

[90:00] which programs are most likely to be beneficial to our members and putting a lot of uh incur a lot of encouragement to the Congressional Delegation to help identify those programs because it's a huge mass of programs and and agencies and different requirements so making sure as much of that money flows into Colorado is possible to fund good climate forward projects that's one piece I mentioned the producer responsibility Bill the next step in that process is the creation of a producer responsibility organization and I should mention I know equal cycle Eco cycle is a big part of your community and they were a huge part of the legislative effort to get that bill passed and now the subsequent implementation side so there they are now standing up the organization that's going to govern that whole process that's going to be a major priority for us certainly over the next year a lot of work on clean trucks some of that will be regulatory some of that'll be the state's plans to fund and deploy Technologies there's a Carl I think Carl

[91:00] mentioned the hydrogen Hub uh that is another piece of this it's hydrogen what role does hydrogen player should it play in the in particularly with with the heavy duty truck truck uses where like electricity maybe batteries may be still more difficult to figure out so there's a lot of work there figuring out what are the conditions where those like on hydrogen what is what should count as green hydrogen how do we make sure that green hydrogen is really green how do we make sure that it does actually work better than batteries before we see the state level policies drive forward too hard on that but that that is a lot of the work that's happening now the one of the biggest accomplishments over this past year was the adoption of this Transportation ghgs rule that has gas emissions ruled by the by CDOT and the Transportation Commission that was a huge effort and and the result is for the first time in the country uh this is become becoming a model for lots of other states and even the federal department of transportation is looking at what we did here in Colorado as a

[92:00] model where ghd considerations are now integrated into the Metropolitan planning organization planning process on Transportation so Dr Cog now has to consider ght emissions in a way it's never had to before there's a lot of implementation work now that's going to continue to be a big priority for us over the next year lots of work at the air quality control commission aqcc and the I'll mention just one more on this list and that is the Excel the the resource plan the first phase of that's now done that was where we saw some huge wins around with Excel and retirement at coal plants and some of the other Provisions about the decarbonization of the grid but now as the next phase where all those things get translated into the actual bids and actual decisions about what resources Excel is going to spend rate payer money on so that is also going to take up a huge amount of time we will work certainly work closely with you and your staff Jonathan is is a considerable experts I'm sure you know on on Excel related and puc related

[93:00] activities and we do a lot there so we work closely with him Carl is great to work with on a whole Suite of policy activities so we'll continue to work closely with your staff and happy to work with you all individually at we typically organize that through Carl as Anita mentioned whenever you're interested on a particular issue or if you let us know in advance we'll keep an eye out for opportunities to plug you in but just know it we boulders okay so all of our members are our favorite members but Boulder is our favorite favorite member and we we really do love working with you and happy to have a chance to to update you tonight and happy to answer any questions you might have and Carl yeah you can jump to that last slide thanks so much Carl for the slides yeah thank you Jacob and that concludes our presentation and and thank you for the patience Council to hear this presentation I know it was long um frankly previous councils knew a lot more about cc4ca and what they did and as Anita said they make advocacy easy for their members and that could be a

[94:01] better way of succinctly saying what they do so um we are part of many membership organizations but this is our favorite favorite so I thought it was important to bring it to your attention last thing I will say um in terms of again the influence that we're having currently Jonathan Cohen is the chair of the uh policy committee so definitely we have opportunities to have our voices heard so with that I want to I want to turn it back to council and I know that it's time for questions and I'd like to encourage Council of Interest questions for cc4ca uh so that we don't have to keep them here or if there's questions that are frankly ones that they're more likely to be able to answer uh perhaps you can prioritize those again thank you so much thanks Carl and that is a great suggestion thank you also Laurel for the presentation and Anita um and I'm looking for Jacob for being here and for that awesome presentation um so let's start first as Carl suggestion as Carl suggested with um

[95:03] questions for our guests and we're just on questions right now we'll have a public hearing before we go to comments and feedback about all right Nicole you're up um thanks for that um presentation Jacob really appreciate that and I apologize if my um attention blipped during the presentation but I just wanted to ask um is a kind of a housing density and land use um something that is sort of in the realm of things being considered so I'm our Dr Cog representative and you know there of course you know we've been talking into having a lot of discussions about that um so I was just curious how that is is fitting in yeah thank you counselor that is a great question and Carl alluded to it a little bit there is there's a real energy around some legislation that might try to weave together affordable housing Transportation climate all into some

[96:00] kind of a package the governor as Carl mentioned has expressed some or Carl and I think uh Laurel mentioned also maybe uh has expressed some real interest in doing something on this we have some sense of his inch of what that looks like but it's still pretty early lots of of those interest groups the stakeholders are at the table including us we're in this local government hat and try to figure out where where we think we can get something done that doesn't cross the line that would not be tolerable to our members that local control where that line is exactly but does actually do some meaningful integration that one thing I don't think I mean I I did mention I don't think Carl did one thing that's particularly unusual about cc4ca and it's worth mentioning here on this issue in particular is that to make changes to our policy statement requires every member to sign off on that so to become a member you have to the elected body has to pass a resolution that says they they support the policy statement and that way coming in we know everybody's

[97:01] aligned and once you're a member you have essentially veto power over changes and on paper it sounds crazy I have a 40 member 39 member board and every member has to sign off on changes in practice it has worked really well surprisingly well and some of that's because we put just a ton of time into those conversations to figure out like on this where is the local control line that everybody can live with and will work really hard to see something move through the legislative process that does something meaningful bringing those pieces together but stays on the right side of that local control line that is the the hard line that our members are not going to be comfortable with including certainly you all thank you look forward to seeing what y'all come up with thanks Nicole Juni thank you I just have a quick question I was looking at some of the issues that you mentioned that are coming forward and one that I was particularly interested in was to read peer regulation of excel through the puc and

[98:00] I was wondering is there a place where all this information is located we can have access to them or is it a matter of I suppose reaching out to you and after this meeting uh yeah that is a more complicated question than it should be than it might sound the puc itself is terrible at at making information available in comprehensible ways to the barrier to entry is pretty steep you have to speak puc and you have to understand a website that's not designed to be used by people who are not puc for deeply puc literate they're I think the puc is taking seriously how do they make that better so I don't want to sound like a criticism but that has historically been the case and it's still very true so if you're trying to figure out what's going on the puc by going to the puc website the stuff is all there but it could be very difficult to find and interpret the pieces of the puc's docket that we're involved in we try to make that a whole lot more accessible we do a roughly bi-weekly we call it the Roundup basically a newsletter to all of our

