October 27, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[6:15] thank you so good evening everyone good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's study session of the Boulder City Council I'm council member Lauren folkerts and thank you for joining us on tonight's agenda we have two items our first item will cover a discussion on the council priority to revise the existing inclusionary housing program to focus on middle-income housing and next we will have a discussion on the boards and commissions process but first let's start the meeting with tonight's announcements

[7:02] are those up on screen foreign there they are so we have our covid-19 testing and vaccinations for testing um for more information and provide our locations for free covid-19 testing please go to www.boko.org covid testing our Boulder site is still open 2445 stazio drive seven days a week from 8 AM to 6 p.m and for vaccine information and provider locations please go to boco.org covid vaccine and next we have our return to council

[8:00] chambers with the public being back in Chambers we want to remind you that we are offering public participation both virtually and in person Advanced Sign up is required and no in-person signups will be available during the meeting 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 in-person speakers will speak first and virtual speakers will follow all speakers are listed in the order in which they signed up speakers do do have the option to change their location preference if they need by contacting the city clerk's office at city clerk's office at bouldercolorado.gov prior to the start of the meeting okay thank you before we go into our work items I'd like to outline how the meeting will be conducted first we will review staff's

[9:01] presentation for each item and then we will have time for questions at the end of the presentation we will conduct our Council discussion with staff if you have questions please wait for staff to complete their presentation I'd now like to turn it over to our city manager Nuria vandermeid to introvert introduce our first item our discussion on a council priority to revise the existing inclusionary housing program to focus on increasing middle income housing thanks so much Lauren and I believe we've got a full uh Full Slate of conversations today so I won't take a lot of time talking but we'll say that inclusionary housing is a really important topic and one that Boulder has worked hard on over the years and in fact um being a source that other cities turn to for advice as that moves forward so Kurt I think I'll start with you if you wanted to do it before we send it over to Jay

[10:00] um good evening Council um Kirk for an hour director of Housing and Human Services uh hold on for one second we're having a technical issue yeah there we go um so tonight um I'll be joined by uh Jay sugnet and Michelle Allen um they uh they work with uh um the developers within our community and they work around how housing policies this is our first discussion uh with this Council for a study session on affordable housing so we're really looking forward to receiving both your questions and feedback so the inclusionary housing program is really the Workhorse of our affordable housing program in the city of Boulder we were one of the first cities in the country to actually Implement inclusion Arizona and so we have many years of experience and it's been a very

[11:00] successful program but it also requires that we make adjustments to it incrementally as the market changes as the housing needs change and what makes it incredibly challenging is we also live in one of the most expensive cities in the country so creating affordable housing takes good policy takes a fair amount of money and it takes Innovation and so I'm looking forward to handing this over to Jay who will be doing the presentation and um and then having the discussion with you um where we will come back to you um uh you know based on the feedback that we hear tonight so um I'll hand it over to Jay good evening everybody uh so uh

[12:02] who is yeah I'm like can you pull up the slides pretty please okay thank you next slide so Council identified two uh priorities related to housing that are squarely in the domain of Housing and Human Services uh as Kurt mentioned the first one we're going to talk about it for the bulk of the conversation tonight is about inclusionary housing but I also wanted to mention the down payment assistance pilot so just a quick aside that is moving forward um and we hope to return to council later either later this year or early next but basically this was a down payment assistance pilot that was approved by the boulder voters back in 2019. I was put on hold due to the pandemic and the since then the market really has changed pretty dramatically

[13:01] and there's a desire to re-look at some of the assumptions so we've hired a consultant uh with the the goal of trying to better understand the potential financial and social impacts both to the city but also to the Future borrowers um so as I said we'll hopefully return later with more information on that topic so back to inclusionary housing next slide please so the purpose of tonight is a bit of an update of primer on affordable housing but really to get your feedback on these updates that were we've identified as potential topics to explore and also get your feedback on the overall process to the public process to Implement these updates next slide so the issue I think everybody knows well but this is a good illustration so

[14:00] this shows that area median income for a three-person household uh about 105 000 that's annual income and you can see half of people in Boulder earn more half of people earn less but the single family owned businesses um had a pretty significant increase in the past year so 1.25 million um so that means half of the home sold for more and half of the homes sold for Less so that differential between what what Boulder households are earning and housing costs is really what's driving this problem next slide and before I go too far I wanted to just be really clear about when we talk about affordable housing we're talking about deed restricted in perpetuity permanent affordable permanently affordable housing so those are the homes that are in our program and the intention is with both rental and homeownership is that no one pays more than one-third of their household income

[15:00] on their housing costs overall so just when we talk about affordable housing we're talking about the permanently affordable so as Kurt mentioned we do have a long history that time frame that I gave you on the last slide only went to 2010 but Boulder recognized that affordability was a challenge going uh over a half century so you can see from the 1960s when the Housing Authority was first formed and there I'm not going to go through this point by point but um there is a really good detailed summary of each of these uh in your packet um but as Kurt mentioned the program was adopted in 2000 and we have done two updates since then and as you mentioned now is a good time to revisit conclusionary housing to respond to changing Community priorities as well as market conditions all right next slide so in all that hard work is really paid off so we have just over 3 800

[16:02] homes in our program that are from the affordable that's 8.1 percent are permanently affordable um and more than halfway towards our 15 goal and this graph below is is really worth spending some time on and making sure everybody understands it so out of every 100 units that were built uh in the five-year period a do one of those were Market rates and this is new construction um and out of those hundred units 19 were permanently affordable again new construction and one of the unique things about folder is that in that time period we've also been able to acquire 70 additional units through preservation purchasing existing affordable or purchasing existing market rate housing and converting it to deed restricted permanently reported so for every 100 units we're technically getting 36 which is significantly higher than 25 percent

[17:02] um inclusionary housing requirement that we'll talk next slide so I want to talk about the three major tools for achieving our affordable housing goals the first one is annexation so we're both the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan identifies the need for an annexation particularly or residential to provide Community benefit to ensure that that growth and development contribute positively to the community and for residential that's typically as I said permanently affordable housing so we have slightly different thresholds so small developments so one to four uh units we typically work for two times cash for large developments so if it's 30 or more units typically the requirement is 40 to 50 percent um since the last update in 2018 for Middle income we've really focused or shifted the focus from moderate income

[18:01] household ownership to Middle income and then mid-size developments was that area in between that have been a bit challenging and Council has wrestled with those in the past year and staff intends to return fairly in the next year with some potential solutions for that as well um and the one thing I want to be clear with uh one of the key outcomes is that annexation has been a great tool for us to get ownership opportunities um so the other you know if you think of a holiday neighborhood or Northfield Commons there's pretty significant number of those for ownership um and that will become really important later in the conversation next slide number two is inclusionary housing so this is basically a tool that um a lot of jurisdictions are are pursuing Boulder's been doing it for quite a while it basically requires all new development to contribute a percentage

[19:00] of housing to as permanently affordable and this in Boulder it's 25 we raised it in 2018 from 20 to 25 that extra five percent was specifically for Middle income um and there are four options so they can provide those units on site off-site they can make a cash and live contribution or they can dedicate land for affordable housing next slide so Kurt called it the Workhorse absolutely so um you can see just the sheer amount of cash and live that has um basically come to the city but over the past since 2013. and it's the most common way of satisfying our inclusionary obviously obligation uh next slide and outcomes so between 2013 and 2021 there were 182 developments in the city that were subject to IH um very different uh the outcomes of

[20:01] that uh as you can see the vast majority all except for seven uh paid cash and that brought in 53.8 million dollars and but we have gotten some on-site we've gotten three affordable ownership projects uh four affordable rental projects and [Music] um part of the challenge is that the outcomes we aren't getting the outside on-site outcomes that we were hoping for particularly with the update back in 2018. next slide so the third tool is local funding so we brought in over 85 million dollars over the past six years uh and cash in there is definitely the most significant portion of that in almost half we also get property tax um and that basically goes into our obstacle the community housing assistance program the child program you may remember from

[21:01] your budget discussions uh we also get federal funds and we those are Community Development block grants uh home funding and we also have commercial linkage fees so that is similar to an inclusionary housing requirement but it applies to non-residential development so all new office Hotel other things have to pay at first worst foot um fee as part of new development to help support affordable housing so that linkage fee has been 11 but we anticipate that that portion of the pie will continue to grow in the coming years next slide so that local funding um is really key to this conversation so local those local dollars can get leveraged with outside sources sometimes too three and sometimes four dollars um in state and federal funding it also provides a wide variety of

[22:00] housing types that are geographically dispersed so that acquisition comes into play if we were relying on IH and on sighting outcomes entirely this map would look very different it would be even more focused on areas where there's new construction happening um and it's the primary source of magic for acquisition but also middle income so we don't have the same those ability to Leverage um outside sources for Middle income as well we'll talk about that a little bit more next slide so the bottom line uh so IH is producing very few affordable units directly but it's producing significant number through its chemical contributions um so we want to strengthen the program look at how do we create some additional incentives how do we strengthen the current incentives um increase the overall program efficiencies and go some loopholes talk

[23:00] about that a little bit but we also we recognize that there's a lot we don't fully understand about how the market is working we like to hire a consultant to help us to understand that in particular the dynamic between for sale and Rental and the changes that have been happening next slide so of those three tools you can see the outcome so the annual production is highly variable it depends on how of development in general which is also highly variable the main thing take away from this slide just shows look at the amount of blue which is rental versus home ownership so you can see very early in the program up to 2013 or 2012 there was a lot more homeownership units created and after that it switched to rent next slide and this just shows that um in a pie chart and this is really

[24:02] quite significant because when we're talking about middle income we're talking about ownership right so for the 2016 middle incomes strategy and the market analysis showed that that the vast majority of rentals were affordable to Boulder households um and and we believe that's still true today so this ownership piece is what's really challenging so when a household is ready to stop renting and purchase a unit that the opportunities for properties are very slim as you saw from that first graph next slide so a little more definition so middle income what we're talking about typically is 80 to 120 percent of Boulders area median income so it scaled depending on the household size but that just gives you a sense of who the income

[25:00] ranges that we're talking about and on the upper end you notice they those are six figure salvments next slide [Music] so quite a few challenges that we've been talking about so those home prices increasing greater than median income but also the housing market has been slow to recovered from the 2009 housing crisis and it's no longer just Bolder talking about this for um Mountain communities it's almost every Community across the country and then additional challenges are creeping up on us so we have high inflation as well as rising interest rates I just heard today that the average interest rate is over seven percent for the first time in over a decade so we have we have lots of work to do next slide and one thing or a big part of this whole puzzle is the challenge around how do we get uh ownership um and they typically what the city does

[26:02] is we help provide Gap financing for our affordable housing partners and this graphic just illustrates our typical subsidy to stakeholder housing Partners um where someone else is roughly 80 to 120 or 110 000 per unit uh and that's for new construction for rentals uh ownership acquisition we've purchased four uh homes on the open market just just this year um and that average subsidy is around after 110 um it goes up with larger units um but this the big challenge with ownership is new construction uh that Gap is is quite significant so half a million to six hundred thousand so these are very rough numbers um this is just basically uh what we've experienced over the past year and these numbers keep growing every year next slide

[27:02] so we have some existing tools and new tools coming along down the um the pipeline so of those local tools that acquisition and rehab that I mentioned uh those four units that we're purchasing annexation we probably won't see a lot of new units but we can see a pretty steady stream and we have the H2O which is home to ownership down payment assistance program that is a program that's been around for about 15 20 years at the city where we offer down payment assistance of up to a hundred thousand dollars for households to purchase a home on the open market and in exchange they agreed to share a percentage of their appreciation and that percentage is based on how much down payment assistance they receive uh there is also the middle income down payment pilot is that what I meant I talked about very briefly at the beginning that's also coming along and then the state has also um for the first time really gotten involved in Middle

[28:00] income as well so the in particular they uh the state has created a middle-income Housing Authority with special powers to help encourage ownership and mental income and they've also the state legislature has allocated a half a billion dollars towards affordable housing and a big chunk of that is dedicated specifically to Middle income and ownership ownership and then something else we're very excited about the state has a down payment assistance program that can be layered on top of local programs and that's 25 000 no interest loan to any uh to moderate and middle income so hopefully that tool will be available so it's holds in the coming months next slide so there's a couple things that we have identified that we would like to explore as part of this conclusionary housing

[29:01] update and a lot of it is basically increasing our funding but we have given up on the both of trying to incentivize outcomes and particularly for sale but we want to explore the potential of increasing cash and live for larger homes So currently a home that's 1200 square feet okay is the same cash flow amount as a home that's four thousand or six dollars or even 8 000. so we're exploring a way to capture the difference in charge so that larger homes pay in a fair share of the caption there also currently if you are demolishing a home or replacing a home you're not required to pay cash and as we know sometimes very modest comes very get replaced with fairly large homes so perhaps there's a way to look at how do we capture the difference in added square foot so that

[30:01] they do pay some sort of cash next slide and then overall strategies to improve the efficiency and the outcomes so we'd like to modify the inclusionary housing rents to serve a wide range of incomes So currently if a private developer comes in and wants to provide affordable rental housing they are just simply required to provide 60 Amis and there is definitely a need in the community for 50 emis and lowered to really provide housing to people in our community that need it the most we'd also like to adjust the how we establish the methodology for cash and load um that's where a consultant can help in terms of looking at what other cities are doing and then another code name a clean up items specifically one is looking at land um the land dedication option so we've had two recent land dedications and

[31:02] we've have some lessons learned that we'd like to incorporate into an update next slide foreign and then overall proposed project schedule and Community engagement uh so this is our basic time frame uh there's an attachment that's specific to that and also there's an attachment on the racial Equity assessment um which is basically an ongoing process throughout to make sure that what we're doing helps us to achieve our racial Equity goals and it's important to note that what we found so far is that you know the affordable housing and and the diversity of households that we have in our affordable housing now is really one of the most important tools we have to achieve a lot of racial Equity goals so next slide so that's it so questions for Council um but we would have be more than happy to

[32:01] answer any questions you might have based on what you heard I see Rachel got her hand up first Rachel would you like to kick us off with some questions um I do want to start off with one question um in the packet there's a paragraph that reads missing middle versus middle income and I'll just read it out loud because not everybody watching will have probably seen it this is missing middle housing and middle income housing households are often conflated but are two different concepts missing middle refers to a building type like duplexes fourplexes and Bungalow courts in contrast to what the housing market has mostly provided post World War II I.E single-family housing larger Apartments condo buildings missing metal housing and Boulder particularly new construction is not affordable to Middle income households and I'm going to pair that with um something that was presented in the

[33:00] slide so it said that Cinco family homes average right now is 1.25 million and it looks to me like it's doubled in less than 10 years like from 600 000 to 1.25 million in less than the last 10 years versus attached homes the average price right now is 480 000 and is I don't think according to the slide it has even doubled since 2010 and I think the missing middle by the what was presented in the packet would count like a duplex I think would count as a um an attached home so I'm just trying to understand why does the packet say missing middle housing in Boulder is not affordable to Middle income households is my first question sure um I mean that's a great question uh it and I experience with discussions with planning board and also the housing Advisory Board um that seems to confuse things so and also these folder uh sub community

[34:01] plan so there's a strong desire to have missing middle housing that you know the the term was coined by Daniel peralig um to describe that type of housing right that you just read um the challenge is when that's new construction it is rarely affordable to a middle-income household so even someone earning 120 000 isn't going to be able to afford um eight hundred thousand dollar town home or a 1.2 million dollar town um so for me it's just helpful to to have that distinction as part of the conversation does that make sense it um I I do hear what you're saying I I I may agree to disagree and come back uh during during comments with it but I appreciate that the explanation um and then uh let's see also want to make sure I understand the timeline that was presented you're looking for

[35:00] stakeholder feedback March and April and then a new code section May June and then we would vote in july-ish would that be the expectation on something new yes okay uh those are all my questions I think thank you thank you Rachel Matt looks like you're up next thanks Lauren um I will I will join and follow up with where Rachel's line of inquiry was on missing middle and middle later but just so there's a two of us interested in that um uh my question is uh I don't think I saw it maybe you alluded to while I was taking notes so if it's redundant my apologies um how what is our progress on reaching our 15 of inventory by 2035. where where are we on that trajectory um so I'm kind of wondering if you have if you know where that is because I know it's you know we're not consistent every year but at this snapshot in time if you could give me a sense of where we're at I can't 8.1 percent

[36:02] 8.1 percent towards the 15 right so currently yeah to keep in mind the challenge is that it's the total number of of Home houses housing units in the city so 8.1 so the 15 once we get it that's 15 of all housing units in the future as well so it's kind of a moving Target sure so how would you evaluate that we're on track ahead behind where how would you evaluate that trajectory um so that was part of the conversation in the middle income housing strategy and the last company comprehensive planned update um we I think Council and staff realized that we were getting fairly close to the 10 goal um and so we went through a process and raised it to 15 and so the part of that conversation as I recall was wanting to create something that was ambitious but at the same time

[37:01] realistic um but yeah it's really challenging to say yes we're on track nor not on track it really a lot of it depends on the market um and a lot of other factors so I can't give you a perfect answer sorry I appreciate it absolutely true wants to say something uh thank you Matt so just um a little more information on that we have um I think it's about 12 12 or 1300 units that are in the uh the pipeline right now which are either under construction um or um are in the planning or development uh entitlement process um so those those uh units will be um developed um as we have resources and um as they're approved for developments um we would hope that those units could

[38:01] be developed over the next uh four to five years um and what we have seen is that the pipeline continues to increase as well um so in 2018 when we uh when we gave the update to council and went through this inclusionary housing ordinance update we also had about a thousand units in the pipeline at that time so I'm encouraged that that pipeline has not gone down it's actually gone up a bit we've also seen um over this last year that the amount of Gap funding required to implement affordable housing is going up and um so not not sure if we'll be able to maintain the pace that we've had over the last two and a half years which has been a very good pace so there's a lot of factors that come in the Market's changing prices uh the price of