[99:01] members it's pretty lengthy and detailed so it tends to go to the board members and our committee members not necessarily all of the elected officials that are on the bodies of every one of our members but anybody who wants it we are happy to add you to it so one option is we add you to that and every couple of weeks or so you'll get a pretty detailed update on what's happening at the puc that we're involved in and I'd also say anytime you have questions that feel free to reach out to us or ask Carl to reach out whatever the right protocol is we are more than happy to speak to you directly provide any information you might want we often prepare little background memos internally so that like if you were going to testify at the puc we can give you a background or on that proceeding so even if you're not going to testify happy to share any of those that might be helpful to you thank you so much you bet thanks Ginny any other questions for cc4ca nicely done I I struggle with it I'm sorry everyone does a lot of a lot of

[100:02] letters going once twice thank you so much for I mean you're welcome to stay but you're I think you'd be officially off the hook you're here is that right Carl awesome all right thanks Anita and Jacob yeah thank you let's move on to um other questions just on the on the um whole policy statement Nicole's up thank you um and apologies to the four of you who are on the legislative committee because I've got I've got some questions but hopefully I can get there and quickly um one of the things that I was wondering about Carl and um maybe other folks on the committee too um how are the principles prioritized so for example if something can increase equity and racial Justice Statewide are we willing to see local control in that case I mean how are we kind of stacking them up against each other foreign

[101:01] I'll acknowledge that this is brand new so it's not like I necessarily have thought this through um but what comes to mind is that um if any of these principles are being violated by pursuing by by advocating for a bill that's something that we would want to bring to your attention essentially that's a political issue right away um it might even mean that we don't even take a position until we check in with you um so so that's probably the value of the principles it's not a question of one being more important than the other um it's a question of all of them being important and yes there may be times that we need to yield local control or perhaps racial Equity not everybody's going to be happy in that perspective uh but we're gonna like I said before we're gonna do it intentionally we want to make sure this is basically a red flag for us for principals being violated we need to bring to you thank you that's helpful

[102:00] um and I was wondering did we consider climate resilience and social vulnerability as principals was that anything discussed I'm sorry say that again if I was just wondering if we had considered climate resilience and social vulnerability as um principles right things that multiple different ones that's um no it's actually a position right now um and yeah I'm actually I mean I it's definitely a position I guess the reason I don't immediately think of it as a as a priority but you can convince me otherwise our principle is because does it apply to everything I mean if we're working on a sales tax matter for example uh is there applicability I mean I don't know it um certainly would be more than happy to add it as a principal if the council thinks that that's appropriate yeah now it's just something that kind of came to mind for me because that social vulnerability I think um ties into a lot of different areas and you

[103:02] know and and I do think about taxes right as relating to social vulnerability some of us are more vulnerable to increased taxes than others for example um so for me it just seemed just in line with a lot of the discussions that we've had this last year um and I think with the storm and flood water master plan fresh on my mind that I that idea was just out there as a principal so um then another question I had was around the rapid response racial Equity tool I was just wondering at what level we're focusing on assessments and impacts is that at the local level or are we looking more broadly at regional state or federal levels when we're thinking about the impacts of policy decisions again good question that honestly I hadn't thought of but uh what comes to mind is that it would um generally speaking I think it would be a state I mean if it's a state policy I think it's going to be a state impact and that's how it should be reviewed um one way of looking at it is let's say we

[104:02] close a coal plant and it leads well maybe this is not a good example because not sure if that really fits into the equity column but there may be an impact to one Community or maybe even a series of communities that's negative and we can benefit and that may violate our Equity principles and I think that is included um I think that's that is a consideration that that we would want to take into account so if I had to rank it I guess I would say an equity issue that addresses our community is first and foremost important one that is uh impacts outside the community is nonetheless one that's worth noting and bringing the people's attention and considering okay thank you um and then I was wondering if we had considered affordable housing as Prairie I know you talked about it a bit it sounds like it's kind of going to be on the radar in general it was

[105:00] just one that that I was a little um I was expecting to see and didn't see it so much the rent control one but right and and um I mean again you know what makes a priority list has up until now been checked a variety of boxes it's not just what's important clearly affordable housing is important and that would be under everybody's top three top four lists um and we have worked for the last five years on successfully on mobile home legislation which is one of the best ways to address the market rate affordability and we also supported legislation last year that provided a great amount of Recovery Act funding for for affordable affordability from what I know in terms of what we can actually realistically get in 2023 it's a question of pursuing the grants um and that's something that um uh representative Mobley for example is really Keen to make sure that Boulder is prepared that we have some shuttle ready projects for the substantial money that

[106:02] is now being made available for mental health for homelessness and for affordable housing so it's a little bit more I mean so the answer is we will be pursuing that absolutely and I told that to representative every time I speak with her and I also thank her for reminding us it's great to have a local Champion but I also um um I I guess pursuing grants it's inconsistent with what I said before but I guess I I didn't think of that as is translated into a state priority because I wasn't really expecting a policy change yeah okay thank you that's helpful um and then I think this is a similar question to my first one about principles being prioritized and so let me just say what I think your answer is that's not right um so my question was about how policies are prioritized when they're in Conflict so for example um 22 be about

[107:00] um preventing camping man seems a little bit in conflict with 32 about Criminal Justice Reform to me right so um I was just in that case then it sounds like if a policy if an issue came up you would then bring it to the legislative commit committee and then to um possibly to counsel for discussion is that um it's almost like legal principles but I I think uh and I am a former attorney so I guess what what I do my process is to look at this what's what most what's most specific so there is actually language and the policy statement that says oppose limitations on City's ability to ban um the band camping um so that one would Trump another one that could otherwise be read as allowing it um now of course you can change it you can strike that language right now um but yes that is the way that um that I interpret it and I also frankly I

[108:01] mean my job is to make sure I have a good sense of the pulse and Council um it's not just the words in the policy statement if I know that there's one or two members that are really concerned about it I will probably check in with you individually um because frankly if you don't have a unanimous voice and worse yet if we have a council member going to a legislator and saying don't listen to what Carl says we don't really believe it that's not going to really help so um seeking unanimity and that's one of the benefits for working people voters that our Council has so often been unanimous um so yeah I guess 22 B opposed preventing local governments from Banning camping in public spaces is one of the things I had highlighted as well and I don't um I guess given that you brought up in your short list Carl that right to rest is likely to be up this year at the state

[109:00] level might it be more helpful um for you to solicit feedback from us now rather than like if we know it's there and if that does need some amending um is this is this the time to look at that you know so thanks to you mayor uh mayor Pro tem uh friend we actually have two pieces of language in that bill and that position one is protect protect our abilities but also to look for the ability to kind of like raise the floor Statewide um so to me if it's just a straight out cities you can't band camping um I have the direction I need if it's if it goes into raise the standards and maybe some sort of trade-off you know while camping unless you don't have enough uh homeless Services um that to me is one that I would automatically take to you because that's that's such a tricky political trade-off and it could very well be after all that

[110:00] we just decide we're not going to be involved in this um you know we know CML is going to be actively opposed that opposed it or we could say we do want to Champion this we want to stand out as a city that wants to support it um but in that other case that's that's my political intuition that when if it gets any more complex in the straight out band any conditional issues that I'll bring it to you and I will not be speaking on behalf of the city without getting your further Direction and and the reason I won't I'm not looking to resolve it now is because I just don't know how that balance might be thought to be struck and and what what you know what Shades uh they might they might propose yeah I mean I would think that and I I can just come back to this in comments thanks for letting me call away Nicole but you know there could be a clause at the end that that says something like unless uh population proportional adequate alternative housing options exist or something like that so

[111:02] when the the right time is to look at that but I don't I don't know that that's exact that that 22b is is precisely the majority of this council's uh probably preferred statement anyhow back to Nicole cool yeah that was for my comments later but um so anyway thank you Carl just wanted to thank you and I apologize for springing these questions on you um tonight versus sending them in advance um as I normally would have um it's been a little a little bit of a week but I really appreciate your Fielding them um at the last minute and I also wanted to thank you for remembering my earlier comment about Healthcare I'm super impressed that you remembered that um thank you thank you thanks Nicole over to Mark Wallach and if no one else has questions I'll have a couple well I only have two questions um the first call and thank you for the presentation uh regards policy position number 53 in which we um advocate for the reduced threat of

[112:00] ignition sources such as overhead power lines um would it be possible to put a little more meat on that because I I Airlines are very dangerous um you know we're talking about undergrounding with Excel and uh it seems to me there's not very much there there and is it possible to do that yeah I mean a good catch thank you for bringing that to my attention um I think it should be qualified with something like such as um an unnecessary risks or risks that could be avoided uh with overhead power lines because we're clearly not saying that we're um well it does start off with reduced threat I think in any case um I could certainly bring some more some more specificity okay I'm not asking you to do it now because I'm not I'm not trying to put that and I won't

[113:02] um but I I it just struck me as as you know for for a policy that's significant to this city and which we're going to work with Excel to do undergrounding we ought to be advocates for for you know state and federal funding for that purpose so that we can accelerate the process because at the moment I think we're looking at a very extended amount of time before we could actually underground all of our city I can certainly provide that specificity in the final the council will have an opportunity to consider thank you my second question um uh regards rent control as as I think it and you can correct me on this that it's it's sort of unlikely that the governor is going to be receptive to a rent control regime could we at least make a distinction uh between General rent control and

[114:01] manufactured home Community pad rent stabilization which is you know we've discussed that a little bit it's really a a little bit of a different animal and trying to get people to understand that it's a different animal and for those people who reflexively throw up their hands and say you know we we cannot have rent control but I think we could make a good case that we ought to have pad rent stabilization for those communities because it's different and you know we've discussed that um we discussed it when when I was testifying down in in Denver on the bill and I think there's a case to be made that that might pass muster even if the larger rent control um Bill does not move forward yeah and just to be clear council's

[115:00] policy statement already states that we support rent control generally and that we suppose support the more limited version of it or pad red stabilization so the way I took that for example um when we were working on mobile home legislation last year is some Advocates said no let's not include that from mobile home because that'll take away our ability to like get a more broader bill because that's one of the best examples and yet I knew that you know there was no appetite for a full uh rent control limitation so I you know I pushed to make sure that we went for what was a very good example of where it's uniquely needed unique vulnerabilities of the owners of mobile homes and so that was included and as you know the governor threatened The veto it that was to be that continued to be included in the bill so um bottom line even though I bring this to your attention because I know it's a great interest to our community I think we know where the governor stands and I don't you know one year

[116:02] another opportunity yeah it doesn't mean we can't Advocate including before him okay and it doesn't mean that we won't either thank you not a way of saying we can and uh a pro tem that's well all I got tonight nicely done council member Wallach double time okay I think I have four questions Carl and I will try and move through them quickly um still on on um paragraph 22 under CD and E um this is also new in the homelessness HHS space um D makes a ton of sense to me increased funding for Supportive Services but I'm wondering overall where this new like how did we arrive at this language because if I look at like c and e together I have some concerns that that high systems utilizers um may need more transitional housing as an example so so why did we say flexible

[117:00] funding for permanent maybe I don't understand the terminology here for targeted populations but it seems a little bit more narrow and specific than I might want it to be um just wondering where we got that language and are we sure that that's as a council what we want to be saying because I I have I have some concerns like that people are being um given you know Keys rather than uh the real Supportive Services and and maybe um as I said last week one group home options and and transitional housing before getting into the permanent housing that that is not helping people to succeed yeah I I don't know if I have the bandwidth to completely help answer this question but I'll tell you where the C came from which is recognition many of you of course are aware of the the concept of high utilizers those who who uh use a high amount of the city services invests are having a great impact on themselves uh the fiscal uh budget of the city and on the community

[118:01] in public safety as a whole um we often attempt to find ways to address strategically those higher utilizers and one possibility is that we might bring a policy recommendation to on how to address that recognizing that it might cost less um for us to advocate for um a state bill that you know spends x amount of money when it's going to be 2x if we don't do anything the intergovernmental Affairs committee heard this recommendation and they suggested let's let's hold up on saying that we would support those kinds of recommendations what we can say this is what the committee said and certainly you can revisit is if recommendations are ones that would be broad enough to apply or potentially apply to other uh members that were on sheltered Community um and you know have the ability of being replicated and systematic

[119:02] um that would be a win-win so in other words they would they would address the needs of high utilizers um help get them out of uh the unhoused situation but also provide the potential to have a broader impact and uh councilmember warlock I I I hope I captured your sentiments in in how I worded it there um and I don't know if there's anything you'd like to add to that okay so again I don't know if this truly answers your question mayor Pro tem but that was the attempt and so I recognized that these all may not be entirely consistent with each other and I'm happy to make any changes that you feel are necessary okay and can we make changes you know at the next committee meeting and then bring them back like are we we're not set in stone here for the year if we Tinker of course in fact um one thing you may do is is say this is good for now but uh next time the committee uh reconvenes uh just like uh

[120:03] councilmember Spirits um bring your uh have the committed luck of this to see if there's any need for reconciling potentially competing um language is that would that work for you yeah that's great um okay my next question is on the um I I think I know the answer but just checking preventing gun violence um you know a lot of what we're asking for now I think has been sort of potentially bungled by the recent Supreme Court decision um and and I don't know that that anything gets done if if Federal elections aren't aren't swung so do we have any room to Advocate um to to get selected on things or is that outside the scope of what we do because I I don't think our advocacy on gun violence is going to make any any bit of difference because it needs to happen at the federal level and um if there are people who are you know appointing Supreme Court

[121:01] Justices and whatnot that are ruling the ways that they're ruling we're not going to gain the ground that we need is that just is that is that illegal I don't I don't know then maybe for a good answer I'm not sure I mean I'm not entirely sure what you're asking to but of course I think we should advocate for whatever policies we want and then let's in court decide whether it's unconstitutional and until they decide that what we're asking for is not constitutional uh we should preserve the option to advocate for it yeah yes and as a city I think it's it's um the advocacy is almost on on who's who's appointing justices for a lot of these things so right right okay I think I think I'm reading between the lines on your answer there and then my last one is just on um the rocky flat stuff I just want is the entirety of this section still relevant yeah um great point because we have carried it over for like three or four years I think it was uh then council member uh Lisa Marzell who was um very actively involved in Rocky spots and so