[39:00] developing housing is changing but we have continued to keep a good pipeline of housing units moving forward thanks for that context no knowing the pipeline is is helpful than just a snap and I think you're a mute man no I don't think I did oh anyway no but that's really helpful context seeing what's coming down the next few years thank you for that Kurt thanks Jay is that it for you Matt looks like yep okay Mark and then Juni and then Nicole just a couple of questions um uh when what can you tell me what caused the shift from the 39 ownership level uh to the eight percent ownership level that we're experiencing today unclear about that yeah I wish I could point to one single

[40:00] Factor as to why that happened um as we tried to explain in the moment I think it's it's a combination of different market dynamics um was the big one so when that burst and you know the fact that subprime mortgages exploded and um there was a serious clampdown in terms of who the federal government would actually provide back alone there's also construction defects there's also a shifting in Federal Financing so I don't think we can point to one thing in particular I think it's a combination of all those different factors okay and and the thing that that well I feel like I have confidence in saying that is because it's not unique to Boulder it's not unique to Colorado other communities across the country extend a lot of the same things but by the way when you do estimates of

[41:00] uh the cost to produce uh middle income housing um what do you use as a as a hard cost of construction that's a good question Michelle um we don't construct housing the city doesn't construct housing and neither does the housing authority and that's one of the the issues that we're facing the Housing Authority doesn't do it because there's no federal or state funds to leverage but as Jay said State funds seem to be coming down the pike um so what we've been focusing on is using our local funds for acquisition so does that make sense um yeah somebody knows but it's not us so we can easily find that out um when you showed the charter funds um that included 85 million dollars of investment

[42:00] um does that also include the value of of tax credit programs that we use to to um provide a good deal of our affordable housing no it does not so that's just that's purely money that came into the city um that money went back out to our housing Partners okay and they were used able to use that money to leverage it okay and and finally um we have a look at at one of these um rent-to-own programs that might be useful for people in affordable housing would it make any sense here I I don't have a view on it I'm just asking the questions yeah I'll answer that um if I can so um we we haven't we haven't done that and um uh there's a few factors involved with

[43:00] that um the rent to own uh with with a rent to own approach you're not able to Leverage The the tax credit dollars that you just uh spoke about or requested information on so it it makes the creation of that affordable unit um very expensive okay um so it's a model that can work for the um uh for the residents um but it's it's very difficult to put the get the financing resources to to make that approach particularly with the high cost of of development okay my last question is uh promise is my last um when we look at cash and Lou for demolition or replacement of an existing home I I assume that's going to be on some form of press graphic basis so that we treat a 2 000 square foot replacement differently than a mcmansion correct yeah so we don't know if it would be per square foot or if it could

[44:01] be ranges of square footage um that would basically escalate as it gets bigger and bigger okay thank you that's all I've got thank you Mark Juni yeah up next thank you I have a similar question to Matt and I feel like I didn't really hear an answer or if there is even an answer to that and my question is since we're at 8.1 and the hope is to get to 15 by 2030 so I'm wondering are we growing what is there a how do I put it do we know how how much we're growing each year is there such a goal is there such a metrics or is it more are we just doing it every five years so how do we know how much we're growing in order to get to that 15 percent per year

[45:07] so um I mean when I started with the city about nine years ago we were I think about 6.8 or I'm sorry 6.1 so we are for we are making progress um and it's something that we measure annually so we will know at the end of December 31st we know exactly how many market rate units were and we know how many affordable units were permitted so our affordable housing dashboard um really does try to reflect that information at least on an annual basis does that help yeah it it does thank you so much and from what I'm hearing from you it's more of a reactive approach I I suppose the city is not in in the business of creating housing in itself so you're waiting to see at the end of the year to see how much you've created

[46:01] and then you somehow update the metrics as opposed to say well this year we intend to grow one percent because if the if the hope is to get to 15 by 2030 we're already in 2022 so to get to that number it would be to grow one percent each year but from what I'm hearing from you that's not really how it works yep just challenging to yeah and I think I have another question about this slide when I was looking at them and it's it's slide number 11. it says tool number three local funding and you mentioned 85 million dollars and it was over a 10-year period so that's about 8.5 million but my question is does that include any type of State funding it seems like that does not include State funding because you mentioned affordable housing and state funding so I it seems to me that doesn't

[47:01] include any of it um yeah it's a six year period the 85 million but um yeah the there were we don't get stage funding so the federal funding often comes through the state so that that may be where the confusion is okay thank you that's all I have thank you Lauren thanks Junie uh Nicole and then Bob thank you and thanks thanks for this great memo in the presentation um I have a question that's probably going to sound really stupid but it's really just me trying to kind of take us way back to a really really high level do we know why people want home ownership is that something that we understand from people because well sorry let me but you answer the question first but I'll tell you where my mind's going

[48:00] um I mean it's been the American dream for quite some time is owning your own home it's it's seen as the pathway of Building Wealth intergenerational wealth um and the US is kind of unique in that way most most other countries I would argue there's there's much more acceptance of of renting um so yeah I'm sure others have different opinions and thoughts on that as well but that's what I would say and I I mean the the reason that I ask is because what people's motivations are in getting into the program like fundamentally this is a program for the people in our community who wish to live in our community and I think the way that we are um the suggestions around how to modify some of this really depends for me on why people want home ownership do they want it because they build wealth do they want it because it can potentially stabilize housing costs when they're kind of skyrocketing in other ways do

[49:00] they want it just because they like to Tinker and they want to be able to you know put in bookshelves or whatever it is that they want to do um to me that that really feels like a critical piece of information and so I'm just wondering if the engagement process will maybe involve some of those kinds of questions to understand the people who are looking at this why because I think that there are some anyway I'll wait for discussion for the rest of that but um the other question that I had so I'm just going to summarize that is that we don't totally know we can guess but we don't we don't really know why people in our community want home ownership um and the other question that I had was I was just trying to understand the engagement plan a little bit and I talked about the primary stakeholders I think this was part of in the racial Equity instrument and it talked about a group that was important sources of input and then secondary sources of input and then secondary audiences and I was just wondering if you could describe a little

[50:01] bit those different um sorry dogs sure um yeah let me just pull it up real quick and I guess you know the groups are listed right but what's the purpose of these different um categories what's the why are they divided up like this oh um so my understanding is that's really from the um our our community engagement framework is to be super clear with the public and who our stakeholders are and what the level of involvement is is to be expected so I mean so that's the purpose of trying to articulate that early on in the process um but that doesn't mean that that's exactly what's going to happen I mean I think processes evolve um one group to get moved from one box to another um fairly easily so does that help answer yes yeah yeah no it does I was just because to me that um

[51:00] the people who want homeowners feel like they're the primary group in there um and they were listed as sort of a secondary audience and so I just I wasn't sure what that meant in terms of how they fit into the engagement process thank you thank you Nicole Bob and then I will ask some questions that I have thanks Lauren um so uh it sounds like we're doing pretty well with respect to our low-income targets and goals I know that the denominator increases but it sounds like the numerator is increasing at roughly the same Pace seems like we've been at eight percent for a while but I was encouraged to hear Kurt say that we've got 1200 units in the pipeline so maybe that'll nudge up closer to 10 soon but of course tonight's discussion is not about low income affordable housing is by middle-income affordable housing which of course as um as this Council and prior councils have found is a much tougher nut to crack one word I didn't see in in the memo or

[52:00] here tonight was was was Regional um and I know this is a somewhat a controversial topic but let me try to frame it in the form of a question what is our regional approach to Middle income um attainable housing because we do have communities that surround us who do have middle income housing that is attainable um are we are we just kind of drawing the lines at the Boulder City Limits and saying uh we have to get some middle income housing here in the city of Boulder or are we looking at this more holistically and regionally I know that there was a regional Consortium put together back in 2007 there was a big um uh confab what was that about 2008 during 2019 when we all got in the big Auditorium with Longmont and Louisville Lafayette and Erie and so on and so forth and talked about affordable housing I haven't heard much about a Regional middle-income Housing recently what's uh what's going on with that guys um thanks for that question Bob um I'll

[53:00] give a bit of an update in this you'll you'll see something coming to council actually related to this in the very near future as well um so the the Regional Housing Partnership have have been working with the surrounding uh communities um around various strategies and policies if you remember when you were up in that in that room up in Longmont um for that kickoff of the of the strategy there was a list of various uh policy approaches that different communities could Implement um to make progress both on affordable housing as well as middle income housing so we've been working with um uh the surrounding communities and I'm pretty excited to say since that kickoff there's been several communities that have actually implemented uh inclusionary housing

[54:01] um so we're the Regional Housing Partnership is working with Superior Lewisville Lafayette in Erie and through the uh arpa conversations over this past summer the county arpa funds they've decided to allocate resources to help support middle income housing and particularly um uh uh increasing and duplicating some of the approaches that we've taken over the last year which is actually purchasing uh market rate units um updating them and then reselling them at a lower price and um as you've rightly said some of those types of units are actually more affordable in the communities that I that I just listed so the arpa funds are we will be

[55:02] bringing in IGA uh to council it's an IGA between Boulder County and the city of Boulder um for our city program to hire additional staff to support the expansion of that approach in other communities and for us to provide additional capacity um for those communities to begin to take on that work themselves um so we're pretty excited about the progress that's being made in the surrounding communities and we're hoping that we can share some of the things that we've learned along the way with them as well thanks that's real helpful uh Kurt and I would hope that I know you can have your planning according to the timeline to have three or four touches with us over the next six or eight months on this topic um if in one of those touches you could

[56:00] bring back some of the some really great facts and figures tonight around low income afford affordable housing here in Boulder I would love to see some stats around middle income housing especially intentional middle-income housing in the region and what we're doing with our regional Partners uh uh so kind of expanding those limits to to Boulder County or whatever you think is appropriate but outside of the boulder State limits and what we can do because I mean this is a really really tough thing right um as you guys pointed out there's just not the aid that there is for low income stuff and so it'd be really nice to to learn what we can do with our our sister cities in the area around middle income housing not to to kick the problem over to them but um because their land values are lower and their their costs are lower I think it's unavoidable for us to be looking to them to help us with some more middle income challenges thanks Bob

[57:00] um I had a couple questions I wanted to bring up too so my first one is it's a little bit hard to tell but I think from some of the slides it looks like um the acquisition and Rehab funding has by the city's Partners has primarily targeted rental properties versus ownership properties and I was wondering if you could clarify if that's true and is that mainly to take advantage of matching funds that are available or are there other dynamics that impact that um the bulk of our Acquisitions uh have been through Boulder housing Partners so and their focus is on rental um but as I mentioned we we have been trying to acquire ownership and we did purchase those four units just this year um and we'll be looking to purchase more but it really has to do with that

[58:00] um the the Gap so those concentric circles so that the cost escalates um when you go from rental to ownership to new construction does that help yes um I was also wondering if we have any details yet about the state's transformational grant program and whether any of the funding for that might apply to Middle income housing um absolutely so we as staff have been um providing comments to uh Department of uh local Affairs uh on how they're going to structure those um specific programs uh and as I mentioned the the creation of the middle income housing authority I think presents some significant opportunities as well but I think we once those rules are published we will definitely be ready to

[59:01] apply and take advantage of those funds the best we can foreign [Music] thank you um and then a couple just more technical questions so the inclusionary housing fee scaling that you talked about considering for um you know different sized housing units but also for demo and replacement homes could that also be applied to additions potentially potentially but it could be challenging um so potentially we have to look into it yeah yeah and then you can do housing and IH is specific to new housing um so additions are a little bit of a outlier but we'll definitely look into it thank you you also mentioned that there are code updates planned as part of this process

[60:01] but it doesn't sound like at the moment those include any zoning related updates um is that true and sort of what kind of lift or how you know how would trying to consider some of those things affect this process going forward yeah I appreciate the comment and your um written question as well um so planning and development services will be coming to council for a study session November 10th to talk about the specific uh Council priorities related to zoning changes um but we are as housing and Human Services our domain is is inclusionary housing and so we'll be focused on those updates but we will be coordinating closely with Planning Development service and staff all along the way

[61:00] thank you Matt um is it okay if I let Aaron go first since he hasn't had a chance to ask questions yet thank you thanks Lauren this is actually uh colically with what you were asking so it's a well-timed I just want to mention that uh I have been in touch with uh some of the organizers of the middle income housing authority and we're working on setting up a meeting uh to talk um about what they're up to and how the speed might be able to take advantage of that so I will report back uh certainly the housing staff into the council after I have a chance to talk to them so I just want to let you know that's coming up before too long thank you Aaron do you have any questions or just another question thanks thank you um okay Matt and then I think would be great to after this start going into comments yes this is a question just following up Mark's line of inquiry um about sort of ownership versus rental and uh

[62:00] worrisome uh ratio that is sort of arisen recently um I don't like that ratio where it's at so I'll just stick with myself on that but um so the really question centers on [Music] and I can't this isn't original someone certainly thought of it before and there's probably a reason why we're not doing it but I'll ask anyway why can't we mandate a certain percentage of new units just be ownership versus rental I mean why can't we create that very parody that we want or at least create a floor so that it just can't dip below a certain amount I think as was mentioned it was in the 30 percentile range prior to sort of the falling off the cliff that we saw post 2013. so why can't we just mandate a floor to that ownership to keep some level of parity uh throughout our community do you mean um Matt are you talking about for for Market projects I muted sorry um I was referring to um well it could be Market or in our

[63:01] inclusionary housing program it could be either way really just where we have control because seeing that we're in a runaway of rental um how do we claw that back and so really it's either or is there a vehicle in either of those institutions or or areas that we can mandate ownership to bring back some parity um to those numbers well the the place that that we know that we can mandate it is through annexations because it's a negotiated um agreement and and we can and do require that all new housing um that is constructed through annexations is for sale housing as far as like imposing that on the market I think that's problematic because um you can while you can impose it that doesn't mean somebody's going to do it there's a reason they're not doing ownership right now and that's not going to make that go away um oh and I'm sorry I I I've been reminded to make sure you know who I am

[64:00] I'm Michelle Allen um with HHS I'm the inclusionary housing program manager so I work with developers that's pretty much um talking with them day in day out and like I said you know I think that there there is an issue with trying to mandate something like that they're not doing it for a reason um and mandating isn't going to take that away for example if they're very um um of adverse to the construction defect law if we mandated they simply won't build them so I think it's problematic Matt but we can certainly look at it I'll just suggest if we don't get the housing we want we don't want the housing right I mean I think there's some value question of it it's not what we want we shouldn't just accept it because it's just housing so it's a value question I think to pose for the rest of my colleagues but unless it's the exact housing the right housing that we want do we do we mandate and if they say it's not working first fine we'll wait until we

[65:00] get the right housing that we want in our community so I had I don't know it it's not fully baked but I'm curious to see what we can do to Force the hand if possible so anyway there's other thought I'd appreciate that down the road thanks for answering that question well Matt if I could just add one thing to that and um with all these policy decisions there's there's trade-offs you know that have to be made um and and I think one of the things that we know whether it's mandated or not um there isn't the same funding for ownership that there is for rental the financing mechanisms are very different um we'll see how that changes with the state funding um there there could be some changes there um but in reality the um through that approach um we would certainly see a significant reduction in in the overall development of rental affordable housing and you

[66:01] know so that's sort of the tough trade-offs that we would have to think about um it would take us um a fair amount of analysis to understand what that trade-off would actually look like um and what that impact would be um but if that's a direction the council wanted us to go in um you know we we could certainly do that um and then we'd have to come back with um sort of a an understanding of the of the capacity it would take to look at those questions thank you Matt um Juni are you do you have a additional question or are you going to kick us off on comments I can do a little bit of both I was looking at the annexation tool number one and I thought to myself well and I read in the memo that section as

[67:01] well and it talks about how uh to date almost 113 middle income prize homes and this inventory has been re a result of annexation requirements so I and since I've been on Council I've been a huge proponent of uh the Baseline studies for area three and I'm wondering if that part of that comment is to kind of like move counsel uh to think more more closely I guess I suppose at the next Retreat uh hopefully I am not gonna be there if elected but I wonder if that's the thought to get Council to be thinking closer on the importance of annexation I I think one of the advantages one of the advantages to that uh Judy is that um uh in area three um the city in HHS in part would be a

[68:01] landowner of some of the development and as a land owner um it makes it easier for us to go in a particular direction just like Matt described um so the other opportunity to to go in that direction is is by actually being the landowner for the development so area three we do own HHS about 30 30 Acres so there's certainly real opportunity in area three to accomplish [Music] a lot of these goals and and probably to come very close to hitting that 15 you know percent goal thank you Okay who wants to kick it off with comments don't all speak at once right we got Nicole

[69:01] I'm gonna jump in because I'm getting increasingly tired so I'm hoping I'll be a little more coherent if I go first um I really just want to come back to this issue of why people want affordable homeownership um I think it's just so critical for us to understand that when we go into it we can um if we think that it's because people want to accumulate wealth I mean frankly I would not tell anybody who wants to get wealth out of a home to enter into this program because the the wealth that they will accumulate over time is a lot less than what they would get with a market rate home elsewhere so I think it's really critical right if we know that if somebody's coming in to get wealth out of their home that feels like something important that that we want to know because I'm not sure this is the right mechanism to do that if it's for cost stabilization I think some of the points Lauren brought up in her hotline post addressed that the nice thing about you know buying a new home is that you do have some cost stabilization but if

[70:00] your HOA fees are increasing really quickly if you are having maintenance costs not just regular maintenance but kind of what I think of as like Capital maintenance costs on a home like your hot water heater goes out or maybe you need a new roof or something like that that's not really going to stabilize your costs and if you don't have the as much Equity as the market rate home would you may actually end up um paying more than than You're Expecting over time and even more than you're accumulating in your home so it seems really important for us to understand that and if there's some other reason that people are wanting home ownership then you know how can we tailor the program to meet those needs but I feel like without knowing that there's some different directions and we may not be solving for the right um constraints as we're thinking about this program so in the engagement process I would love for us to spend some time understanding why why do you want this what is it going to get get for you to step into this affordable

[71:00] home ownership program program and then I think a separate question that all of us should think about is why do we as a city want this why do we want affordable homeownership because we've been talking about you know this is the the housing we want or the housing we don't want fundamentally it's the housing for our residents and our workers right so what what is it that we are looking for there if for example we are trying to address racial Equity through home ownership I actually worry that this is going to exacerbate the wealth Gap if we continue with a program like this because of that accumulation and and not being able to sort of accumulate Equity the same way that you would in a market rate right so if we have more people of color entering into the homeownership program affordable homeownership program for example they're capped in in what their Equity is in their home but if we've got more people who are not people of color in market rate homes their wealth can

[72:00] kind of keep going right so I really worry that if we're not crystal clear about what we want as a city and what we're trying to do and how the ways that we're going about it may exacerbate some of the issues that are there we may end up in a well not we but our future Council people in 20 or 30 years are going to be in a much harder spot even than we're in right now um and let's see Philly I think that is all of my comments thank you and I just wanted to jump in and kind of I know the staff memo had some specific things so the questions about the existing affordable housing program and its Evolution I think we mostly got through in the questions section but if you have any of those left over please make sure to bring them forward um and then you know as we give General comments I feel like people could kind of address both um if there are any inclusionary housing updates they wish to add

[73:00] um and if they agree or want to see a different approach taken with the community engagement and formal hearing process as it has been laid out in our packet and just to clarify on that my mine were getting more kind of at the engagement process something that I hope to see come out of the engagement process some clarity there um and I just want to say Lauren I really like the ideas that you put in your hotline post about inclusionary housing um to sorry to a Joy's question too in the memo thank you Nicole bomb you're up next and then Rachel and Mark thanks I just want to say that I I really agree with Nicole um I think you know this conversation tonight sounds a lot like a conversation that Aaron you'll remember we had in 2016 and here we are six years later and I don't think we've made a whole lot of progress that's not the first from lack of trying a lot of councils and a lot of Staff have really tried but this is a really really tough nut to crack and we've kind

[74:01] of assumed all along that folks want to buy and own houses um but then we've done it in such a way that their appreciation is limited and it's not really been scalable in any event and so I think Nikola is actually asking the right question which is what do people really want that's the engagement question then what do we really want what's what benefit are we seeking because as right as Nicole said um the um you know we're looking at the people who live and work in Boulder and about half the people who work in Boulder actually don't live here it may be okay with not living here that it's a little I'm going to say arrogant for us to assume that everyone who works in Boulder wants to live here they may love living in Erie or Lafayette or Lucifer Longmont or some of those other lovely cities and so I think I think it's it's great that we're looking for opportunities to give people who work here who want to live here um a chance we have a really really tough Hill to climb and we've been

[75:00] climbing it for six years and we have made no progress and I'm afraid that Weber City United Council in 2028 is going to have the same problem six years from now and that's why I really urge us to take a regional approach to this especially when it comes to Middle income low income we're doing a really great job on we got a lot of tools you know as Nuria said the beginning we're um we're kind of like the poster child for inclusionary housing programs for for low-income cities copy us all the time on that we should keep doing what we're doing and the great work we're doing but the middle income stuff I think we really really need to partner with our our um our sister cities in the region and look at this more holistically um because that's where they live um and and they they may work here they may work someplace else and I'd really like to see this approach be a much much more Regional than it is you know and as Nicole said you know that we we should test this to see if this is what people really want and I think the middle income down payment assistance program which we um put together in 2019 and the voters approved um then they got put on the

[76:01] shelf for a little while will be kind of the ultimate test of that I have no idea if that program is going to work or not it may fall complete we may put a lot of effort into it this year or next year it may fall completely flat but this will be like the really in my mind the ultimate test of whether people really do want home ownership um subject to these limitations around deed restrictions and caps and if and if we put this program together then we get nothing but crickets then I guess the answer is no and we really do need to focus on on Regional things but Let's do let's do both those in parallel let's let's stand up this pilot program see if it works see if we get takers but then let's I'd love to hear in the spring from you all on a much more Regional approach approach when it comes to Middle income housing that's all I have thank you Bob Rachel good luck herding the cats councilmember folkerts they broke me all over the place in this um okay so I understand that on November 10th we're gonna have another discussion

[77:00] um sort of about code changes but I think that's just preliminary scoping and like what do we want to prioritize and it's been almost a year since the retreat I don't know nine ten months and um at this pace I don't think that our council is going to get the things across the finish line that I would like to see across the Finish Line um during my tenure and I'm worried that on this front on on creating more middle income housing through inclusionary housing program that we are a little bit nibbling at the edges and not going to make the kind of Dent that I would like to see um as we seek to sort of solve the middle income housing crisis frankly I I've heard from a lot of people and I don't um I don't mean to to disagree with Bob exactly but I I know personally a lot of people who would like to live here who work here and I think we need to make that possible and be it through ownership or rental and I

[78:01] don't think we get there without tacking on middle missing middle to this discussion I think that that is what's missing um I don't think we have to make it perfect but I I think that as we are doing engagement on the timeline that I last that I asked about so we're getting stakeholder feedback March in April and we'll bring code sections back May and June I think that should include um not you know perhaps stuff that we were going to talk about on November 10th but we're gearing up to this engagement and I think that it should include some of the missing middle pieces so I would like to see us look at um certainly duplexes by right Lauren mentioned parking minimum relaxation and a couple other things I think are a good idea but um I would like us to to really consider before we leave this study session um and not a five to expand what we're already going to be doing engagement what we are going to engage on and what we're going to vote on in this middle income discussion middle income housing

[79:03] discussion when it comes back to us in like September this is the first middle income strategy thing that's coming to us I think it would be um fortunate for us to to leave it at sort of and it's not that I'm I'm not appreciative of of the annexation and other ways that we are getting some some of this housing in but I don't see how how it's not going to help us solve the problems to get more of the units that are worth that cost 480 000 versus 1.25 million into our housing stock I think we need to move on that and be decisive and add it in and I think this discussion uh is is an appropriate place to add it that's all I got for now thanks um I'd like to invite uh Kurt and Brad to maybe address that a little bit if we were to talk about adding you know having a nod of five to expand this to

[80:02] address more um of these zoning issues is there anything you would want to let us know about um that before we take that on well I think I think uh Brad's here um tonight to actually answer that question um or respond to it the best he can and I I also appreciate the hotline that you sent Lauren and um those are some some uh some pretty good ideas that we could explore but I'll I'll hand that over to Brad because that would a lot of that work would be led by by his Department yeah I appreciate that uh the question uh council members and and that handoff Curt I think uh first of all yes we we do have teed up a discussion about uh Zoning for affordable housing as one of the projects for discussion on November

[81:00] 10th um I also appreciate the observation that that um is very accurate that um the missing middle the middle income housing is integral to zoning and land use and these are all interrelated topics um being here only five months one of the things that's been very impressive is the amount of collaboration between all the Departments and certainly uh none uh less than between HHS and planning and that's uh that's critical that we have that connection on an ongoing basis um I'm going to have to um see as we explore these questions with uh Jane Kurt and uh folks on my team and especially our engagement Professor uh professionals about just how much inner weaving of these various topics we can

[82:00] be successful and bring you forward to the public and still get meaningful impact yeah input um both because they are so interrelated but also recognizing that um we are looking for discrete movements on on each of them uh whether we're talking about um uh inclusionary housing or adus the other types of uh zoning changes code changes for affordable housing occupancy um so we'll we'll want to be sure that we're being very clear in our in our messaging and engagement with the community so that we get the results that you want uh and reflect the interest of the community but we we absolutely appreciate the interconnectivity-ness of it and and I know that we all look forward to a full discussion around those points further on the 10th

[83:00] thank you Brad um Rachel I think that you know I like your idea of bringing that forward is something that at four and out of five I think if you're okay with it I'd like to keep going with the discussion and then we could maybe come back to it in a little bit certainly didn't mean to to nudge it ahead of anything else just put it out for you thanks thank you mark um yeah I think Nicole raised a very interesting point of of sort of why ownership versus renting and I think to some extent it's a stability issue um and it's also a regional issue in a place like New York people commonly um rent for their entire lives and you know they're comfortable doing it in part because they have rent stabilization which we do not have here um but other than than the stability and the wealth generation

[84:02] aspects of it it's an interesting question of of why go to the ownership room um and as part of that I I'm very interested in getting some kind of documentation as to whether our middle income Community is going to be responsive to deed restricted housing before we go too far down the road in these programs um we ought to know what kind of demand is out there for a 600 000 or 650 000 townhouse if you can't realize a market rate of appreciation will people want to do that I'm sure there'll be some um but is the market very deep for that or will people simply say I'd rather have a townhouse in Lafayette and I can make whatever money I can make on that over a course of years rather than do it in Boulder

[85:00] um and and be restricted um so I I I think for me that that's a really core issue as we move forward on this I'd like to get some better assurance that there's a deep market for that kind of property because otherwise some of these proposals and programs are not going to work very well I don't mind trying it um I think Bob's program is is very worthy of of experimenting with let's see if let's see what the demand is and if they're lined up around the block to participate okay [Music] um but I'm not sure if that's the case and so you know I'd like to get a little further detail on that thank you thank you Mark Matt you're up next and then Tara and Aaron thanks Lauren um yeah so there's been a so there's a line of inquiry that sort of Rachel I think posed in a sort of the

[86:01] beginning inquiry here and I think Nicole expanded on and certainly Bob did and I think sort of we're we're heading towards a conversation I think some extent might necessitate a policy shift for us and it's certainly not from a lack of trying I mean Bob and Aaron have been chasing this for for six years to little to no avail and it's certainly not from a lack of great effort and creativity to try to address it but I wonder at some point are we just chasing Sasquatch and you know do we need to really re-pivot our messaging or our our priorities to really be focusing on missing middle and saying well if we're not if we don't have the tools at least available to US unless there's not some Regional effort and the state hasn't kicked in the right stuff that we need maybe moving to missing middle is a better use of our resources our time and our legislative powers to unlock through zoning and ordinances to lower the price floor and so if we consider that we can

[87:00] still close the gap on middle income we're not hitting it directly but we can at least lower the price for floor and gain greater entry into our Market than otherwise exists right I think of the difficulty we have certainly in South Boulder with regards to enrollment in our schools well lowering the price floor maybe it doesn't address middle income housing but it certainly would create greater opportunity for young Working Families to still gain access to this community and replenish the enrollment that's necessary to keep our schools open so I I think we need to step back to be frank about where we really have an overall policy decision and Direction and and I would encourage us to consider uh pivoting towards a more middle um a missing middle approach um than continuing to focus so hard on the middle income until these tools truly become available to really move the needle meaning thank you Matt

[88:00] um Mark I think maybe your hand is still up from earlier and then if that's true Tara be cool thanks for that great question it seems to have really given this conversation really a great um Direction so when I say what do I want personally um and why do I want middle income slash however you want to call it is because of income diversity which I think is really important for our society and I think as a council sometimes we have to nudge Society forward or culture forward in the direction than which we want so I will tell a really short story about a Neighbor Next Door across the street neighbor of mine and they are very well off and she said she was upset about the way Boulder was come going in the schools because her daughter's friend

[89:00] invited her on her private plane to go on vacation with them to some sort of Island and how can this be a good place to bring up kids now I'm only telling that story I'm not blaming anybody for having a private plane or anything I'm telling that story because for our you know our Stu you know our schools and for students and for families too I feel to to thrive there should be some sort of income diversity not just porn I don't like to say porn rich but of all different incomes so that people grow up knowing people that aren't like them so in that sense I really want to somehow make this work and you all are way smarter than me in in this field which is a new field for me but it would be my dream to have income diversity in this um city and even for that reason I think we should keep pushing for it so that um our kids grow up with with people that aren't like them and also as far as

[90:01] what Matt said to fill the schools up with all different types of people of all ethnic groups and all incomes it's the same thing as I remember before we had Medicare and Medicaid the market wasn't giving us what we wanted so we had to create Medicare and Medicaid which wound up being great programs so in that sense I'm really hoping we can do something great whatever it is and whatever we decide I feel like we need to just nudge this forward in a strong way thanks Tara Aaron and then Juni foreign but I want to Echo the the comments of some of my colleagues about the the need to move forward aggressively here uh you know we did our last IH update in 2018 and I think that I the five percent of

[91:00] additional middle income requirement has has been successful in terms of getting us some additional units and some progress but it seems like some of the other tweaks to the program that we made you know haven't had an enormous effect uh I think that was in the memo and that's certainly my understanding and so I'm a little bit where like I I see that the proposals that are coming this time around they all look good so I support them but I worry that they might be a kind of a small incremental change that may may not make a huge amount of difference and of course with this really substantial problem of missing middle income housing for for our community and you know we we did our middle income housing strategy um this was early and bottom of my time on comes 2016 was it Kirk that we did that and um and it has ambitious goals and and gosh we are so far away from those goals from from six years ago uh and so wondering just how we can we can push the needle further um and you know people have talked about the demand for this type of housing I

[92:02] I'm guessing that just about anything that we can accomplish you know that there will be need for you know I don't think any of our um affordable housing uh production in the past has ever lacked for um interest and um I know we have a waiting list in both the middle income and the uh moderate and lower income uh areas and so I think to I think we're limited much more by our ability to produce these things than than we are by demand for for these kinds of units I'd encourage us to to keep at it and do as much as we can I thought that uh Lauren's uh list of ideas was a really really good list Lauren I was really impressed by that thank you so much for putting that out that was a a pleasant surprise to have those great proposals come into the inbox yesterday and um you know and a number of my colleagues have echoed that and uh appreciate Rachel saying hey you know can we can we fit more in here I mean can we get some consensus or some

[93:01] majority agreement on this now I get that that a fair amount of what Lauren's talking about fits a bit more in the planning departments area but we'll let you talk about how the the Departments you know work hand in hand which I really appreciate but some of these seem like they're IH related even though they might involve kind of planning code changes like I think about like one of Lauren's ideas how that was a really good one which was in projects of uh under a certain size could uh be approved by right if they had their inclusionary housing needs met on site you know so that they could get come come to the front of the line for approval not have to deal with the discretionary review process that could be at a phenomenal incentive for people to do their inclusionary housing on site right so that's probably more of a planning code change but but it's IH related right so I I'd love to see how we could take this process that you all are going to start to work on and you're talking about doing public engagement which is important right it's a pretty substantial one I'd

[94:00] really love to see this process uh you know include some more things under its umbrella so that we can get more accomplished in this in the same sort of time frame you know if we can have the same kind of Outreach but include you know maybe uh you know three additional uh ideas as part of this you know like uh buy right approvals for for projects that include on-site affordable or like the ability for people to do uh a deed restricted unit on on an existing lot if you know where they couldn't currently right so allow an additional unit or a duplex you know there's a deep restriction something like that things that that we could fit into this existing effort but they could move the needle further um than we've been thinking about so far so I I'm glad we're going to come back to Rachel's thought here um because I think we we do need to keep doing more and so I'd love to see us broaden this effort to include some additional ideas that can accomplish

[95:01] some some more housing middle middle income housing production uh that's what I got absolutely thanks Aaron uh Juni thank you I have a question I have comments but I also have a question because it relates to my comment and as I was thinking and hearing the discussion on page 11 of her Memo it talks about how uh since 2013 more than 90 of these permanently affordable homes have been created as rental units so I'm thinking if 90 are rental units that means only about 10 percent were for sale is that correct yes that sounds about right so I think that kind of technically answer your question and I mean I'm a renter and I know Nicole you asked about well we need to talk to community members and

[96:02] I actually have thought about whether I want to buy an affordable housing here in Boulder or continue to rent and as I was going through that thought process and I thought well I might as well just continue to rent at this time but if you have any type of uh I suppose how do I put it if only 10 percent of our housing stocks or for sale it's either we have an issue with Demand right but it's 90 or just rental so there is an issue that people may not find these um how do I put it they might not think it's the best way to get into a house in Boulder and I think part of it as well part of the answer I that um Nicole mentioned by the way I have several screens open so that's why I'm looking the other way is there a way to talk how do we know how satisfied people who have been living in these um

[97:01] and these sold homes affordable sold homes have we we do we have a way of have we reached out to them um yeah I can answer that um so we the homeownership program does a periodic surveys of all affordable homeowners uh we just did one I believe it was 2019 the one before that was in 2012. um and we have the nice thing about the 2019 is we were able to show um uh basically track how we're doing in terms of progress uh I can share the full report with you but um you know the Highlight that jumps out at me is that nine out of 10 people said that um they would make that decision again to purchase a home in the program wow so um so and we also asked questions about okay well um how is your financial situation Financial Security

[98:02] um from when you bought the home to now that you've been living in it for a period of time and again overwhelmingly people felt that they were more financially secure after owning a home ownership owning a home in the program and it's also just keep them it's important to keep in mind that it's it's for most people it's not a permanent solution but the average tenure of an affordable home is about seven years um so people a lot of people are still able to build equity um in their home uh and they see it as a stepping stone so to enter into the real into the market so just um I also I will share the um survey with the rest of council as well thanks wow thank you for sharing uh those points um it's it's very welcome to hear that that people feel satisfied nine out of ten that's pretty good uh well thank you for that and um I welcome the comments made by Tara the important of diversification of income