[122:01] I did look through it and um I I believe it still is relevant um I mean somewhat Evergreen principles that are there but if there's anything that you see there that you'd like me to to research to confirm um you know I did look at it I do think it carries over well okay all right I'll I'll look closer and ask you why if I have any other questions that's all my questions so I think if no one else has questions we will um move over to the public hearing I think we have one person signed up over to Elisha that would be over to Sarah to maneuver the public hearing and allow her access to speak good evening everybody this is Sarah Huntley director of communication and engagement before we go into public participation for this hearing as we typically do I've been asked to go over our vision for productive meaningful and inclusive Civic conversations and thank you Emily for bringing up the slide

[123:01] so this is a vision that's been created with community members and City staff to support the physical and emotional safety of everybody participating in a meeting so that includes community members staff and Council and also trying to make sure that we are making space for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives there's more information about the productive atmosphere's Vision on our website next slide please specifically what it means is that we have some guidelines and rules that we're asking people to withhold uh part to uphold during this meeting one is that all remarks and testimony be limited to the matters related to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meaning are prohibited and lastly we ask people to sign up to speak using the name they're commonly known by and to

[124:00] display that name before being allowed to speak we are allowing audio testimony at this time I believe you have one person signed up to speak this evening you can take the slides down Emily and that is Lynn Siegel and I can go ahead and um allow her to unmute thanks Sarah hi Lynn you've got three minutes and um I will give you a thumbs up that we can hear you when you start but you are still muted at the moment Sarah can you remind us how to how would she immute Lynn you should be able to unmute I'll send you a note um toggling you to unmute foreign not seeing any unmute occurring Lynn all you need to do is um unmute your

[125:02] microphone I've turned on the ability for you to do so is also like a keypad sequence um and going back to early Zoom days it seemed like there was something if she's on the phone she can press star six and if on a computer is there a secret thinking button anyone know I don't recall but let me just look quickly thanks she should be unmuted now it looks like all right Lynn you're unmuted good evening but we cannot hear you yeah you're unmuted Lynn but we can't hear you

[126:02] um I'd suggest your microphone is not working even there's no one else in line for um Linda Q up behind I'll just give it another 30 seconds or so anyone else have command something options I'm not going to see oh no she's unmuted so that's not the issue and the one thing I could try Rachel I think the issue is the microphone's not speaking but I could temporarily promote her to a panelist if you would like us to try to see if that helps get her access and I can burn her back down from a panelist to an attendee after the public hearing that sounds

[127:01] great okay I don't know if it'll make a difference because as I said looks like her microphone is unmuted but let's give it a try Lynn I've just sent you a note that invites you to rejoin as a panelist okay there we go okay Lynn if you could re unmute yourself we'll see if we can hear you yeah I'm unmuting myself we can hear you we can hear you Lynn and with my prompt and I suggest that you get rid of web zooming I mean Zoom webinar web zoominar that's what it seems like at kind of Carnival um webinar does not allow too many things and it's being used throughout the city now and it's really really not good and

[128:03] I appreciate you getting rid of Zoom webinar and just using Zoom there's nothing scary about it there's nothing security about it it just needs to be used it's a lot better of a format than Zoom webinar um I just had to go take some stuff outside and so I didn't hear what you were just talking about but I appreciate Carl's um his presentation and what went before with the people about all of our federal opportunities and such and I'm glad that y'all are doing such a great job on getting these opportunities open to the city so thanks a lot and that's all thanks for being here Lynn um and that wraps up our public hearing so with that um we will go back to council members to see who's got

[129:00] um thoughts to share and have discussion bye Lynn and anyone want to kick us off Matt Benjamin Nicole on Deck um yeah I get I get the full name treatment right all right um well uh so first um I I really it's more just uh expression of gratitude towards Carl and the team um I I have to say he has an uncanny ability to seemingly always be taking mental notes because it seems like any passing little conversation or or anything he's he logs it away and then it ends up in the policy position so just credit to Carl and the team for just always being listening really even if we're not on the subject of policy uh to take those little little nuggets and fold them in so uh just just credit because some of those pieces that were mentioned I'm like I don't even remember

[130:00] having those conversations as a group but yet they folded in and they definitely you know represent the will of this Council so so just great work and um I like where this is at and certainly respect where my colleagues are and certainly some of those modifications and changes and I'm glad they caught them but but by and large this is a really nice policy statement and uh again credit to Carl and the whole team for for doing that work and making it easy on us by always hearing all those conversations throughout the year to get it done so thank you thanks Matt Nicole Speer thanks Rachel oh yeah thanks thanks again Carl um I had [Music] um a few comments I'm gonna try to get through them quickly um Rachel if it gets to a point where he's just like no Nicole please go and have a conversation with Carl please let me know um at that point no no that I'm open to that um as well um I think you know one of the one of the points that I just had just around the state policy priorities um is that the way that some of them are

[131:01] um kind of phrased I worry a little bit that they're impractical goals and I wonder if we could just change the phrasing a little bit to make them more achievable so as an example we talk about ending homelessness supporting the city's ability to end homelessness and I wonder if instead we could shape that to be reducing the harmful effects of homelessness for all residents or reducing chronic homelessness something like that feels a little bit more achievable to me kind of like with vision zero we're not saying we're going to stop moving people through the city just that we're going to work on doing that more safely where nobody's getting killed or seriously in injured so I'm just I'm wondering about that similarly with the Clean Air in Colorado I'm kind of priority that I'm not sure that we're going to kind of restore clean air to Colorado but promoting access to clean air across Colorado something like that feels like it fits in a little more with some of the new additions around making

[132:01] sure that people have safe spaces to be on bad air quality days and things like that so just kind of I don't it's not changing them it's really just describing them I think in a way that at least to me feels a little more actionable um and I wanted to say there was a point where we were talking about um sorry let me find it really fast though committing to regularly convening with organizations and communities that have awareness of potential inequities and policies um I really love that idea and um just want to again you know encourage us as we're talking to these groups that have this information that we're making sure we're doing so with an eye toward acting on that information if we're kind of frequently asking for this feedback and then overlooking it or ignoring it I think that that causes a lot of harm um so just just want to kind of name that out loud um the I I think I mentioned this got to it a little bit and my questions beforehand