[99:01] and ensuring that you know that people live in a community that is diverse it's not good to have a community we where you have uber wealthy and just Working Class People which I consider myself one are people who are just struggling in the community and that's all you have and you have nothing in the middle so I think it's very important that we ensure that um you know people who are middle income have access and when we think of middle income you know it's your teachers right it's your I mean I'm a lawyer um but it's not people who are extremely wealthy so I think it's so important that we do all parts to ensure that those who are working in the community they can live here as well and I think Rachel made that comment clear and I think that's very important as well thank you thank you Junie um let's see I was gonna jump in with some of my comments before

[100:01] we go back around for seconds um I I really appreciated what Nicole brought up um and and that sort of brings the greater question of like why are we working so hard to expand this particular program um when you know the affordable rental program is doing quite well and is meeting a really important need in our community and in some ways I think that they're there are trade-offs right if we try to incentivize home ownership units really heavily it ends up at least from some of the information the memo sounding like we might be doing that at the expense of either cash and lieu or more affordable rentals and so for me I I would prefer not to make that

[101:00] decision no um I I would like us to look at other options for creating those things to try and do both and to the extent that we are capable of that and that's why so much so many of my sort of comments and suggestions focused around in the hotline that I sent out focused on zoning related issues because I would really I see the amazing work that we're doing through the affordable housing program and I think that that is really vital we've sort of agreed that there's more need in our community than we could possibly outstrip with the programs we can provide um but so to the extent that we can I would like to see us looking for how can we expand those programs so that we can um make sure that we're providing options that allow the widest range of people to

[102:02] call our community home um so kind of like the quick summary from the hotline for people listening in the public who didn't get that um you know I'm really interested in seeing our inclusionary housing fee be based on a per square foot Unit A per square foot unit so that instead of looking at a housing unit and assessing a developer a fee based on that unit we're looking at sort of the number of square feet of development allowing us to charge more for larger units and also potentially taking advantage of other things in our community like the expansion of existing homes from small to large that are changing the affordability landscape in our community I think that you know each each time that something like that happens may not have a huge impact but

[103:00] when you expand that over years and over houses all of those modifications to our housing really do have a big impact on what kinds of homes are available in our community for purchase um I'd also like to see allowing the additional deed restricted for sale units to be added to Residential Properties even if those push it above the allowed Union count in our zoning code and adjust requirements for projects with a high level affordability to allow additional units by right if the project is under a certain size and also consider looking at parking reductions and reducing open space requirements so you know I I understand that those things would take more work from Planning and Development staff and that that wasn't initially conceived as part of this program

[104:00] um but I think that it's important to look at those things because they they will really impact the kinds of projects that can be built in our community and I think that the adjustments that we're talking about to this program and that staff has brought forward are great but I really would encourage us to be more bold and I think I'm hearing that from a lot of other council members um yeah so those are mostly my thoughts Tara and Nicole would you like to give a couple more and then I'll try and wrap us up move on to the next all I wanted to do was thank you for your hotline which I agreed with and thought was creative and outstanding and also your comments about being especially about being bold which I totally grouped as well thank you Tara Nicole thanks I just wanted to get

[105:00] clarification because I think in the course of the discussion um I got a couple things crossed a little bit in my brain um it seems that well one one question I think just for staff is that the developers aren't producing the um kind of affordable homes for ownership they're producing more rental units or is it that that's what kind of the market like people are wanting because I think I lost which which one it was it's contributing to that you know it's a fantastic question and I should have covered that in the presentation but so in the early years of the program back in 2000 um up until about 2012. uh a lot of what was getting developed Market in the market was ownership and so it's really easy to get a deed restricted permanent affordable unit because they just set aside one of those one or two or whatever percentage it is as permanently affordable so we were getting quite a

[106:00] few but then the market shifted to rental and then that made it more complicated it's it's very difficult to provide an affordable rental within an existing market rate project um so that's really um that's and against all those factors that we've talked about earlier earlier but a lot of how we get affordable housing is based on what's getting built at the time okay great thank you and then then my understanding is that what it is you're proposing kind of what we said as a work plan priority back in January was really around trying to incentivize developers to build um more affordable units right um and so what we're I mean I think the things that you've laid out I think Lauren's editions um in my mind that's going to be moving Us in that direction of what what we said as a the work plan priority and I'm not saying that's going to fix it all but as I mean we were very intentional back in January that we

[107:02] recognized that Planning and Development had undergone a lot of Staffing transitions they were really in a rebuilding phase and needed a little bit of time um and you know what what I would be really curious to hear about Miss maybe for our I think you said November 11th discussion or 10th um what I would be really curious to hear is are there things where if we as counsel were to aside we're just going to take the heat from the community on whatever changes is being made would that help things move faster right is there is there anything um there so I would just be curious you know are there things that you can punt to us to make them go a little bit faster if we're just willing to be the ones to be bold and stick our necks out or not so that I think is a question for later but back to the questions you asked us yes to what you're proposing yes to the things that Lauren brought up as well thank you Nicole Matt

[108:02] oh thanks Lauren I I'm hoping to maybe uh play put out a suggestion to sort of maybe either action oriented and sort of maybe pivot us in a particular way if you if you don't mind to maybe help sum up some of this um so one of the things I want to just maybe toss out to my colleagues is really thinking about perhaps and I know we're touching on missing middle a little bit with regards to our conversation on the 10th um and I recognize that we're doing middle income discussions with regards to inclusionary housing here and you know sort of they're they're related but not and so I I think one of the challenges that we almost many of us campaigned on on a lot of this so this might be part of clarity for the community is [Music] without putting tucking our tail between our legs um there's I think maybe a capitulation that needs to kind of occur with regards

[109:00] to the aspirations to meet the the our desires for Middle income housing and and maybe just pivot our overall policy objective away from that a little bit to really lay true to the true fabric that's in front of us which is we just really don't have the real Tools in front of us to to substantively tackle middle income housing and so to set the expectations up in the community that that's not a really a deliverable we're going to meet substantively whereas if we pivot our overall policy strategy to missing middle housing that's a different set of tools and strategies that I'm confident will help lower the price floor of Housing and get us some of the way there so I want to just throw out if we need to have a straw poll or if we not have a not a five to really kind of pivot the general strategy in this sphere of missing middle middle income which kind of get conflated with each other certainly out in the community and whether we need to make that pivot in a formal Direction um because I'm a little worried that we're putting we think we're putting

[110:00] eggs in that this is where where everything's going to happen is in this Sphere for Middle income and I think we're hearing that it's not not from a lack of great effort and creativity but I think we might need to Pivot our Direction and just be more clear year that we're going to do so so hopefully that's not too ambiguous but I wanted to maybe pose that to my colleagues and I I see Bob's hand up so I don't know if he's going to call a Quee or say it more succinctly than I could thanks Matt um I think you know I'm thinking about this too and have been thinking about it in the framing of this meeting and I also kind of want to throw out an alternative way we might look at this which I guess I'm less sure that we need to change direction from Kurt's team and what they've been doing but what I really am interested in is maybe bringing forward at the November 10th meeting um staff's Arguments for why this some of the things that I brought up in my

[111:00] hotline might make sense as part of these the overall zoning adjustments or if we could do those as part of this work plan item to me I'm not really clear yet on what those trade-offs are or um what they might look like in terms of timelines for both of these projects and that's something I would be really interested in having more information on um before finalizing a decision either way um Bob do you want to address either of those things that Matt or I have brought up or um only agree with both of you um I I think this I think I think you're saying similar things um I think Advanced this is not a capitulation but we we did set for ourselves a goal of creating 3 500 units of Bill income housing in 2016 and my guess is I didn't see the number the

[112:01] memo but my guess is it's it's a fraction of that and at the current Pace it's going to be it's going to be decades if not centuries before we get there so let's let's say let's acknowledge that there's a big difference between missing middle and middle income housing and look at all the tools that we're about to talk about on November 10th around adus run occupancy around duplexes and triplexes we got a lot a lot of things that we need to talk about and prioritize for staff we talked about these at The Retreat and and staff want some prioritization out of us in a couple weeks and that's great and and let's let's kind of acknowledge where we can move the needle as Matt said and and and really help um people that are are in Middle income in regardless of whether it's their rentals whether their ownership whatever they are to be and stay in Boulder I mean I think we have a common goal of that um I think whether or not they're owners or not owners is almost a secondary question I mean yeah it would be great if they're owners but but um the economics of that are really really challenging so let's make sure that people who want to be in Boulder who

[113:01] work here who happen to be in the middle middle income group have opportunities whatever those are to live here and and I think that's really what we're going to talk about November 10th so my second Matt's suggestion that we really think deeply between now and November 10th and come prepared to that meeting with some prioritizations that will will be tools that will truly move the needle um more than we have over the last six years thank you Bob Nuria would you like to yeah this has been a fascinating conversation actually I I find it really um intriguing and I would just say tooth I would offer first of all I wanted to invite Brad to just make sure and affirm I I think we're hearing you right that at the next meeting in November 10th there's a lot of things that involve pnds but this is one of the things that we want to make sure that by that meeting we have thought of and that we're bringing forward and when to affirm with Brad that that is something

[114:02] that he and his team is prepared to do but I'll also say this one of the things I find really intriguing about the conversation is rather than a capitulation I find it more of a as we have more data as we see where we're going we may see that this is not having the impact or achieving the outcomes we want and maybe it's time to think about additional items or different items or switching gear so I I think it has been an entirely um fascinating conversation and not one of um defeat as much as we are trying and actually making really good Headway here but we actually want to see if there are other tools in the toolbox that may get us into different directions and I think that's the ask and the conversation we've been hearing as well as as long as we're having a conversation about engagement and conversation of things that are interrelated can we take advantage and leverage some of those at the same time so I just wanted to mention that but mostly I just wanted to allow Brad an opportunity to make sure

[115:01] that we're affirming what you're hearing and and what you're saying so that we're prepared to bring that forward in November um into the next which is two weeks away I think that meeting to talk about all of this in conjunction with the work that you're doing yeah pink scenario um I'll Echo that this is very uh helpful conversation and I think uh you will find that it is a good lead into a uh inclusive conversation on the 10th um about zoning changes for affordability but also you know acknowledging the interconnectedness as I mentioned earlier between uh related priorities of adus and occupancies and some of those things so uh we we definitely hear uh and and very much share the desire to to move these forward uh framing it um in terms of missing metal and middle income uh is useful and I think you know

[116:01] one of the ways we will have this conversation with the community so uh very much appreciate the discussion and and look forward to more of that on the 10th uh hopefully in the memo as we've uh been putting that together we've given you uh various choices you can make and um and you know we're we're ready to uh continue to run fast and whatever whatever Direction makes sense thank you Brad Rachel I want to make sure and get back to you and I'm glad you raised your hand um so I wanted to kind of see how this is fitting in with what you were thinking we might um you might request in terms of a not of five thanks for that so I I continue to have concerns like I'm looking at the the meeting for November 10th and it's we're planning relating to site review criteria use tables and standards adus affordable

[117:01] housing occupancy Boulder Junction phase two and area police three planning Reserve Urban Services study there's a lot in that meeting and tonight what's up is Middle income and I I think that I mean I mean no disrespect to to anybody in this whole city but I think part of the reason it takes us six years and we don't finish things is because we push things off two weeks and then we say we're going to come back to things and then like for me it's not really going to matter what what I hear next week like I I know that I would like us to do Outreach as part of middle income on missing middle I would like to include that in the engagement that's being planned for this topic tonight and so pushing it off to November 10th in terms of um another five asking if we want this to be part of that engagement I don't think moves the needle forward in the way that I I think again if we want to if we really want to make a difference for our community and to help people um who need help with housing

[118:00] I don't I don't know why we delay weeks and then months and and and the reason I brought up like this isn't going to happen on my tenure if we continue at this pace is because you don't know what the next council is going to want to do um and how long they're you know they're going to want to re-look at things so I think it is important to to have work plan items that are to your work plan and that you get them done and so I will again request that that we do a notify to see who's interested in adding for this engagement that we're talking about tonight some specific missing middle while we're while we're doing Outreach to the community on the timeline that was expressed in that memo do we want to include some specific asks as Lauren suggested in her Memo as Aaron alluded to um I think that Matt's getting at and that that I would request like do we want to do um duplexes by right everywhere maybe um maybe deed restricted maybe not I would think that's part of the engagement do we want the parking minimums do we want the square footage that Lauren's talking about and I'm going to forget the other one to two I'm sorry I didn't memorize the list they

[119:01] were all really good so yeah I would love a not a five as part of this Outreach do we want to include a couple of things that we're very confident whatever else comes forward on November 10th we would like to lift up to the community and be on schedule to to accomplish that in this Council yes Juni I welcome all the comments made by Rachel but my question is how feasible to come back this quickly and who are we trying to reach out to and will that income pass a group of people that is varied answer for my part Judy it was whoever's being gonna already be receiving Outreach on the the middle income housing that staff said that they were going to reach out to in March and April they're already planning that Outreach so I'm saying let's stick this rest of this part of middle and come into that Outreach and reach out as you're saying to all the right people everybody who we

[120:01] would need to engage with let's engage I'm not saying let's shortcut it but let's let's just combine the couple additional questions and and just keep on a nice a good clip foreign so I think I'm still just trying to figure out how how this is sort of sort of right so we've got we had a work plan priority around updating affordable housing requirements and then we also have one about changing codes um to incentivize smaller and more affordable units and I think this this um is that I guess that's the question for Steph is what we're doing around engagement for that second part about changing codes like is that a separate process is that part of this like how how does it all kind of fit together um and I guess the reason that I'm asking is because it's not because I mean there's a reason that I keep saying let's in single-family zoning every chance I can't right but um it's not because I'm against it it's more uh

[121:01] where are we um where does that fit into the discussion because if we're taking people's time and energy to it doing that kind of qualitative research interviews stuff like that and asking all the questions at once can make it kind of hard to get answers on any of the questions so is there already some engagement planned around the code changes and would this where does this fit in this question of um changing zoning so I think that's a question for uh Brad unfortunately again as you're doing it and I don't know Brad If part of that question is it kind of depends on where the prioritization comes from in two weeks in terms of the timing although I also understand Rachel's request of as long as you're going to do some engagement could we also add this and maybe that will be more better informed Again by the conversation we have on in two weeks

[122:01] because then we'll know exactly what oh we we may engage on but I I don't want to put words in your mouth and you may have a different process no if if that's um that's fundamentally correct uh the engagement process around Zoning for affordability um is not laid out in terms of a time frame yet um because it encounter you know plays with some of the other priorities um but but of course the question on the table um could be one and then we could back into that on on the 10th but uh but it does relate to that as you as you ask durian thank you Brad Matt and then Aaron and then I'd like to see us um look forward to voting on some of these things or giving nods of five or

[123:00] not um thanks Lauren lots of nods so stretch your neck uh in the preceding few minutes um I'll lower my hand so it's not distracting um so Rachel's um points Rings true um and it sums up with one word urgency um it's not our necessarily our political urgency it's Community urgency six years in running and move the needle much so it's you know doing mostly the same stuff and expecting a different result we've we know what that alludes to um so I think really it I think we have to lean into not being held hostage to some extent by uh copious engagement when we need to act urgently on some things and I think we should consider moving faster on some of these things that are Urgent needs for our community to unlock the potential and at the end

[124:02] of the day it's the nine of us that own the consequences of the decisions we make regarding engagement feel confident that moving towards some of these zoning and ordinance changes for missing middle are going to do well for our community and we have to face that um you know at the time of election and face our our public comments and all that so let's face that let's lean into the decisions we've been elected to make and make them and and not be oh we gotta do all this engagement to figure out whatever it wants we can do some of the engagement while we're acting and so I think we need to walk and chew gum more than we have and and so I I like to sort of lean in where Rachel's going and say let's start let's just decide where we're going to go and some of those may not work but let's engage let's do the engagement while we're looking to implement those things and get those balls rolling and and I think that's what the community has it needs for us to do um because we're not helping anybody just sort of slow doing the Slow Roll here so um and so I really want to push the

[125:01] urgency here so if there's a a nod there if there's another nod of five I think we're nod to 30s at this point um but but I I that urgency is what Rings true here and we need to act without engagement holding this up thank you Matt Aaron yeah just from a process standpoint I think to Rachel's point I think we could make a commitment tonight to include some additional pieces in this process but maybe we have uh you know maybe have a detailed discussion on November 10th about what items to include because I think uh that I think we might benefit from some additional time in a larger context about talking about what things but so just suggest that we make the commitment tonight for Rachel's request but not have a limited list that that we're confined to that we decide on tonight when maybe we haven't had time to fully vet that um up to this point thank you Aaron and Mark

[126:02] yeah I just want to make a brief comment um to the extent that we tend to we seem to have a very variable cut excuse me concept of community engagement um we like it very much when we want to be engaged with the community and when it's not suitable for our purposes we are now looking to shorten engagement I have no problem with with Rachel's request to put more things into the engagement process and to ask other questions of the community but I I do have a problem with um the concept that engagement is only important when we want it to be and is less important when we don't want it to be I think a more consistent approach would be preferable and if we are going to Value Community engagement we ought to Value Community engagement um that's just my view on it obviously I

[127:00] I don't think that's going to be a prevailing view here um but I think we're displaying a certain inconsistency in the way we deal with something as important as Community engagement thank you thanks Mark okay so with our nods of five I'd like to propose Rachel will you let me know if you're okay with this sort of incorporating that idea that Aaron brought forward into your proposal that we um ask staff to incorporate um more of you know take a take a bigger swing incorporate some of these Bolder more zoning related things into this work plan item but let us know on the 10th sort of a little bit more detail of what um that means or just kind of clarify that we're on the same page around what that could

[128:00] include did that require a response from me yes are you does that work for you or I'm not sure if you'd like to rephrase that I would love to phrase it if I could um that's right I've followed it precisely it is the concept that um we would take a we would have an unofficial vote not a five tonight to say we want to expand engagement um on what we're doing on middle income inclusionary housing to also include um some planning questions and code questions that could include things like duplex because I wanted to say it 10 more times tonight and parking minimums and in the lower enlist and other things as staff may or may not suggest is that is that the the concept if so I will um I will do a disco dance in in uh in Celebration

[129:03] yeah all right can I ask a clarifying question about that motion yes sorry I just I just poked in and I saw Nicole's hand up so I don't know if I jumped Nicole's hand so it wouldn't mind if I just okay time go for it all right sounds good uh so clarifying question is does would would adding this to the Outreach allow for us to like I said walk and chew gum where where staff can start to actually scope these issues out like let's while we're engagement actually start to formulate these things rather than waiting for the engagement to finish before we start the work I I think if we can do both we can ex get our time frame in a better spot um the the Outreach May inform us which ones we jettison perhaps but I I I'd like to make sure that we're starting some of the work on these while we are engaging not in chronological order but working side by side

[130:00] so uh Brad and and others if they want to comment I'll I'll let you do that and I think what we hear you right like how do we do things um concurrently instead of consecutively I think that's that's important I think for at least my point of view it it's certainly we can but it'll depend on which of those things we're doing and that's the conversation we're about to have in November because in November hopefully we have that prioritization and which things come first and that will help us really figure out what type of Engagement actually can be leveraged and layered and done at the same time and that's why that conversation is critical that that may be fine that's two weeks away I won't be here for that conversation but I just want to make sure that when we embark on the engagement we're not waiting on engagement to start the work so once we Define the list of five at the 10th that that's great but let's start working on them while we engage I just want to know that we can do this in parallel Brad versus if we're doing it concurrently I just want to set up the

[131:00] expectations of what we're actually going to uh give a not a 5-2 here yeah maybe another way I can kind of uh describe in any project is it's made up of component parts and engagement is one research might be another uh actual writing of code and vetting it with the attorney's office might be another um mapping might be another so we with all projects kind of can move bits and pieces those those forward on different timelines and and typically are doing many parts of those concurrently uh but but at the same time there'll be some discussion as we've alluded to on the 10th about about those you know again Council Council preferences on some of those elements but we we definitely have a mindset of moving all the pieces forward uh you know concurrently as opposed to necessarily consecutively

[132:02] thank you Brad Nicole yeah I'm sorry I think my my brain is really slow tonight so I'm still just trying to understand are we trying to expedite the the part of our work plan that was about changing the codes is that is that what we're trying to do to sort of move that move that up so that rather than kind of waiting on some more discussion and then engagement plan and everything we're talking about just taking some of that and putting it into this engagement for the affordable housing requirement updates is that if that's a question to me I would say in terms of the middle income and the missing middle that was sort of um described as as not relevant to this discussion um I I believe it is relevant and and should be um should be included in the Outreach that's already scheduled so that's what

[133:00] I'm suggesting is that we take the pieces that are gonna add to the middle income housing stock and the types of housing that are missing metal and can have benefits for Middle income and diversify the housing tax it's I think a little bit different than some of the other components of affordable housing um but as relevant to this discussion I'm suggesting that we we just Loop that into the engagement that's already being planned okay and I think where I'm where I'm struggling is just in the um I feel like I only have part of the information um of thinking about what we're going to line up as being the most important thing to try to move forward with sooner than later um I think for me like waiting those two weeks to have a little bit more information and then prioritizing um feels feels a little more comfortable just because then I feel like I've got a full set of information and what are all the different things we can look at leverage people that kind of thing and

[134:01] decide where to go thanks Nicole Aaron yeah we appreciate that Nicole I believe the proposal that's on the table is to make a commitment tonight to include additional items as part of this Outreach but without making a commitment to what those items are exactly but with the things on the table that Rachel had already mentioned like duplexes and other events that could help with the missing middle housing so we're not limiting ourselves and we'll still have the discussion a couple weeks about prioritization as I understand I think that was a great clarification and on that note I would like to see if we can take uh see how much support we have for that idea so if you are in support of that please raise your hand I see one two three four Tara's trying to cheat with two hands five six mark seven okay nine all in favor

[135:00] unanimous that was great I'm glad we got there Matt you also had a proposal that you were looking for a not a five on do you still want us to do that I I mean I I think there's some redundancy and overlap with what Rachel is doing and it may not it may not be here and it may be a conversation out with Carl Castillo to be frank but I think we need to have a policy General policy discussion of what direction are we heading with regards to this section of Housing and where are we putting our eggs I don't know if that's here or not um we could do a not a five I'm not sure what purpose it's going to serve but um I don't think we have the right policy direction for the goals and the needs of our community with regards to missing middle middle income so uh the problem persists unless someone has a different way of framing it I am not sharp enough at the moment to come up with a better framing of that I

[136:02] apologize um I think I feel like we've discussed this pretty thoroughly at this point and unless anyone has anything else that they would like us to address before we move on I would like to propose that we end this topic and move on to our next one maybe with a five minute break yes okay so at 8 16 I would like to see us back here so that we can start our second topic of the night thank you guys [Music]

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[142:13] would you like to introduce our second item our boards and commissions process discussion sure um and I'll actually send it to staff because I know that we are running tight on time today but I'll say again there's been tremendous work in this area not just by staff but frankly from our community connectors from our Community Partners dialogue Boulder who's been providing us some recommendations so Pam and Sarah and Brenda are all here to talk about it so I will send it to them to kick it off thanks Nuria and good evening Council my name is Pam Davis I use she her pronouns and I serve as assistant city manager um as Nuria stated tonight's presentation and discussion on boards and commissions really is about a year

[143:01] and a half in the making um we've been working with a wide team of employees from across the city and I just briefly want to thank our staff core team some of whom will be presenting this evening we've been working closely with Amy Kane our Equity officer Elisha Johnson our city clerk John Morse the elections administrator Sarah Huntley directors of communication engagement our engagement managers Ryan Hanson and Brenda rittenauer and of course Taylor Ryman our assistant to city council we're also really thankful to the dozens of Borden commission Liaisons and secretaries that support the operations of each individual board we've had extensive engagement with them throughout the work of the last year and a half to really understand the needs and challenges of each individual board and how to sort of support the collective board and commission program in Boulder but also keep in mind the the unique needs of the different topic areas that they represent um so with that I would like to ask for

[144:01] the slide deck to be started thank you and next slide um so this evening's flow um we hope that you had a chance to kind of Thoroughly review the memo and attachments because what became clear to us as we were putting this together is the universe of Boulders boards and commissions have a considerable number of interrelated Parts a large number of stakeholders within the city organization in the community and so tonight's study session alone cannot possibly Encompass every um great idea and opportunity related to our boards and commissions so as a result our core team worked with our subcommittee on boards and commissions um big thanks to council members folkerts and Weiner for your assistance as we've worked through these we've prioritized six specific opportunities for sort of immediate board and commission Improvement and

[145:01] experimentation and then we also want to bring to you a proposal for a longer term approach for a more comprehensive strategy that would address the additional body of work that has sort of come to light over the last several months um so in this presentation we intend to share a summary of our work to date that supports the recommendations we have that will help to evolve our system and then to provide some context for where we think we can go next next slide please before we dive into our material I always think it's fitting to preview the questions ahead of time um and then kind of go through our materials so they're fresh in your minds you will see more questions than you normally receive in a study session and part of that is we have kind of a balance again between some acute improvements we think we can make with your support along with kind of a longer term strategy consideration so you will see before you uh the questions have

[146:00] been really grouped based on sort of the the framing of the topics and so this first set of questions that you'll receive really relate to immediate process considerations that having your direction tonight will help us ensure a smooth and continually improved recruitment selection for the 2023 board and commission process those would include you know getting your feedback on the 2022 interview process and whether you would like to continue in that same direction addressing kind of the question that has come up a couple of times this year about how Council addresses the one candidate for one vacancy issue when there's sort of a lack of competition for a board or commission seat and then a requirement that given our kind of post covid world and expectations around both in-person and digital engagement that to ask you whether you'd like to extend your own decision to hold hybrid meetings to boards and commissions with

[147:00] an expectation that they do so next slide please the next set of three questions sort of deals with um substantive kind of experiments I'll say in terms of how boards and commissions connect with both Council and the community and so these three questions deal with one um slowly stepping into the concept of council Liaisons to boards and commissions we're going to recommend starting that with kind of a pilot approach with a council member to understand kind of the scope the value add of um the the liaison relationship and also kind of keep in mind what additional work expectation that would place on all of you as council members to try to serve as individual Liaisons to all of our boards and commissions we'll have a conversation around boards and commissions and their relationship to how the community is engaged on a variety of issues and then um finally we have a procedural question

[148:02] for you as it relates to formalizing how boards and commission represented are invited to consult with you during your meetings currently procedures address that in the context of regular meetings but not study sessions and so we offer an opportunity to sort of formalize that procedure and then finally as I stated we'd like to have a conversation about exploring a longer term strategy for a comprehensive assessment by a third party of our boards and commission system to learn from what's happening around the country and to deal with some of the additional proposals that we've received as sort of a holistic approach versus trying to do these kind of one-off incremental idea Explorations every few months with you um so with that that's kind of the question preview uh next slide please

[149:00] put one more slide thank you um so just to ground um you all again in the background of this kind of recent 18 months or so of work around boards and commissions from a staff perspective um well over the last couple of years we have received a great variety of inputs and events that have fueled the ongoing conversation around boards and commissions we really see the impetus for the initial formation of our staff core team and a lot of the work that we'll talk about tonight comes from the adoption of our racial Equity plan in February of 2021. um goal number five as you see on the slide called for us as a city to examine the barriers and opportunities available to service on boards and commissions and really explore how we enhance the inclusiveness and provide Equitable access to service and so while while that goal language is fairly simple what is behind that and the conversation that has been occurring

[150:00] on our team is that to successfully enhance these opportunities and to increase diversity among board and commission members we have to really examine all of the practices and structures in place so this ranges from how we recruit how we create inclusive environments and a spirit of belonging on individual boards and commissions and ensuring the service to our city is not dependent on one's identity or ability or economic means um issues around enhancing the direct impact of boards and commission service on the overall progress of the city so essentially what's the value proposition of being a border commission member for Boulder in the first place and so so again behind that simply stated goal in our racial Equity plan uh is is sort of a vast range of effort that our team has been working through next slide please so with that as as sort of a grounding um again we've had significant effort

[151:01] underway uh from engagement with different groups on boards and commissions process improvements on how we select boards and commission members how we conduct meetings and internal development work on internal diversity equity and inclusion principles in how our business is conducted going to now invite a couple of members of our core team to sort of highlight the work within our umbrella that they have really spearheaded around boards and commissions and so the first team member I'd like to turn to to sort of address those first three um components that you see is Sarah Huntley our communications director foreign good evening Council my name is Sarah Huntley I'm the director of communication and engagement for the city and I'm pleased to be able to share with you tonight a little bit of information and background on some of the sources of feedback that we have received on board and commission improvements um beyond the staff effort that has occurred this has really been a

[152:01] area of focus for many folks in our community as well as some folks specifically on Council and staff and I want to just summarize a little bit of where some of the feedback has come from so as you all know you created a council subcommittee on engagement that is actually the shorthand for the full Council subcommittee's name which is the Council subcommittee on engagement and creating welcoming spaces Council spaces or something to that effect but we call it the engagement subcommittee because it's a lot shorter and for the the last couple of years um council members Bob Yates and mayor Pro tem Rachel friend have served on that subcommittee and we've talked about a whole lot of improvements and some of them have been related to boards and commissions and I want to just sort of frame up a little bit how my team views boards and commissions so really boards and commissions are a form we consider it to

[153:00] be a form of engagement right these are volunteer community members who are choosing to engage with the city around specific topics with a whole lot of time energy and granularity so it is really an ultimate form of Engagement so that is why various points in time the Council subcommittee on engagement has has talked about boards and commissions they've tried to because there is also a council subcommittee on boards and commissions I think it is fair to say that we have tried to sort of distinguish between Logistics process Improvement and consistency of how boards are run and leave that to the boards and commission subcommittee and instill because Dad talk about ways in which community members might wish to be engaging at boards and commissions so there's been some conversation at that level and if you have questions about that I'm sure that Bob and Rachel could give you a sense of the types of conversations we've had the second group um of a source of feedback has come from

[154:01] a group in Boulder called dialogue Boulder and this is a group of interested community members they've been meeting virtually since January 2021 to to and they started like themselves this wasn't a city started group there's a passionate community members who came together to discuss frame problems and suggest directions for possible solutions concerning boards and commissions and public engagement and sort of a mix of both those things um they asked me to share with you tonight that participants in dialogue Boulder represent a cross-section of the public reflecting A diversity of age gender ethnicity and economic resources it's especially varied in its the group is especially varied in its views on local issues but unified in a desire for better communication among city council staff boards and commissions and the community dialogue Boulders members many of who had Nev whom had never spoken to each other before and are often across

[155:01] the aisle on different political work together with mutual respect the recommendations they made which were numerous were reached with full consensus and were only made after full consensus was retained the problem-solving mode utilized by dialogue Boulder could serve as a successful model to address other city and local issues I will note that Judy nog who's been a significant leader of this work is in the audience tonight as an attendee and as available should there be questions about dialogue Boulders work the other important area where we've been able to gain feedback is from our community connectors and residents so I know you're familiar very familiar with this program and I would want to say that they've only begun to scratch the surface of their feedback in this area but in some initial preliminary conversations they were able to really lift some suggestions for process improvements that are designed to address some of those barriers and so

[156:00] you will note in the appendix that's attached to this memo there's a very comprehensive list of all of the great recommendations that have come to our attention and as well as a little indicator of where they came from that's not to suggest that any recommendation is any more valued than others we just wanted you to get a sense of um where um where these are originating from and as we talked about tonight already the ones we're lifting today are either the ones the staff thinks are most actionable right away or in some cases particularly in dialogue Boulder represents um at least one or two of their highest priority items as they've identified to us I also want to point out that in the appendix there's a long list of recommendations from all three of these groups that are already being acted on that we didn't feel like needed to come to council's attention they were things that staff had within its purview and capacity to make immediate changes on so I want to personally thank all of these folks who are participating particularly

[157:01] from the community for their time and energy on this issue and if we do move in the direction of having a more comprehensive independent study I would love to continue to involve them also want to point out that in terms of community connectors and residents we do have Lenora Cooper here she's one of the community connectors to answer questions as well and I think both Judy and and um Lenora have been waiting very patiently through the rest of the previous conversation and would welcome an opportunity to answer any questions you you might have and with that I'm going to stop talking and pass over to my colleague Alicia Johnson pass the mute button and also pasty video button good evening Council Alicia Johnson your city clerk and Records manager and thank you so very much for allowing me to speak tonight I wanted to

[158:00] just give a basic outline on the work and accomplishments that we have obtained in regards to the Recruitment and selection process improvements and also the evolution of the boards and commissions meeting Logistics at the start and during this year's recruitment period this team that Pam outlined began the review of the steps and the approach that was related to recruitment that we could actually improve on and again we had already talked um being excuse me have been wanting to work with the community connectors and the other groups that were noted to get their input so based on the subcommittee and thank you again Council subcommittee for your input and patience with us as we work through through that and also various counsel feedback that we gain through meetings and and exchanges the city began a test for a new method to the boards and commissions interview and

[159:00] selection process so we also want to highlight for you tonight that we piloted a program with the HRC board and commission I'm sorry board and they actually offered the first time application in Spanish language so that in itself was a big accomplishment and so the second thing we wanted to highlight was we gave individual applicants the opportunity to select their own interview time for direct conversation that was relevant you know to the board or commission they were applying for and they had the opportunity again to ask those questions to staff and at least one Council liaison and that proven to be very important to the applicants as they were trying to obtain obtain information on you know what exactly that service included so we had a total of 116 interviews and they were conducted virtually through zoom and this and again this was the first time we

[160:02] actually did the interviews virtually and it was also the first time that we did an interview in Spanish with interpreters so interviewees were then provided you know their interview questions in advance which proven to be good as well for the interviewees because it gave them an opportunity to be better prepared and be more engaging and comfortable during the interview process and so they were also again allowed to ask staff and council members questions again pertaining to each board and commission during their interviews and at the end of the interviews those interviews were then recorded and provided to the full Council to view at their Leisure and we also posted the interview with the links and the passwords on the website so the public could also be aware of who was applying and have access to those interviews so that proven again to be a good first

[161:01] step in making those changes to align with our goals for racial equity and inclusion so at this point I would like to turn it over to my elections administrator John Morris to go over the steps he and I have been working on on the evolution of the boards and commissions meeting Logistics because we're trying to bring the boards and commissions into a hybrid environment thank you thanks Alicia yes uh as she said John Morse here elections administrator for the city of Boulder I'm going to walk through where we're at in our hybrid meetings um so our boards and commissions have followed the lead of City Council on moving into this new format of in-person and virtual meetings it was a big group effort uh among a lot of our departments and planning this started back in March and we were making a lot of Headway and then of course as we all know uh kovid through a wrenching things and kind of

[162:00] made us hit the brakes a little bit but we got back on the horse we've been working on this at the end of the summer up until now um and so we currently have three rooms right now um that are available for our boards and commissions to start their meetings um things we were taking into considerations with these rooms were our technology uh public accessibility parking and comfort for our members um and then the expectation too is to have a few more spaces become available to meet as we get some equipment in um and and are able to set that up um when we went about this planning process for our hybrid meetings we thought it would be best or most prudent to have uh two pilots uh begin the process to kind of have some lessons learned and takeaways and so our Arts commission met in their first hybrid meeting in September and then we've had our open space Board of Trustees meet this month um had some great feedback from them