[133:01] um but seeing not seeing land use under greenhouse gas reductions number two of the policy priorities that was a little just um surprising for me I just wonder if it's something we want to um think about adding in and at some point I'd be happy to give an update on what Dr cogg has been kind of getting to around some of those things if that would be helpful for all of us to move forward with with that knowledge um I think Mark's comment about pad rent or question about pad rent is a really really good one and I would love to to sort of see us even formalize that as something we're paying attention to even if we don't feel like we can make a lot of progress progress with it I do disagree with 22b um just wanted to to name that that's not it's not one I'm really comfortable having um in in this policy statement um and oh yes okay so another kind of bigger topic area this was around number policy and number 24 where we're talking

[134:00] about immigration and then also um number 40 and and some of the ones that followed there we talk about um protecting um immigration data but I think in this climate that we're in where our rights basic human rights are being Stripped Away um specifically are Reproductive Rights I think adding something there about protecting our health data and reproductive data from being shared also becomes really critical and important especially depending on what happens in November at the federal level and I think in a similar vein with number 40 adding language around our kind of access to gender appropriate health care and protections that we're putting in place for our queer and trans communities that also feels like a really important component of what feels like a similar theme about what rights are we protecting and how are we ensuring human rights in an environment we're at the federal level

[135:01] they're starting to be stripped away a bit um and yes I would love to have a conversation about adding single-payer healthcare or finding some some way of putting some teeth into the the priority around health care I think that would be wonderful um and let's see I really appreciate the addition of air quality and clean air under the air quality and clean air thinking about safe Sheltering as well so just thank you to everybody on the committee um and Carl for for including that and for number 60 um I would really love to get some feedback from some from the people at the center for people with disabilities at some point just around transportation and modalities and almost there got two more comments um on number 61 where we're talking about Transportation modalities thinking about a future that has fewer cars and

[136:00] how is that impacting our transportation priorities and what kind of policies we're advocating for at the regional state and federal level because in the future if we're doing things right we will have fewer cars so how can we start thinking about that now so the policies we have in you know 10 or 20 years are really reflecting the future that we'll hopefully have at this point or at that point if we're doing things right now and finally around 67 and thinking about um where we're advocating for higher education and CU in particular um I would love to see some things there advocating for housing and Mental Health Services as well because those are things that I think are are campus-wide issues that also have impact on our older community so thank you I'm happy to send those two in an email Carl if you couldn't write as fast as I was speaking so thanks everyone those are all my comments thanks Nicole um I will ask if you if anybody wants to

[137:01] queue up behind me or just uh sorry make a few comments so first back to the the 22 uh BC and E I would love for us to look at some different language there and um coming back to council with some amendments so um I I'm not suggesting that we completely strike B but I think that we should look at different language for that and then c and e I'm just not sure that we get to where I would want to go for um ensuring that we are advocating for uh what would be the most um effective uses of of state law change in particular um that might really help us to help people who are currently unhoused um so if we could do that Carl at subcommittee and come back with that that I think that would be great um and then just again with my um not well articulated concern around the gun violence prevention which is is

[138:00] far-reaching just to consider whether we are empowered um at all to do anything that might help get people elected who can actually make the things that we're advocating for happen so we we just nothing's going to happen if if the people aren't in office who are going to enact any of these things so it feels like an exercise in futility sometimes so um if there's a way to to do that more formally um through through this arm of the city I would like to know about it and and you just use it I guess that's all I got any other feedback yeah right Junie and Lauren on Deck thank you I just have a thought and a comment about the make my day law which says that the city will pose any policy change but it says Beyond personal residences so I wasn't sure if that only means businesses so I think maybe that that needs some clarification of what do you mean by that

[139:01] thank you and actually I um I thought it was it's well written and I did notice the comment made by um my council members fear about the homelessness I mean most of you know that I care deeply about the homeless but I think ending homelessness itself is very hard so I think uh reducing or some of the language that was mentioning earlier seems to be something that get us to something concrete because it's so easy to have just lofty um ideas about change but if we limited to things that we're doing concretely that might be more helpful so I thought ending homelessness yes that's what we want ultimately but how are we reducing it I think those are some of the steps we can take thank you thanks Judy uh Lauren bring us home

[140:02] I don't know if I'll do that but I will give my best shot so um I agree with some of the issues that were brought up around 22 BC and E I'm and I'm not I'm a little bit skeptical if we will be able to come up with a language change for B that would get unanimous support on Council I am open to the effort but um that seems challenging um in terms of rent control I really appreciated Mark's comments about wanting to to have a specific call out for mobile home pads but I also wanted to express at least my support that we maintain also the the policy um in support of um getting rid of the prohibition on

[141:00] rent control you know that doesn't mean that us as a community would have to implement it it would just give us the opportunity to look at that and other communities around the state to do it if they desired and again I understand that the governor is not very supportive but I think it's an important policy statement um regarding homelessness I appreciate a lot of the comments other council members have brought up I I understand why there's a um emphasis on High system utilizers but I also would like to see um you know emphasizing anything involving family homelessness I think that that's something that we're not um bringing to light enough and can often be hidden so just trying to bring that forward

[142:00] um and I agree with Rachel's comment about in the for the funding for permanent housing options I mean it might be as simple as just striking permanent from that I think that you know we I personally would really like to see us look at supporting all housing options um and that might mean looking at options that are not permanent as well um and yeah and protecting our Health Data reproductive data and access to gender appropriate Healthcare all seem like really great additions as well thanks so much Lauren Junior your hands up is that a new hand I'm guilty of that all the time too um okay so with that I think that um the public hearing I should probably should

[143:00] have formerly formally brought to a close a bit ago if I didn't do that so that was brought to a close it is now um and so I I this being a public hearing I assume we need a roll call vote is that true an emotion or no or just feedback I don't believe oh go ahead no I don't believe this was brought forward for a vote only for input that Carl will take back and continue working on great um awesome so in that case any final thoughts before we close this out um I'd just like to clarify what I intend to do as far as next steps and see if that works for Council so no I wasn't able to take notes on everything I'm actually delighted that you guys had you were so engaged that you've made as many comments as you did so my intent is to review this video capture as many of the thoughts um where I believe that they are likely

[144:00] to bring about Anonymous view so a lot of these things I think are just plain improvements and and um I think those are easy enough to make and some of them either because I'm not sure Council has unanimity on or or even close to it I might delay those to the intergovernmental Affairs committee or on ones that frankly I just don't understand how to best address so if that works for all of you um I will bring that document back in the memo I will highlight the changes that have been made um and if I did my job right you'll be able to approve it on consent and I hope to do that um the next next month the goal would be to have this policy statement finalized and printed and ready for our legislative breakfast on the 13th and I think we have uh December 13th so I think we have ample time to do that so if that process works for you that's that's my intent intended next steps that sounds great Carl um anyone else need to give any feedback Bob Yates you look

[145:01] like you're just chomping at the bit I'm kidding all right thank you thank you so much Carl um and Laurel and everyone else who um was involved in that presentation and with that let's um Elisha can you take us to our next agenda item yes ma'am thank you our next item on tonight's agenda is item number four Matters from the city manager for a is the community culture resilience and safety tax Community non-profit Grant structure item thanks so much Council and because you haven't heard enough of Mark Wolfe lately with the budget I'm going to send it over to him and uh Charlotte Husky and budget as well they make a great team and they will turn over the Reigns thanks neria good evening Council I'm gonna pull up my screen here mark would you mind introducing yourself absolutely can you see my screen now all right I can Yep this is a good thing

[146:04] sorry let me uh start that again we'll get it feel like I've done this enough that I should be an expert by now okay uh good evening Council Mark Wells Senior budget manager um happy to be with you again a long time no see um but we're talking about a little bit uh different subject uh this uh evening we'll be discussing the community culture resilience and safety tax non-profit grant program structure we have discussed this one time before back in July so we're going to provide a little bit of Framing and Charlotte will take us through some of our initial history of the tax and the feedback that we've heard through our engagements back

[147:00] in 2021 and earlier in 2022 and then I will summarize Council feedback from July and some of the steps that we have taken since to make some revisions to the the proposed structure and again kind of walk through some examples of of how this might look once the criteria is full developed and were actually you know implementing the program so the goal this evening is to receive your feedback and essentially hopefully get a green light on moving forward to implementation to develop more specific program criteria so again we're looking at the the broad structure of the program and making sure we're hitting your intent of the creation of that program and uh happy to receive that feedback as a part of the discussion um later this evening so Charlotte husky is our principal budget analyst and she will take us through these next several slides

[148:00] good evening Council I'm Charlotte Huskey a principal budget analyst with a budget office and as Mark mentioned we're going to go through a brief history of the community culture and safety tax the tax was first approved by voters in 2014 which extended it was a three-year cycle for the first CCR CCS tax through 2017 generating approximately 27 million over three years and funding 13 projects a mixture of both City and Community nonprofit projects voters then it then approved a four-year cycle through 2021 dubbed ccs2 which generated approximately 42 million over four years with 31 million allocated to City projects and 7.9 for non-profit support this past November 2021 voters again extended uh the the ccrs community cultural resilience and safety tax through 2036 for 15 years the longest

[149:01] extension uh the non-profit program structure was developed with staff and Community input as well as councils input developed last year from between January and June of this year and we provided a touch point with Council in July 22. in addition we also have appropriation for City projects Council appropriated 1.7 million so far this year and a special ATP earlier uh this March and have planned appropriation of 28.1 million in the 2023 recommended budget just a brief reminder of the the 21 renewal of the ccrs tax this renewed the 0.3 percent dedicated sales and use tax in November of last year authorizing us to issue debt debt up to 110 million

[150:01] specifically for the ballot language uh for the non-profit portion it's stated using up to 10 percent of tax revenue to fund a grant pool for non-profit organization projects that serve the people of Boulder uh after the renewal was passed in November we formed an internal steering committee made up of Grant managers internal Grant managers within the city including staff from the equity office the Arts office housing and Human Services Community Vitality Communications and engagement and finance which we formed in January to explore Grant structures we also held several focus groups discussions that help to inform the framework that we put together for Council consideration in July and as as well as the revised structure for consideration this evening um the focus group discussions were held last summer as well as earlier this year

[151:00] where we spoke with non-profit stakeholders and they helped Identify some challenges and benefits of the potential Grant structures providing a summary of the 2021 engagement that we held leading up to the tax renewal last November we held several station several focus group sessions last summer and received input from 19 non-profit organizations including a mixture of large medium and small organizations also including existing ccs grantees and they provided us some great feedback including summarized list here which includes supporting Capital planning grants and planning studies and not just Capital construction projects making both transformational Investments as well as investments in smaller capital projects supporting projects that have broad reach and support the entire community

[152:00] in Boulder enhancing flexibility in the grant Administration and ensuring transparent decision a transparent decision-making process we also conducted uh two additional sessions this this uh this spring and March and April of 22 where we had over 15 representatives from 12 non-profit organizations primarily smaller non-profit organizations participating and they provided us uh feedback which helped confirm the program goals and refine potential structures of the grant framework and these uh this feedback from the stakeholders really fell into three General categories or themes and those themes are Grant accessibility and technical assistance coordination opportunities and flexibility and value under Grant accessibility and technical assistance we heard from many

[153:01] stakeholders that there are there are significant barriers such as technology resource capacity and other resources that prevent them from taking advantage of grant opportunities they noted that a key factor for Success was Acts uh access to planning opportunities and Technical technical assistance and they also identified both in in the 22 engagement session and the 21 challenges to finding affordable commercial space with in Boulder the second thing theme of collaboration opportunities uh the non-profit organizations um had an interest in the ability to collaborate with other non-profit organizations and establishing Partnerships for a shared non-profit space to help address gaps in community services they also noted the Partnerships with City staff

[154:03] and want to continue those Partnerships with city city staff and working on these grants and the third theme of flexibility and value we heard that the size of Grants should be scaled to the organization side and that their size and that there should be many different types of Grants to support the diversity of non-profit organizations that exist in the community so these engagement sessions as well as our internal steering committee and input that we received from Council leading up to the 21 tax extension helped us develop these funding goals and intended outcomes for the ccrs nonprofit program listed here including advancing our racial Equity goals and outcomes addressing critical deficiencies improving infrastructure and advancing our vision of being an

[155:02] inclusive and welcoming Community maintaining a healthy stable and financially sustainable non-profit base within Boulder leveraging investment of public dollars to provide Community impact maximize Community impact and addressing infrastructure needs to ensure Community viability while preventing higher costs in the future and I will hand it over to mark for the remainder of the presentation thanks Charlotte so um as I mentioned we were chatting with you about this proposed program structure back in July um I think it's fair to say that we we did have some challenges trying to capture Council feedback in certain areas in in July there were a range of opinions on aspects of the program and areas of limited uh consensus that being said there were certainly some areas where we felt we needed to go back to

[156:01] the structure itself and try and capture what we felt were some areas that there may be at least a majority of council that that felt that we needed to to reevaluate so some of those areas included clarifying uh the focus on capital projects so making sure the intent of the program was in line with um with voter intent that we were clarifying the use and limits on technical assistance that robust evaluation was built into the the program structure that we provided both the capability for larger transformative projects and also access for smaller organizations and uh lastly we heard some range of opinions on the Staffing structure of the program itself So based on that feedback what we did is as a staff team went back to revisit and emphasize the original goals of the program as Charlotte has outlined

[157:00] revisit our previous engagement results again to make sure that we're in alignment with our nonprofit organizations that will be receiving this assistance uh re-emphasizing the importance of the program evaluation and with that and I'll touch on this a bit later in the flexibility associated with evaluating the program knowing that we were trying something a bit different and uh reevaluating the types of grants for clarity so again there I think because we were looking at a variety of different types there was some confusion in how we were presenting it so again we're trying to clear that up this evening and then in the specific revisions we looked at looking at the limitation uh maximums that we had proposed across the types of Grants and instead look at honing in on the limitations related to the administrative and technical assistance spending and then lastly to readjust the timeline and look at the specific process for criteria development and our next Council touch point