[163:01] we've heard that the members on the boards were really happy and excited to be back in person and with that we have trained up all of our other boards and commissions on the new technology and the new meeting spaces and then the guidance we've given them now is that in November and December to start conducting their hybrid meetings before the end of the year um so with that I will pass it off to Brenda thank you John um I'm excited to get to join you tonight to talk about the Dei workshops that we have um have collaborated with all of our staff members who are working directly with boards and commissions so those are our staff Liaisons many of whom are directors and high-level managers in the organization and also um those who sit in the role of board secretary who are really the folks who handle all the logistics to make those meetings happen um so starting in March of 2022

[164:02] um this board and commission's project team members that you're meeting tonight and the others on our Core group as well as those folks I just mentioned who support boards and commissions worked with a Consulting team called um a consultant from iproject LLC um to create a series of workshops and participate in those workshops to enhance diversity equity and inclusion and belonging um the word cloud that you're seeing before you offers a peek at the many terms that we explored through that process our leading consultant Angela Davis who really has a just a ton of experience and knowledge in this area and worked with the city on our bias and microaggression training curriculum um she worked with this core team um to plan and host three two-part workshops across the course of the year a total of 24 hours of training um toward the goal of creating a

[165:00] diversity equity and inclusion blueprint for boards and commissions as Pam mentioned in looking at the racial Equity plan goals related to boards and commissions diversity we realized that before we start intentional and CR intentional recruitment in communities that have been historically included and with folks who have a lot of Demands for their time and their talents we need to take an honest look at the climates and cultures of our boards and commissions and support them in being a valued and valuable service experience for community members so our first two sessions focused on inclusion and belonging really leaning into words that staff is familiar with and has been using for many years productive atmospheres and psychological safety um the goal really is to encourage full-hearted participation from everyone who is in these spaces including the members staff and the community

[166:00] attendees we walked through the full life cycle of being a board or commission member and talked about how to bring inclusion and belonging to each step from recruitment which you all have taken helped us take a huge step forward on this year to onboarding and throughout the phases of the service term which for those members often includes increasing leadership roles in July sessions three and four focused on creating a diversity blueprint for each boarding commission the workshop participants explored their own intersectional identities and what they knew of the identities of their current members and worked in small groups to understand what qualities in a candidate would add to their culture rather than the traditional culture fit model that can lead to a less diverse group the final two sessions in September illuminated past and present inequities in America particularly related to political structures and policies the recent pilot process improvements of the

[167:00] human relations commission who are in the process of fully supporting a primarily Spanish-speaking commission member um those pilot those pilots and and process improvements were lifted to help folks really understand what walking the Walk of equity means in this these situations um and staff teams work together to continue to finalize their own plans for innovation so in addition to the pilot actions of the human relations commission other Innovations have already started to become implemented including co-creating group agreements with the landmarks board and then a new intentional introduction space for um incoming members of The Parks and Recreation Advisory board we're eager to learn more about other innovations that are happening across the system as our fellow co-workers bring them to us and we're also eager to hear the barriers that they are encountering as they try to bring on board these new Innovations one item we spent time on during the

[168:02] workshops that is of particular interest to you all is how to bring you into this work as the folks who do the appointment part of that life cycle um and so we are considering that as part of our next steps in this work um so that's just a brief glance at 24 hours of training and I'm happy to answer other questions but for now I'm going to toss it back over to Pam thanks Brenda and all and uh can we have the next slide please just to round out our work to date I want to make sure that I know that um part of what brought us here tonight and the first place for this study session was that in the July 14th Council process discussion as we solicited items of interest from all of you what emerged were nearly 10 different recommendations and ideas that do relate to boards and commissions and do the the scope and time of that particular meeting the decision was made to go ahead and

[169:00] schedule this study session to really focus in on boards and commissions what we have done with those suggestions at this point are we've sort of filtered them into the larger body of recommended improvements and so you'll see that comprehensive list that others have referred to tonight that within that those items from your recommendations have been captured a couple of which are being addressed here tonight a couple of which were able to be implemented is sort of a just do it with staff and then a few that we have proposed sort of rolled into a more comprehensive assessment moving forward of our board and commission system so those have have not been lost and we just wanted to be thoughtful about the ways in which some of those recommendations from you all are connected to other work in progress and make sure that we address those things systemically rather than individually next slide please um so briefly I will sort of overview

[170:01] our recommended next steps from the board and commission core team and as discussed with our subcommittee on boards and commissions and then really turn it over to you all to address these seven questions that we have outlined um So based on the the structure we've outlined tonight when it comes to those questions one through three so those kind of immediately implementable type improvements we'd like to First establish Clarity from you on your desire for conducting the interviews and selection process for the 2023 board in commission vacancies um you heard a great description from uh Elisha related to sort of how the process went in 2022 and while we believe we achieved a considerable success in sort of the applicant experience of that we also recognized that it was an incredible burden on some of you from a Time perspective to proceed so we just want to hear from you

[171:01] directly your experience of those trade-offs and whether you would like to proceed in a fashion or make modifications to that 2022 process we also will then recommend in question number two just clarifying your will and what to do in the event that we ultimately have one applicant for one vacancy in the boarding commission the way that that happened last year was it was sort of brought up in the moment that there was a desire among Council to see some competition for a board and commission seat and so we made the decision to hold a handful of positions that only received one applicant what we discovered by doing that was by the midterm round of filling those vacancies in some cases we were successful in soliciting additional applicants in some cases we actually lost our one applicant just due to the delays that were incurred by not filling the seat and then in other cases we ultimately

[172:00] decided as a city to go ahead and appoint that one candidate for that seat because the priority of making the board whole became more important than that kind of competitiveness so we'd like some clarity on whether that that is still an important consideration for you all um and whether you'd like us to proceed in a similar process of sort of holding those positions of vacant um to try to establish more competition that third question um is really related to the hybrid environment of boards and conditions you as a council have determined that you will be hybrid indefinitely so that there's always that virtual participation option but that you are are allowing for in person as well we have a sentiment among our boards and commissions generally to follow suit with that but would like to explicitly clarify that for all boards and commissions that the expectation of hybrid or virtual at the very least um be intact for them as well the second set of recommendations around

[173:00] sort of piloting some ideas around the connection between boards and commissions Council and Community uh we we have some loose sort of recommendations to consider improving uh those various dimensions of relationships by um taking kind of a year-long study of what a council liaison role could look like with a boarding commission by having one council member leverage the existing relationship with a board to sort of think about what would be a meaningful expectation and sort of job description so to speak of a council liaison program we then want to move on to discussing uh kind of the board and commission's relationship to the community so as boards and commissions are provi are advising the city on various issues are they themselves also in a position to experiment with forms of community engagement themselves on behalf of the city to help inform a council discussion and then the third question in that

[174:01] Suite is related to again the kind of inviting representatives of words and commissions to potentially speak at study sessions as well as regular meetings on items before Council and that really is is a bit more of a procedural kind of flying council's approach to how CAC or council members request a board and commission representative to speak on a particular issue in that study session environment finally question seven is sort of the big one and so I want to kind of take some time to describe a little bit of our thought process around this this is this is sort of not an example of just wanting to throw a consultant at a hard problem but really we think that there's a strong justification for leveraging an outside resource in the case of looking at this larger universe of more complicated changes to our Warden commission system um the part of the justification is we know from talking to peers across the

[175:01] country many cities are experiencing the same challenges and opportunities that we are with boards and commissions the board and commission model is one that is um has been around for a very long time and folks are really starting to rethink how um the kind of Pathway to public service in that realm Works in an environment where we have much wider open eyes about barriers to service in that regard and so we'd like to have a third party that has experience in this conversation broadly to to leverage their knowledge to help kind of inform what Boulder might consider and try on as a fit for our community we also think that a consultant really would have an opportunity to look at our system with fresh eyes um and sort of an objective approach to stakeholder engagement what the groups that you heard reference in our presentation tonight really scratched the surface of all of the different people who sort of have a stake in the work of boards and commissions people who have served previously people who um

[176:02] you know are not considering board service because of a barrier we don't yet know fully about and so we think that having that kind of objective third-party approach to engaging those stakeholders to putting fresh eyes on our system and not have that work driven by sort of the same folks that have been enmeshed in our system for so long would be incredibly helpful to us finally a very kind of tactical concern around staff capacity you've seen all of us present here tonight and I will note that while all of us have a role to play in boards and commissions there's another 20 plus folks in the city that also touch boards and commissions and there's really no one fully staffed position whose job it is to do this work and so from a capacity perspective um you know we can certainly continue to do incremental improvements as a cross-departmental staff team but we think going ahead and resourcing an

[177:01] assessment from a third party would give us the opportunity to move more quickly and more comprehensively in this effort um so those are sort of the three key justifications for why we're suggesting this um as we've sort of thought about what would this start to look like um you know certainly we would have to refine a scope and kind of ensure that it covers what we need but generally what we're thinking talking about is that embarking on a project this way would um the expectation would be that the third party would engage board and commission stakeholders to compile additional feedback we've heard from some voices in the community but not probably the the full scope of who we need to hear from that they would conduct an environmental scan as I mentioned of kind of emerging practices in Borden commission Administration and peer cities and others that the city could shouldn't excuse me that should consider um that this person would or or this

[178:00] firm would help to refine the understanding of existing barriers to service and recommend Solutions based on the feedback we have we know things like time and money and child care and transportation and other issues can be barriers to service but we'd like to kind of fully unpack the root causes of those challenges um and and would appreciate the help to do so we'd like to more formally Define the Cur the current culture of our boards and commissions each has its own character to it and um to create a cohesive experience across the city while also sort of preserving the needs of individual boards and commissions um you know we'd like to undergo a a deeper process to sort of Define what that desired future state is and then ultimately to make recommendations so that we can sustainably enhance inclusion and belonging across all of our boards and commissions and Equity to accessing those roles in the first place and you'll know in the memo and for those um listening at home who maybe

[179:01] didn't get as thorough of a look at it we anticipate the third that a third party assessment would include sort of structural recommendations so do we have the right number of boards with the right Scopes um that are serving necessary purpose um that do we have the the role Clarity recommendations of what do boards and commissions do versus what does council do versus sort of General Community engagement any any remaining kind of logistics and process recommendations as well so with all that and I think the slide got ahead of me a little bit that's totally fine um council member folkerts I would turn to you um for kind of the facilitation of these questions and um uh Elisha has placed the questions also in the chat so if you'd prefer to take the slide down to see each other while you discuss your more more than welcome to do so Thank you Pam and Sarah and Alicia and

[180:00] John and Brendan Brenda I think um you know you guys did a really good great job of showing us a brief overview of sort of the tip of the iceberg and all of the complicated things that go on behind the scenes and making our boards and commissions work and work better um thank you very much I did want to give maybe start with any questions Council might have for our community connectors or dialogue Boulder representative um it is late and I I appreciate them sticking with us I also wanted to maybe give them an opportunity to share with us anything they would like to highlight or let us know as we consider the questions that staff has laid out for us so let us start with questions from Council Rachel

[181:01] I do have a couple I was going to ask the community connectors and um it I think is Lenora the connector who's on the line and I want to think yes yes I've got the right name and Judy for being here I know it's been a long meeting thank you both um but I don't my questions are sort of questions about the questions for Lenora so I don't know if she's got answers to sort of how the community connectors feel about each of these questions I'm happy to just tee that up I was I have some thoughts on on how I want to answer a couple and and kind of wanted your feedback from the connectors perspective before I answered so I understood that so maybe an open imitation and if you don't hit on the two that I was specifically wondering about I'm happy to ask a follow-up is that does that make sense absolutely so I'll answer the question as I understood it so hi everyone thank you so much for inviting the connectors to be here tonight represented by me and um welcome back Mr Mayor

[182:01] so again my name is Lenora Cooper and I've been with the connector program since April of 2020. communities that I'm a part of and I bring a perspective from is community members who are 55 or older who are and or who are economically disadvantaged or in current parlance might be more thought of as low income and also people who have disabilities especially invisible disabilities relating to cognitive issues for cognitive impairment so I understood your question Rachel to be what do the community community connectors see as major barriers to engagement is that correct that's a fine one to answer yes we and and the in the chat there's there's seven questions that are teed up for Council to answer tonight um and uh as an example one is do do we

[183:02] support sort of carrying on with the way that we did boards and commissions recruitment last year and I have some some concerns around it but I was wondering do do the community connectors have concerns did you all talk through um that process or for the questions that are teed up for us did the do you have feedback from the community connectors on those specific questions so I don't have access to the chat so I can give a brief a high level view of the things that we were discussing and it is um it's it's twofold well it's much more full than that but first of all it's just the general access to finding out when and how the application process works just to know about it um frequently this information does not filter down to the communities that are being sought and then once that knowledge is disseminated and received there are so many barriers to participation many of

[184:01] which have already been mentioned such as Child Care Transportation the technology Gap and more and equally important with that are the barriers to outcome and to feeling like the contribution is Meaningful and one of the things that we want to avoid is the feeling of tokenism that is really really critical um because they're there's the covert and the overt barriers to access to participation for the for the all of the communities that Community connectors represent and we just want to highlight and I know that you're aware but I'm going to say it again for the people in the back that the city is missing out on a tremendous amount of wisdom knowledge and perspective that would be so incredibly valuable that the community members that our

[185:00] groups represent can provide did that answer adequately your question super helpful um thank you so much and if there's anything you'd like to add that you want us to take into account as we're having this discussion I would also uh just an invite you to share whatever else you might be prepared for thank you um I do have a list I promise not to read the whole thing um but some of the things that um that we wanted to really highlight was the critical need for interpretation not only for non-native English speakers but also for community members who are deaf frequently people um who have adult onset hard of hearing do not know ASL and so for them to participate they're either need so closed captioning or other

[186:00] um accessibility is imperative and another one that we really wanted to highlight is the necessity for the city and Council to prioritize this and to fund it so that this isn't just some a nice idea that we talk about the ideas that we have proposed again in this sheet that I am not reading to you its entirety all require capital investment and so this is a really strong call to action for the city in their budget to put their money where their mouth is if you want what you say you really want it's going to cost money and it's going to cost staff thanks for that I don't I don't know if we've received the the list that's in your hand that I understand it's hard it's hard to go through a whole page during a meeting like this but if you haven't given it to Brenda or Sarah or sent it into Council I would

[187:01] invite you to do that my understanding is that it's in a different form it's in your packet and then I can ask Ryan to um send out this particular form because it's condensed and um it's it's really accessible it's like this this this this this this oh and by the way this so yes we will get that to you thanks so much I appreciate it my pleasure yes and I'd love to draw your attention so the attachment a in your packet is the sort of comprehensive list of all suggestions that Sarah referred to that's denoted by source so you'll see a small CC behind anything that was recommended by our community connectors and residents and they have been sort of filtered in those categories of we've already started working on it um we'd sort of like to start working on it or we'd like this to be a part of a greater assessment package um I think particularly the budget implications of resourcing all of these

[188:02] great ideas is something that we'd like to bring back to you holistically following that assessment oh just one final thing that I do want to put in is that um we are we are certainly not opposed to having a third party outside consultant come in we do want to emphasize the the additional importance of the weight of the people that are living this experience every day and that that continue to be included and valued and prioritized thanks Lenora and thanks Pam for the presentation I forgot to say that and everyone else who participates thinks that's all I got learned thank you Rachel um does anyone else have any other questions for either um Lenora with our community connectors or Judy with dialogue Boulder yes Junie

[189:03] just have a question about number six the part about allowing um board members who participate at the discretion of city of the CAC and I wonder did you stakehold the portion of maybe also if a board chair with the discretion of the board they wanted to weigh in on certain issues like for instance housing and have so my understanding would be in in this sort of procedural change would be if that interest were there it would be surfaced to the saf liaison which would then be brought to CAC as part of the package for that item to sort of make that final determination but if there are others um who would also like to chime in to make sure I was right on that please feel free foreign

[190:01] I'd like to make sure that we give Judy the time to address um sort of the same question that Lenora got to address for if there's anything you'd like to share that um to highlight or let us know as we consider these questions that staff has laid out sure hi I'm Judy nag but I love Boulder and thank you so much for doing this it's it's a it's an issue that's I think Really Gonna help all the way around but I first want to address what Juni mentioned uh hurt number six and that was something we discussed a lot and what we had in mind was broader it's that it was more of any topic that um that touches on something that a border commission has a lot of information on that they be invited but we're happy enough as a starting point

[191:00] with what you have we're not taking issue um with any of these we think it's great and you've done so much um what I wanted to say is um this is a group of people that I would say a good sixty percent of the people in dialogue Boulder did not like each other um before we started getting together and then when they were questioned about it they never had actually talked to each other they just had different opposing views and had decided they didn't like each other so actually people talking can make such a big difference so that was the first point I wanted to make the second point is I think all of these are great and we do not have an opinion on whether or not you should go to outside consultation or not um but we're fine with that our only hope is that whatever you do you continue whether you do it on your own or with outside Consultants that you continue to get community input in the process and board and

[192:02] commission member input in the process um the one other thing I'd like to say is when we first started our interest was in really making life easier for city council for staff although this process of getting there does take a lot of time but we felt that the staff was getting a lot of um criticism that could have been mitigated and never gotten to that point by changing policies and procedures and make a difference for board and commissions more access more people getting on boards and commissions but also the work being more meaningful so you really are more invested in what you're doing and then for the community of course so um the one we were most interested in one of these number three we spent a lot of time really wanting the hybrid possibility or all Virtual Office that's

[193:01] how it goes because we really felt that provided more access to more people and again when I say 100 percent it was consensus was a hundred percent it wasn't just what the majority agreed on we had to have everyone agree on or we didn't put it forward and we talked to lots of community members and board and commission people to get their input so thank you so much thank thank you both for coming and sharing um your thoughts with us and for participating in this process and helping us improve these boards and commissions I personally just yeah feedback is amazing and um we will do our best to incorporate it as well as we can um you are of course welcome to stay on for the rest of the meeting in case uh Nicole do you have a question specifically well for okay

[194:01] so you're welcome to stay on but um it's late and you're also welcomed to take off um thank you so much for joining us Nicole thank you I just had a follow-up to um Lenora in the community connectors feedback for us um this is a question for staff before we get into discussion of the questions with the consultant would we also have a process there for paying some of the people who are on our boards and commissions who are in I know I believe the community connectors are already getting a stipend but I'm thinking about people on the boards and commissions who whose lived experience is going to be really valuable for us to think about this to are we thinking about that because I think oftentimes you know we we are paying Consultants so we're paying people to kind of do the work but they're using the guidance and feedback from the folks who have lived experience right and we're not reimbursing them in the same way so I'm just wondering if we

[195:01] have something like that in mind yeah Nicole we haven't exactly scoped it that said um and and I can speak to some processes I'm a part of right now in the city uh the police department reimagining policing plan for example we've started making that a pretty common practice of really being thoughtful about um depending on sort of the the level of Engagement we're asking for who and how we're sort of soliciting that engagement um we are looking at a variety of kind of compensation models um so I would anticipate we would follow suit with that um so if we had focus groups if you know depending on what direction this goes um it would definitely be top of mind thank you does anyone else have other questions before we dive into answering the questions that staff has laid out for us all right

[196:01] so question number one does council support the continuation of the application and consideration process that was piloted in 2022. um so yeah we like to start a discussion I think I'd like to encourage to the extent that we can maybe having a strong like maybe we start with the in favor argument and then go to the you know not in favor argument and then vote um to try and move through this more quickly so any chance Aaron and Nicole you're both going to try and make an argument in favor or no yes okay Aaron uh Nicole you go first on the next it's fine Aaron we tied if you want to

[197:01] go first please do okay um yeah I actually I liked it I liked being able to watch from offline okay that was that was nice I know the sketch Oh Nicole it seems like your audio is cutting out a little bit maybe turning off your video might help or we might have just lost your connection completely sorry it's been a little flaky tonight I couldn't hear the majority of that okay all right okay let me try again so um I liked the one-on-one format of the interviews um I liked the aspect of being able to watch them on my own time that was a little bit easier for the ones that I wasn't a part of um and what I was curious about is did we get any feedback from the applicants on what they thought of the process um because I'd be I'd be curious about that that as well but in general I'm

[198:00] supportive of trying in again for for another year thank you uh does anyone want to try and field the if we had support from the applicant question that was a part yes at a high level I think from our perspective it was the applicant experience was sort of the the thing that was most improved by the new process um I would invite whether it's um Brenda or John who were sort of right in the room for a lot of those interviews if you have some anecdotal feedback from that experience foreign yeah I mean I will share that I I feel like the attendees it made a world of difference to have one-on-one time with you um as opposed to the previous model of being in a group interview um I also think that it that there was a lot more opportunity to get to know them as individuals potentially

[199:00] um and I was very impressed with um Taylor Ryman who I know is is listening in on this meeting went the extra mile um to make sure that accessibility particularly technology accessibility was not an issue she was hosting folks in her office who might have needed a device and helping folks get logged on who were having trouble so um so I think that uh that we made a huge leap forward and I know that it was a lot of work on your part so I think there's a balance to be struck there John did you want to add anything about logistics on your end oh Brenda you hit the nail on the head there uh there's really only one point I would add instead we uh heard positive feedback of flexibility to be able to sign up for interview times and make things fit into people's schedule rather than having to be in council chambers for one night for a couple hours so I think we uh heard a lot of good things

[200:00] in that regard thank you John and Brenda um Aaron too yeah um no I in general I support doing a similar approach it's great to hear that the applicants liked it that I think that's really really important so it's really great to hear uh the the one piece of feedback I would get is that I just feel like we need to streamline the video recordings like substantially like it was so overwhelming to listen to all of those and a lot of it was repeat filler material so the my one really big request is like that we start the video after we've already got everybody online and everybody's introduced themselves like hi I'm Aaron I've been on Council behind this like so that like we start the video at the moment that they start answering the the questions and then it seems like there was sometimes there was one question at the end that was kind of filler I'm forgetting now but that we also stop it before we do that thanks so

[201:00] much for attending and we'll let you know in a few days and blah like I think out of every 10 minute things there were like three minutes that were repeated in every single one and we have to listen to 100 of them that's a lot of time so that's that's my big big request when we do it this year thanks thank you Aaron um Rachel I I think Aaron maybe had a bit of both positive and negative so if I can continue in that vein otherwise I'll I'll wait to the negative or half and half train starts just go for it great um so I liked the for applicants flexibility and the online format and getting the questions in advance what I would do away with is council's involvement it felt to me like um some of us you know if you were in the room for certain candidates and there was some hodgepodge of like you know I did I did some of osbt maybe but then Lauren did some and there was like makeups and so we weren't all even interviewing the same groups and in

[202:02] interviewing with multiple different people um the the interview experience felt inconsistent based on which council members you had I think that staff was were the people who were um doing a good job of answering questions and and sort of running it so I felt like council members were Superfluous I I like meeting with members of the public I like office hours and things like that but I don't know that this was the right place for us to be interacting in small groups and then all of us were supposed to come together and vote and there's just this weird dynamic with we met some of them we might have preferences for some but then we were watching others and um to Aaron's Point like there was also more chit chat with some people and that made the interviews go longer I would have really strict like your two minute clock starts now and then it's cut off like I think that that is more Equitable and fair to everybody interviewing because if you've got a council member who lets you run on in one room and then somebody else has one who cuts you off at two minutes as I was more likely to do Bob may remember

[203:01] um then that's not a fair experience and it's not Apples to Apples if somebody gets to go for four minutes and somebody else gets two so I would have the strict timelines because we're because it is inconsistent among council members and there were a couple that I felt like we were almost self-promotional in some and so again I think given that we're not all there I would not have have two council members and if we're gonna go we want to stick with council members being in there I'd have all of us so I would say have staff do it or have all of us do it but I the the two and the inconsistency didn't feel great to me that's my feedback hope it made sense thanks thank you Rachel Junie and Matt and then Tara foreign thank you Lauren and I think the leakness is getting to me right about now but uh the comment I want to make is I don't remember everything that happened during the um the process this new piloted process

[204:02] with the new Council but I can say that I was not a huge fan and I do I did like the panel that we used to have I felt that it was more personable um but my question is has um and maybe you've answered this question earlier and I just didn't hear it um have you somehow talked to returning members who were part of this process meaning that they were on a board on a commission before have you surveyed them and asked them hey what do you think of this new process do you find it a little bit friendlier because I think when it's brand new people they don't have anything to compare it to but if it's people who've already been to through the process once and now they're going through this new process do they find it enjoyable foreign council member Joseph we did not do a formal survey of any kind so given that

[205:01] this was a an initial pilot um that sort of comparative analysis was not conducted okay well thank you and um I think at this point I'll go with whatever the rest of this Council wants to do thank you thank you Juni Matt thanks Lawrence um highlight for me is that there was sort of positive feedback from those engaging um I think that's that's always a great metric is to make sure they're enjoying the process because I think that snowballs that if they're enjoying the process others may be more likely to participate themselves if it's uh there's good word of mouth um but with that being said the points that Aaron and Rachel brought up resonate with me as well it was just a slog for Council to get through that um and and furthermore I think if we're not going to make too many changes about council's participation and it's just going to be a slog then I think one thing I would like us to do is

[206:00] be really intentional about the that council meeting study sessions that we do in the weeks around boards and commissions and we go really light we go super light because the lift to do this and to prep for the uh Council meetings I I think something's going to give and something's not going to get done with the quality that the community demands of us either the prep for the council meetings or the attention we give appointee boards and commission so um we're gonna have to give and take there if we're going to keep up the slog and it's going to be a just a marathon for Council then we go hyper light on Council and study sessions for those few weeks foreign do you mind if I just interject with one comment which I think was relevant to say earlier which is by virtue of having this conversation now we have more time also so one of the things that we are looking at is if the decision is to generally use a similar process with some of the tweaks that

[207:00] we've already taken down we now know that in October if you recall the decision to sort of transform our process like happened in early January at like we were building the plane while we were flying it knowing this now will allow us to start those interview recordings earlier give you a longer run away to watch those videos so um hearing that feedback and receiving it really well it was very expected to hear that from you but want to let you know that that that will also be a consideration is that timeline thanks for interjecting Pam I think that was really important for us to know Tara well I was glad I'm glad it was a pilot program because that means we can feel free to change not change I'm not emotionally involved in it although I was exhausted I had a big lift um but at least I had less to listen to but I will say I only have one comment you know there's something called the fast forward button and when I listened to the interviews I just fast forwarded it took me like one minute

[208:00] because the last question wasn't important is that they were asking so did nobody know about that or you didn't want to I mean just asking can I call it quick here not mean fast forward but like double time like no okay I just wanted I thought maybe you weren't fast forwarding got it I was fast forward again double timing but um I another option would be um the staff somebody mentioned and I don't know if it was Pam that they liked at the council some the council people were there another option would be that we don't one of us sits there and none of us asks any questions um we definitely don't need two people but I definitely see your point Rachel and I never thought of that before because um we had our because when they were chit chatting I just you know fast forwarded right through it so I didn't notice it

[209:03] we have to do what we did last time but Lauren and I would not be hurt right Lauren no but there were things that I liked about it good segue Tara um so I I think um you know the comments that Aaron made about make you know making sure that we're removing filling fill material and like really that the video is only the heart of it does feel like good feedback um sticking to a strict timeline I think you know one of the issues that came up was that because we were kind of building the plane and flying it at the same time the the script wasn't necessarily like clear or the same for everyone when people followed it to more or less greater extents um depending and so I think that given that we have a little bit more time there could also be more

[210:01] um Clarity around what's expected on that front I also just want to Echo but I did like I understand not wanting to sign up for yet another thing that Council has to do but we I did hear a lot of feedback from community members that they really appreciated feeling like they had the opportunity to ask us direct questions as part of that process um and given that there aren't a lot of other direct touch points between um boards and commissions and Council to me it feels like important that there's at least at some point where we're having direct interaction with individuals that are going to serve on our boards and commissions Lauren can I just interrupt for one second um I think you guys misunderstood when I said fast forward what I fast forwarded was every time I talked or every time a

[211:02] council person asked a question because I already knew those questions I only listened to the community the people that were um speaking so I it was took half the time because I didn't need to listen to myself right ask the same questions over and over I had to memorize So I listened to every single Community member but not the individual Council people asking the questions that's what I meant thank you for clarifying Tara um okay Erin you what you said reminded me it was the questions for us that that was the things that the there'd be several minutes of us answering questions that we all know the answer to and I was like do I need to listen to this just to see how they asked the question and learn something about them or it was a that was the one I'd like just to think about how we do that because that there were many many many minutes of council members answering questions uh that wasn't directly relevant to who we should appoint to avoid

[212:05] let's see so thank you Aaron I've heard a couple of different ways for how we might go forward with this um so in general does councils do you please raise your hand if you support the continuation of the application and consideration process that was adopted with modifications and then we can discuss what we can vote on modifications one two three four five six seven eight okay that was eight um in terms of modifications to the process I didn't really hear any

[213:00] um objection but the only one that felt like it had difference of opinion on to me was um the council involvement piece are there any others that people would like to bring forward in terms of yes Nicole what I heard what the council involvement piece was around um I mean because I heard a concern and then I heard staff kind of address it so I was just wondering where we're at because what I heard staff saying was this woman who've got a much bigger Runway so it may be a little bit different there and I didn't know if that concern was still there after Pam's response well since that was my question um the concern is still there because all right we may expect to have a longer Runway but if we're still throwing 20 hours a week into watching uh interviews and still have a heavy Council load I just want us to be mindful that if that's the time and we see us heading towards heavy loading a

[214:00] council schedule and it's the week and we're just full of those those things then we need to figure out we need to something's got to give so I I know that we're gonna give a longer Runway but that doesn't necessarily mean we're not going to run into that issue thank you Matt um and Rachel that was originally um I think I believe a concern that you brought up yeah so I would say I still my preference would be to not have counsel involved I think you it was the portions of it that I thought ran better were staff lead I appreciate your your um Point Lauren that we want to have um interactions with board members and you know hopefully the the board liaison and other things can give us that opportunity but um at the applicant stage I I think what would be more optimal to allow the applicants to still have a good process with the application into Matt's point of having it be not not a huge time commitment would be you know staff there

[215:00] to help applicants you know answer a question in two minutes another question in two minutes those you know 10 applicants of answering those two minutes are all compiled and given to us with the question in writing and we watch that and then we get the next set of questions and we watch those two minutes and I just think it will it will take a lot less time and I don't think that we add value I think that we um create sort of an inequitable inconsistent experience by being involved in it so I just have the the direct staff member um who's who's involved with that board be the person asking the questions and there to answer questions thanks Rachel Aaron and then Tara yeah I I did hear from the feedback that we got was that applicants appreciated some time with Council as part of the process like I said I did get that feedback and I I perceived that myself as well that introduced our participated again so I I would still have a council involvement I think Rachel to your point which is a good one about inconsistencies I think with this

[216:01] additional Runway I think maybe we could have some more solid expectations for council members in terms of cutting people off and how we ask questions and things like that so that we all have something that we agree to ahead of time to get that consistency in there but then and then in terms of um kind of Burden for for Council I think we should consider having one council member at each interview rather than two uh so I'd like folks to consider that as a possibility I don't know that it helped to have two of us um and and it added time so I think maybe we could get that benefit to the applicants of having Council involved with one council member um and that might be a better balance thank you Aaron Tara just want to make triple sure that everybody knows that I listen to every single applicants speak twice but you're laughing but never the council people are real and does the community understand because I'm super tired and I

[217:00] said it the wrong way the first time okay we good good okay thanks Jimmy everybody twice yes I think that I remember excuse me a little bit of what happened back um when we had those meetings um I understand the idea of if we were to remove council members but we would be voting on these community members so it takes away the personal part aspect of it so I think um if we have to do it the way that we are currently doing it having I mean meeting community members is a good thing um but I do remember actually in some of my um engagements with the applicants there were times I was the only person because it didn't work out with my schedule with

[218:00] another council member so that was done um I thought it was okay I didn't feel any particularly negative way about it it felt fine um but I do know that it was a challenge to match my schedule with other council members so maybe that might help in a way but having I do think because we were the one voting on these things having some uh some you know some engagement is a good thing I really do um it makes you feel closer to the process than if you just voting on It ultimately just by watching the person it just takes away from the human element of this particular process if it's just you watch a video and there's no real engagement with the person so thank you Juni I think given all of that I would like to propose that we um please raise your hand if you support

[219:02] a single council member doing the interviews one two three four five okay I think that passes if there's anyone else who would like um yeah Pam Lauren can I just ask a quick follow-up because it will inevitably happen when we get into the details are you comfortable delegating which council members interview which board vacancies to the board and commission subcommittee because we ran into that a little bit of the the Slate of who gets to interview who issue so I got a recommendation can it be the liaison to that board if we're going to go down the liaison path why not let be the council liaison we designate that is running that energy just throw it up I think we have to that EMS that we're going to approve that and

[220:02] I for the sake of Simplicity I would prefer to not make it one impinge on the other perhaps we could say it could be the council liaison or that the board s and commission subcommittee could select pending the approval pending liaison it that person thus is designated I'm not trying to hinge it I'm just trying to streamline so we can move on to question two through seven I know um I'll tell you though that everybody's schedule was so crazy that it was a lot more complicated and that might uh I'm not sure we can do that because of that reason and I imagine Alicia might have her hand raised to tell us something along the same lines Felicia oh you're muted I saw it flick on and off for some reason it doesn't want to let you talk

[221:01] you're still muted you're still muted oh there you go there we go let me put the headset back on um we what we did one year would seem to work well was that they allowed me to put uh everyone's name in a hat and draw the names and assign the boards and commissions um to those particular council members so that's always an option as well that way you have time to schedule it once we put the schedule together you'll know what that schedule will look like or we can work with you because we can schedule the interviews around when you are available for those in boards and commissions so you could leave it up to me and I can just randomly uh like I said names in a hat pull them out and assign each council member two boards just an option I appreciate that thank you I I agree that Matt with Matt that if we do

[222:00] assign Liaisons it would be nice to have the liaison for that board do the interview but if not I'm happy with pulling names out of a hat Rachel as you all know I didn't even want to participate in this but I'm very comfortable with the boards and and commission subcommittee figuring out these details and then to Matt's Point moving on to number two that'll be my vote on this okay so great it sounds like there are no objections to any way of us selecting these really unless can we just move on to number two great does council support their creation by staff of a protocol to address boards and commission appointments where there is only one application for a vacancy you can ask a process question real quick yes can we maybe instead of starting with

[223:00] the comments start with a vote and if it's contentious maybe deal with that but if it's eight or nine of us saying yeah let's go then we can belong sounds great I have a I do have a question clarifying question can I ask that Matt yes because one of these instances we had last year we had one woman and several men apply and it needed to be a woman and the way the staff memo was written is if there was only one applicant so I just want to be clear are we talking about one applicant or one qualified applicant because that's two different things qualified applicant is what's in our minds asking the question okay the memo said something different because I look for the word qualified it wasn't in the memo so if the straw poll is on qualified applicant that's fine I don't know an opinion one way or the other I just want to make sure that we're clear on what we're voting on so one qualified applicant so if there's a gender requirement and there's only one of that gender and there's many of another gender then the rule would apply