[158:03] all right so um I will do a combination um of uh things and hopefully this won't take too long but I'll remind Council community on the structure of the grants that we had proposed and we'll walk through some of those changes so to start this is the table that we um displayed in July what is important to note here is that we're not proposing to change the different types so we're proposing to maintain those three different types of Grants and I'll remind everybody what the three different types of Grants were in a moment I think what's important here is to point out that on the far right we had proposed these recommended maximums by the type of Grant and we're essentially suggesting to remove that and I'll speak a little bit more to that so we'll have three different types of grants that I'll walk through the explanation we'll maintain those three different types but instead of of having the limitations by type what we're proposing is to have these these

[159:01] thresholds or maximums across the the type of spending right so instead of looking at it by type one two or three we'll look at it by the type of spending in capital planning or technical assistance and administration so this ensures that the vast majority of funding is going towards either planning for Capital Investments or Capital Investments uh themselves uh and then what's um what we thought would be of use given that we're trying to reach as many organizations as possible is let the demand of the program the demand by type essentially Drive how much spending occurs in each Grant type right and we'll talk a little bit more about that but essentially if there's huge demand in type 1 great then we'll let our evaluation committee determine that and make those recommendations and awards if if it's in type 2 then great we want to make sure that the community demand amongst our

[160:01] organization is driving where that spending is instead of setting arbitrary thresholds at this point in the process so what does that look like in terms of numbers so again 90 would be behind that capital investment we would Reserve up to 10 for those Administration costs again this is over the life of the 15-year tax and then within that 90 percent of capital investment um we have uh most of that 75 percent going to that direct capital and then a portion of that would be reserved for that technical assistance and planning um to receive Capital dollars so again just making sure we're in a the capital uh infrastructure tax we want to make sure that the vast majority of these dollars are going towards capital projects all right so this section will cover what what types of Grants are we talking about just as a reminder and then

[161:00] provide some scenarios um of uh example organizations that may go through um the grant process for each type I want to put a disclaimer here now these are fake organizations these uh do not exist in at least we were not intending for them to mimic any uh individual organization they're just to be instructive of how this grant process may look so starting with type 1 this is uh the area where we felt um based on feedback that we had heard in the in the number of different engagement sessions that we needed to provide a type of grant that was more accessible to a greater number of organizations so what type 1 grants are intending to do is invite organizations in where they're at and so some may be in a position where they're closer to receiving Capital dollars they have a project that is more identified

[162:00] for their facility others may be at a stage where they simply need a help need help to get into in the door right so they might need some technical assistance in organizational development um to do some Capital planning to imagine what uh their commercial space needs might be or what their Solutions may be so this is something that we felt important and in alignment with some of those program goals was to have a place to go for organizations where they could receive technical assistance in anticipation of a capital investment so who might be um eligible or interested in this type of Grant so we have a couple of different again fake organizations example a human services organization that is currently renting commercial space they have a short period of time remaining on their lease but they've

[163:01] seen an increase in demand for services they're hiring additional staff and they're seeking a permanent space solution knowing that that lease is coming up in a couple of years so they don't really know where to go from here but they they know they're they're in need of some assistance and they're interested in determining that that long-term solution organization B is uh or arts and culture organization that currently owns a small commercial space uh their property is in need of significant repairs but they're not sure if those repairs are affordable um if they stay in their current space so these two organizations may be good candidates to pursue type 1 grants meaning that we would open up applications to organizations they would Define exactly what their need is in the similar summary based on criteria that we would develop over the next few months and then be connected to services in the

[164:01] case of organization a that might be a bit more intensive in terms of the technical assistance to figure out what's the options within their existing uh with their existing space is there an option to renew the lease for the long term are there other issues on the horizon that they need to be aware of that they need some assistance in negotiating with their property owner for instance organization B might be a bit closer to a capital investment where they simply need some Capital planning dollars to bring in somebody that can cost out what that project might be so we've called this a cohort before but essentially these organizations will be at different places and connected to third-party technical assistance in order to identify exactly what their long-term space solution may be some may be going for Grant dollars through ccrs so direct capital assistance for their their

[165:00] project within their space Others May benefit but only from the technical assistance in identifying long-term commercial lease that meets their needs and and would not pursue Grant dollars beyond beyond that at this point all right type two so this is the more traditional direct capital investment more similar to previous CCS Grant cycles and we would do this every couple of years and a couple fake organization scenarios organization C Arts performance organization and venue that currently owns their facility this existing facility is inadequate and needs significant upgrades or even relocating to a new facility this organization has cash on hand and is interested in a capital campaign but needs some type of jump start to do so organization D is a larger Child Care

[166:00] Organization that currently owns their facility as well they have existing event space within their building but it needs to be expanded they've determined the exact scope of that project uh have uh determined cost and are seeking Grant dollars specifically for that project so in both of these instances we think these would be organizations attractive for type 2 grants in the case of organization C they would be seeking to receive City dollars criteria could like other Grant Cycles in the past require some type of matching dollars and there may be some guidance available on timeline and setting up their Capital campaign but this would be more direct capital investment for their space for organization D again they have scoped and costed out their project they're asking for a specific dollar amount for a specific thing that would be one of the intents behind the type 2

[167:00] Investments and lastly type three so this is kind of leaving the door open for other types of community-based facilities where we need some feasibility and partnership with organizations to determine the the need but it's not as straightforward as technical assistance to Capital Grant or Capital dollars directly so what do we mean by by this again this is something that we heard consistently through our um our focus groups in these fake organization profiles um one might be a health and education organization that currently rents uh existing commercial space and that space happens to be adequate but they are exploring and uh looking at common community space to reach teens and youth they have connected with a couple of organizations to brainstorm ideas but need guidance on how to scope a project or even look at what the true need is in community

[168:02] organization f is a multi-purpose cultural organization that owns commercial space and has previously received Grant funds through the city the organization is interested in simply exploring opportunities to directly engage with teens and youth and other organizations and so this is a little bit more nebulous right there might be some City assistance and support there but whether it's a direct capital Grant is questionable at this stage so we would invite these types of organizations in to go through a feasibility study if there's areas of commonality so in this example if it's a teen a new center or facility we would invite organizations in to connect conduct some type of joint feasibility study to look at existing facilities and services and see if there's a gap and then there might be the ability to connect to capital investment depending on the project that could be ccrs it could be another source again it just

[169:00] leaves the door open for for ideas and innovation without you know saying it must be type A or B can I say there's a third door here there's the third option to consider these types of new ideas all right recommended next steps so first thing first we would need to identify project manager that would happen immediately after this meeting where we would be going through that process in a parallel track we would identify third-party technical assistance partners for those planning and technical assistance pieces of the program we would be working um quickly on evaluation design so we know that creating indicators will be really important so that we can actually measure the impact of our investments and then set up a process where we have clear checkpoints to