[224:00] and that position would not be appointed right away is that what were those that was daft's proposing thank you I actually might like to talk about it a little first I'm sorry okay go for it Rachel well I like I would just I would appoint the one person I think it's been so so clunky the last couple years to you know we open it up and then often we don't get another person and we've heard people's feelings like I think we're these are volunteer positions and um you know if if people don't want to do them and one person does I am supportive of appointing that person who has kindly volunteered to be honest like we have we have a lot of boards that have a lot of applications some are really hard to fill and um I think it's it's a bit of a disservice to the board to continue to operate light on a board member so I would just seat the one person if there's a qualified applicant thank you Rachel Matt uh Mark and then Aaron

[225:00] yeah we had a peculiar situation last year I suggest we take a mulligan on that um and and simply move forward uh I agree with Rachel uh if you've only got one qualified applicant for the position appoint them um it's a little disrespectful to somebody who's put themselves up uh for to serve the community to say you know we're not going to appoint you because um it wasn't a contested election we don't know how long it's going to take to get somebody to contest it we don't know if we're going to get somebody to contest it and as I said let's put aside what happened last year and simply look forward on this and I think it's it's not inappropriate as as Rachel said to appoint somebody who's put themselves out to serve our community um uh even if they're the only one it just doesn't make sense to me to go through the creation of an entire protocol to deal with the situation that

[226:01] we ought to just deal with easily it's one person appoint them um especially on these boards where it's hard to find uh applicants to serve if you've got one take advantage of it thank you thank you Mark Aaron yeah I didn't agree with Rachel and Mark here um you know we we put this together at the beginning of the last session so we stuck to the hey there's only one one person will will reopen it but I don't think it worked out well I think we ended up offending people and we had qualified applicants for the one position and we lost people and so I I don't think it worked out well so I I I'm as people have said I'm fine if there's one qualified applicant let's let's just point them one thing I would say is that um it would be to just if at the end of the application period we only have zero or one to extend the period for accepting applications for another two or three weeks with some

[227:00] additional you know uh Outreach on social media and such but if if we're still only at one once we get to the appointment process I would just deploy them assumingly qualified foreign thank you so let's who would like to see us appoint candidates even when there is only one qualified applicant [Music] one two three four five six seven eight great I'm just gonna suggest for the sake of time if the person talking before you has said most of what you are going to say you might just say I agree with them okay question number three does council support a requirement that all boards and commissions be required to hold meetings that are either all virtual or hybrid for board members Commissioners and community members to allow for maximum public participation and make

[228:01] Zoom recordings available in a timely way for Community viewing exceptions would still be permitted for special cases like annual Retreats and field trips can we just vote on this or does anyone okay great all in favor one two three four five six seven eight nine great does council support a pilot program through November 2023 in which one council member serves as a liaison to a board or commission with a goal of bringing back Lessons Learned before the 2024 retreat all in favor oh Rachel do you have a comment that you had a question on this one and I'm just trying to find it um sorry

[229:00] I can't get my question was sort of what what does the like um what is the pilot look like my my vision like it sounds like this has sort of already been happening and my vision of liaison would be like you know you obviously you can't speak for counsel but you're going there and maybe bringing the stuff back to council but I I don't know that we've gotten update so I just want to know what's happening what are we green lighting as a pilot what are like the the boundaries what are we talking about foreign you could answer that yeah so I wanted to invite um Sarah Brenda and maybe even Nicole yourself for this one because I know that there's been some work between council member Spear and tab that that's sort of regarding this model I think broadly speaking one of the reasons we're proposing this approach is in just anecdotally talking to a handful of other cities we know of cities that scope what it means to be a council liaison very differently so some cities

[230:01] the expectation is you attend every one of those board and commission meetings you are you are sort of a present person for some it's just you're the designated point of contact for that board and commission so that they know they have someone to go to so we wanted to understand a little bit of of uh council member Spears experience with Tab and then I invite Sarah and Brenda as well to chime in if you have more to add on that and I guess I would just also ask like if there are different ways of doing it how can one and I mean no disrespect to tab or Nicole I'm just trying to understand what we're doing here and grateful that Nicole's already just piloting of her own volition something but if there are multiple ways of doing it wouldn't we want multiple council members trying the multiple ways in a pilot like how it seems like at the end of it we would just only know one one version of how we could do it so again I'm unclear on the like the the boundaries and and the expectations and how we will evaluate the pilot

[231:00] I'll jump in a little bit if you will and say that I appreciate the question and I know that there had been previous conversations even with the previous Council of this notion of a point of contact who can people go to to ask questions um Nicole I'll defer to you your experience but the experience in tab hasn't been certainly that um councilmember spear jumps in and gets involved in the substantive role of the conversation that would not be necessarily what a council liaison would be because they don't speak for Council right um but there have been times when it's been a good perspective about what's in work plan what is not in work plan answering perhaps some process questions as that moves forward and hopefully I think as we're learning about some of this work um how to bring that back to account to the council body I think would be really interesting but there are times when there have been Dynamics about um what should we be planning who do we report to and what does that look like

[232:01] um for uh Council and members that it has been interesting to have the perspective a council member even though they're not in the moment interceding or interacting with the with the actual body so we'd be curious to continue those learnings and happy to do those in a variety of different ways and I'm happy to speak as well and I think this kind of came out for me just trying to learn um initially just to learn a little bit more about some of the stuff that tab um was discussing and watched some of the staff presentations before some of the doctor Cog meetings as I was trying to just kind of get up to speed on on where things were at and I think in the course of of sort of me just being there it became apparent that it was really appreciated to have somebody from Council present at the meeting and that the board board members really um just just seemed happy that somebody was there paying attention to to what it was that they were doing um and I'm trying to think of just even

[233:00] you know times when they've had a question for me in the course of that I think it's largely just been around you know well where where is this coming up or you know on the council agenda I've sometimes been able to provide some information on on things like that but um I think it's it's really just what it seems to be helpful for is building some relationships between um somebody on Council and board member and I think that was the the original recommendation where that sort of came from was really to have a a council member being present getting to know some of the boards board and commission members um but largely for me it's just been a really interesting learning experience and getting at sort of a deeper dive um into some of these topics and just getting getting to know folks a little bit better too so I I think part of the part of the pilot um like this where I sort of tentatively raised my hands I I don't quite know what the pilot is gonna be I'm sort of

[234:00] just going and listening to the job meetings for now to get some information from them um so I I think you know it would be helpful to have a little bit of clarity on you know what is it we're trying to understand about this and and what is this role but I think we're still in a stage where just even trying to figure out how is it um how is it helpful and where is it fitting into this relationship building yeah it seems like sorry this question is ex specifically asking if we sort of support you continuing with what you're doing with tab but I think that maybe Rachel's question is getting at um there might be another question of do we want to expand that to include more council members trying being Council Liaisons in other ways with others I think that's right and and I think it's it's like it sounds to me like what Nicole's doing is not like an authorized I don't mean like

[235:00] it's unauthorized I think it's awesome but it's not an authorized pilot with like you know some boundaries demarcated that would be important to me because I think that this could be and again not not in this situation but um you know with the longer lens of some Council history it's something that could be abused if if a council member is a is considered a liaison with with you know ill-defined boundaries and they're asked like well what's on the council's work plan um I might answer that differently than than some people on past council's night if I wanted a certain outcome from that board so I think it's it does need safeguarding in some ways and I think part of it should be if it's a formal thing reporting back to us so you know the the benefits that Nicole's getting I would think should be you know there should be time and Council meetings for liaison updates or something so I I think personally I would say Nicole by all all means should continue to build those relationships and stuff but in terms of a formal pilot I think I would want to

[236:01] maybe have another check in and understand what that looks like before I'd want to support it thank you Rachel and Brenda I saw your hand go up for a minute and I just wanted to give you the opportunity to respond to our discussion thanks I was gonna um sort of share some value that that I've been able to witness of Nicole in the room but I think it maybe is a little more granular than we need in this conversation right now I do want to just take the opportunity to say out loud that tab is the transportation Advisory board for those who might not be as up to speed on acronyms as others thank you Brenda Matt and then Tara nope nope yeah I just handed it down then muted a different order um so um so I talked to a couple of folks on on different boards about this sort of liaison thing to kind of get a sense of what what's welcome what's not um and so I think that it's certainly from what I've gathered it's welcome but to Rachel's point guard rails there's

[237:00] certainly a concern about Candor within the boards in terms of sort of having more you know metaphorically their parents looking in on the conversation IES sort of sort of and so I think not there's a desire to sort of have those candid conversations they might not otherwise have if we're present um in the moment and so I think wanting to preserve some of that is helpful letting also boards develop their own relationship and working environment with staff without us sort of being present so guardrails I would put on there are we we don't go to Every meeting we we go to every other or maybe once a quarter so I would start light I'd have a light touch to start with and see where that goes before we maybe over insert ourselves um checking in with the chair regularly is probably a reasonable place to have regular contact but I would maybe avoid the sort of let's just go in Beyond every meeting and be sort of a tsunami of presence that reduces our workload but I think also might be a better way not to create too much shock to the boards and the working environments they've already created with staff

[238:01] thank you Matt Tara um Lauren correct me if I'm wrong but what we were thinking about when we first talked about this and I'll just remind people as I was thinking we were thinking I don't think more than once or twice a year but we wanted the opportunity for the people on the boards to have a person to go to on Council if they wanted to discuss something also to have a relationship with whoever wanted to or with the chair and um so my thinking originally was we know some of the community members that speak every other week at our Council meetings during open comment that we do our own boards and commissions and we were trying to and I'm not putting down those open comments they're great I'm just saying that we also we don't get a chance to meet with or get to know our uh people on the boards and commissions so that's where um we were coming from correct Lauren

[239:00] yes okay so I'd like to propose that we first I'm going to break this into a couple votes so if you support Nicole continuing um in the work that she is doing with tab please until from now until 2024. I think yeah no until 2023 thank you um please raise your hand one two I'm I'm kind of curious I don't know what that means like to 2023 like to January 1 like a month and a half from now or through 2023. is your vote dependent on which side I don't even think November 2023 in the middle yes it does through November 2023. okay uh well can I speak to so I I won't support that because I don't think that's a fair shot because I'd like to rep I'd like to be the liaison for tab

[240:01] so I think I don't know why we would be doing that here in this moment rather than having the conversation about that for everybody else at the same time so I'm I'm a little worried why this is a one-off for tab with Nicole and not a broader conversation for everybody to have a kind of shake at the boards that they'd like to be a part of yeah so my other question is do we want to expand this um and have more council members run this as a larger pilot because it seems like there is some interest in more people getting involved sooner rather than later so [Laughter] um does anyone have any questions about that or can I sort of like take the temperature to see are people interested in instead of just having one person go forward with this pilot project trying to expand this pilot project sooner rather than

[241:00] later um please raise your hand if you are in support of that I see three four votes Nuria has a question but I still don't know what we're asking here I think there's I'm just not sure what we're really doing in this moment I don't know if I'm the only one that seems a little confused but I just don't know what we're really going at I thought so anyway I don't know I'm really confused with what we're doing I I was just going to suggest maybe because what I'm hearing is that there is interest in perhaps developing a liaison and that maybe the question is more do we have the not to go more formally develop a liaison that has those guard rails that has some guidelines and then come back to council and then we can figure out how many folks have time and interest in what what um what are those um boards and commissions that that would serve us but let us first come with the rubric for you to approve but to get the nod that a liaison program

[242:00] and a pilot would be would be something that you're interested in and then we can come back thank you for saying that much more eloquently than I was um it's getting late so words are failing me so Rachel do you have a question when my internet went out so I wasn't there for for the last couple of minutes but I just heard Nuria and I think did we pivot from asking whether Nicole's a liaison to just do we want a liaison yeah and and with the understanding there's nothing that stops Nicole from going to Tab and and doing what she's been doing right so that okay thanks I think that's a good clarifying but yeah so everyone in favor of that of Staff coming back with a more formalized liaison program one two three four five six seven eight nine unanimous great we're like halfway through guys um

[243:01] does council support the encouragement of boards and commissions to experiment with new methods of public participation for a select number of items each year a chosen item must already be on staff's work plan fall under the purview of that board or commission and be categorized by staff as a topic appropriate at and sorry at an involve or collaborate level on the city's engagement Spectrum can we vote on this one two two three four five six seven eight oh and nine I missed almost missed your hands up Mark um okay does council support modifying its procedure to add study sessions to the type of forum that warrants an

[244:00] invitation to board and commission Representatives and this and can this be at the direction or discretion of the council agenda committee Mark uh Bob well I I'm not sure if this is a change or not I I think for many many years this has always been the discretion of the council agenda committee both for study sessions and for regular Council meetings um and so I I know this is supposed to be a codification I wouldn't want to tie the hands of the council agenda committee the council agenda committee has done a good job this one in in Prior ones of of inviting boards and commissions and so if it's just a reaffirmation of a policy that's existed for a long long time I would support it um but I wouldn't direct CAC that they must must always have a board of commission because that would take away their discretion and I trust CAC

[245:01] thank you Bob does anyone else want to make any comments or clarifying statements around this before we move forward Nicole I'm agreeing with what Bob just said and then I'm also just adding that I think it's helpful if there's a really clear ask um as to you know what it is we're looking for for feedback um in that in that discussion if we have some sense of that in advance then hopefully CAC would have a good sense of that I think it's just helpful for folks thank you Nicole I'd also like to add that um I agree with both what Nicole and Bob just said but additionally like in clarifying the ask it should also be clear whether we're going to give presentation time or not or if someone is just there to answer questions if they come out um said are we ready to vote on this one

[246:01] all in favor of what we've just talked about no okay one two three four five six seven eight nine perfect thank you guys and then our last question we might not be actually voting so we don't get complaints from members of the community oh sorry not voting just hand raising so none of these are votes voted sessions I think I think we're given Direction via a straw poll that's right sorry heartache there thank you the final question does council agree with the approach to address the remainder of the ideas in attachment a through a comprehensive evaluation by a third party to assess our current systems and make recommendations for broader structural and role Clarity improvements

[247:00] does anyone have questions or comments related to this mat um so in general I I support this but my concern is we've in other work we have been we have felt the sting of not prioritizing things um and so I'm worried that if we don't provide at least some scope of a handful of these that we want to elevate to being a higher priority for us um I I'm worried that it just kind of becomes a soup of analysis um so I don't know if that's here and now but I do think that's a big list and so unless we Elevate some things I don't know if we're going to get the outcomes we're looking for on certain things I think there's I could identify four or five that I think are far more important than the rest that might be subjective to among other of us but I don't I'm just worried that if we don't have priorities in there we're not going to get the results we desire yeah please Pam okay great thank you so

[248:00] a couple things as we approach both the kind of procurement of this support and then sort of following that through with counsel the way I think the team envisions that process would be to work closely with the boards and commission subcommittee on sort of what does that RFQ or RFP look like in terms of that solicitation how is the scope of work framed in a way that does reflect those priorities that you're referring to Matt in addition sort of on the back end as the body of work is completed we would anticipate and we had included just one example of another City's assessment you would be sort of presented with a suite of options that then all of the decisions of what to do with that would still come back to council and so um prioritizing those recommendations um considering you know timelines of being able to fund implementation of whatever those changes might be those things would still be at your discretion so I'd like to think that both kind of the checkpoint and how we set up the

[249:00] work but then also um kind of on the back end the how we proceed with the recommendations would be both based on your key priorities and then also there would be timelines associated with certain things might require Charter changes certain things might require um you know going to the voters certain things might be more immediately implementable but we would have a road map rather than what we have now which is we try to talk about six things in 90 minutes and can can only get through a couple at a time thanks Pam that was great um I think if we did approve this as someone who is on the board and commission subcommittee I would be really interested in hearing what your priorities are um Rachel I saw your hand go up and then come down nope okay in that case are we ready to vote on

[250:01] this one please raise your hand and sorry we are not voting please um let's draw a poll if there is support for this agenda items of this number seven one two three four five six seven eight nine thank you all right um that brings us to the end of the questions laid out by staff in our memo are there anything anything else Pam that you for any reason we would like to keep going on this topic um no I appreciate the direction thank you thank you with no mayor no more items on tonight's agenda oh sorry Aaron and then Nicole I don't know that they're still here but

[251:01] I just wanted to thank um uh Lenora and Judy for their for coming tonight and for all the work that they've done in the community in their respective roles so I appreciate about that thank you Aaron Nicole super fast I just wanted to let you all know you may be receiving these as well I'm getting some screenshots from community members who are seeing things on social media I think with the election ramping up um just folks in the community are getting heated but what I'm seeing is stuff that's disparaging staff and really kind of calling into question their integrity their kind of commitment to their work for the city and I just wanted to take a moment for any staff who are still here with us just to let you know I'm sorry that that's happening um it's not fun when it happens to us as electives but it's I don't really feel like it's appropriate to be happening to staff so I just wanted you know for for those of us here um you know where where we see it

[252:00] directly if anybody feels comfortable just stepping in and commenting for staff and standing up form that may be appreciated maybe not but um just wanted to to let you all know that I see it and I'm really sorry that it's happening and hopefully our temperatures can go down a little bit after the election I'll just say on behalf of staff that we certainly appreciate you saying so out loud and uh we know that so many of you council member support staff as well so appreciate that certainly it's something that we um take in stride it is unfortunate but um we appreciate the support that you give us thank you for highlighting that Nicole with no more items on tonight's agenda I would like to close the meeting at 1008 pm thank you all and [Music]