[170:01] return to council to tweak the program as we need the criteria development and approval would be the next touch point with Council so again this is the broad framework there's agreement on the framework then we would be working with our program manager and Grant staff across the city to develop that specific criteria that you all would review and approve before we implemented fully the made available Grant dollars a part of that criteria development and approval would be a Review Committee that would be charged with making those funding decisions and I believe I touch on that a little bit when one slider or so and additional Outreach and communication so again we had to spend two meetings with Council to make sure that it was clear what this program might look like we'll need to do even more of that Outreach and communication out in community to make sure that organizations are not only aware of the

[171:00] different types of Grants but we're providing clear explanation of what the opportunity is and which type might be appropriate for which type of need so timeline what this looks like again this is adjusted slightly we tried to expedite as best we could here um coming back to you in October so what we would hope to do is be able to work on the specific criteria through the winter and come back in February for the final approval of that criteria that would allow us to do outreached organizations through the early spring where we'd be targeting a program launch sometime April or May of next year the Review Committee would be formed in that may July window as we launched the program that would be a combination of City staff and external Partners again Council will approve the specific criteria and then we'll have you know a little bit at arm's length somebody that

[172:01] a committee that can help expertise using our expertise within the city but also rely on some Community Partners to help make those funding decisions and we're hoping optimistically obviously that depending on the type of Grant we'd be able to get initial grants out next summer I think that's it yep so questions uh for Council this evening um generally do you support the revised structure with the proposed limitations as funding as we outlined some feedback on program implementation and evaluation design and on the process and timeline for Council approval of Grant criteria since that will be your next touch point all right happy to hand it back over to you Rachel thanks so much um thanks to both Mark and Charlotte for those presentations so let's just uh take the questions one at a time so first question is does council support the revised structure

[173:00] with the funding well let me back it up let's see if we have any questions before we answer questions uh-huh questions I got confused it's wrong kind all right um and my screen's not working I see Nicole's hand up thank you Rachel you caught it I was just about to ask for questions before we get to questions um I just have two quick questions one uh Mark and I I think you know we already went over this a little bit um in financial strategies I just want to make crystal clear that I've got it um for the technical assistance um amount I just wanted to make sure that you all think based on your feedback talking to people that um the kind of pocket of funds that set aside for that is enough to meet the needs um because this for me at least the technical assistance component is a major Equity component of this process it's really a way that we can ensure that folks who are often left out of Grant processes have a path in and have the support they need to

[174:02] figure out how to navigate the system and and be successful with these grant opportunities so I just wanted to make sure that that feels like a good amount um to you all yeah thanks Nicole appreciate that question I I think so um and uh it's something we'll evaluate uh so we want to make sure that it's in line with voter intent so that technical assistance provided is to uh is to pursue a permanent commercial space solution and if it's not Capital then it's probably not ccrs is the solution which is okay and there's some benefit of that technical assistance so given that it's not operating support grants um it's not well we'll fund no matter what the solution might be I think it's reasonable especially for now at this early stage if the demand is incredible on that level I think it's something that we'd revisit with Council just like if the demand was great and another type

[175:01] of Grant as well but I think we feel pretty comfortable with with that amount for technical assistance for for the time being awesome thank you um and then my other question was just around the timeline for rollout do you have some initial thoughts on plans for outreach like if somebody's hearing about this and they you know are thinking wow I'd be interested in applying for this when it comes out next spring how do they find out where where the applications are going to be how they get to them all that kind of stuff yeah good question uh so I think we can uh use some of our normal communication channels that that will help I believe what is unique to where we are today versus where we were in previous CCS processes is that we have access to our wonderful Community connectors and so that is another resource that we would work with our community connectors to get information out and then we also

[176:02] have incredible networks internally as well so we issue a number of Grants internally we also work with a number of these organizations as well so I think through the combination of factors we can use multiple channels to try to get the word out I think we also have to develop some materials internally as well and just make sure that it's clear and easy to understand awesome thank you and so I'm assuming there'll be like a website but just as a landing Point like very basic kind of things that that we usually do yeah I think that makes a lot of sense thank you you see Nicole any other questions before we do the other kind of questions okay so let's answer the staff questions then to number one um and just raise your hands if you have uh if you'd like to pontificate on your answer and if no one raises their hands I'd probably just ask for a show of hand so does council

[177:00] support the revised structure with the funding proportions on Administration and planning technical assistance would anyone like to speak about this before I maybe want to raise a virtual hand Lauren Lauren thanks um I just wanted to say that I um and appreciate that we did give a really broad variety of feedback and I think this is a really creative way of solving that issue and I am really excited that you guys were able to rethink this and bring it back to us in this way thank you thank you well said Nicole yeah I'm Echo just another combination I just think it's so clever to get a Consortium of partners for the technical assistance because I imagine the needs can vary a lot so just wanted to call that out as a specific thing that was really cool awesome okay let's do a show of hands who supports this revised structure

[178:01] I got Rachel Lauren Mark Tara Nicole Bob Juni Matt everyone okay moving on to number two does council support the proposed framework for program implementation and evaluation would anyone like to raise a virtual hand to speak to this Nicole yes um just that I I'm hopeful that the metric that we use will include um equity in some way that's kind of giving us an indication of you know whether we're getting uh more grants led by folks who typically haven't applied for Grants or from marginalized groups that I haven't often been recipients of Grants thanks um all right no other virtual hands up so let's do a just show of our real hands do you support the proposed framework for implementation and evaluation yeah me Lauren Mark Tara Nicole Bob Juni met everyone on to number three does councils support the

[179:00] proposed process and timeline for Council approval of Grant criteria virtual hand comments Nicole you're letting me down here I'm counting on you but nothing I got it all out all right okay um and let's just do a show of hands uh please raise your hand if you support the proposed process and timeline for Council approval me Lauren Tara Mark Nicole Bob Juni Matt everyone well done awesome any other um from Council Members comments that you'd like to make on this before I um check in with staff to see if they have what they need we gotta we got claps and jazz hands yeah that was very well done um and it was sort of um herding cats with our feedback so thank you for for taking that slap and bringing us back you know a nice casserole or whatever the right metaphor is so thanks for that um Mark and Charlotte do you have any questions for us before we tune out no we got what we

[180:02] need we'll we'll get our next touch Point scheduled but appreciate feedback and uh glad that uh we were able to capture the wasn't a wasn't slop but maybe sloppy it was good thank you casserole thanks for it again all right um uh with that uh Elisha I believe that's done the other agenda items or not ones we usually tackle but do you still read them no that's up to you you that was our last scheduled item thank you Elisha does anyone have discussion items or a debrief I'm gonna adjourn good night everyone I think we're we're kind of in the right we finished almost at the right time we caught up wait a way to double time it 9 56 P.M nice work Rachel thanks guys yeah thanks Rachel bye