December 1, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:01] foreign [Music] foreign foreign

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[2:01] thank you foreign thank you foreign

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[4:07] foreign [Music] all right well so uh if we could get Channel 8 started we don't want to deprive our viewers of Matt's dad yes they're ready sir great okay Tara

[5:00] okay well good evening everyone and welcome to the December 1st 2022 meeting of the Boulder City Council it's wonderful to have you all here in person and as well as the folks who are joining us remotely and uh we're going to start with a what we now have is a tradition somebody's got it uh Matt you want to tell us a quick dad joke thank you mayor Brackett um so trying to find one topically relevant we're going to go in the transportation sector since Natalie and her team are going to be in the hot seat um so what's the saddest form of transportation a moped right got a better reception that time than usual man all right so we'll move right on into the one announcement that we have tonight so this is about covid-19 vaccinations so for information and provider locations for free covid-19 testing go to

[6:00] www.bocode.org covet testing and the boulder site for that is it 2445 stazio drive it's open seven days a week from 8 AM to 6 p.m and for vaccine information and provider locations go to www.bocode.org covid vaccine and with that I will now gavel us to order and do a roll call if we could Alicia please thank you sir and good evening everyone we'll start this roll call tonight with councilmember Benjamin present mayor Brockett present councilmember folkerts present mayor Pro tem friend here councilmember Joseph here spear here Wallach here Winer present and Yates right here right here mayor we have our quorum thanks so much all right so now we need a motion to

[7:01] amend our agenda to add two things one is item one a a Colorado Springs lgbtq plus Community Support declaration and one C consideration of a motion to suspend Council rules or procedures to allow for three substantive public hearings and to remove one B which was a motion to approve election returns as those are not quite ready yet so moved second we've got a motion and a second do a show of hands here all in favor very good the motion is the agenda is duly amended thank you so we'll now move to this first declaration I'm going to be presenting this and I'm going to come up to the front here so this is a declaration in solidarity

[8:00] with the victims and survivors of the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs and with lgbtq plus communities around the world on the night of Saturday November 19th five fellow coloradans were murdered at Club Q in Colorado Springs in a heinous act of gun violence and hatred the people of Boulder know all too well the horror when a person in possession of a weapon of mass murder enters a public place and suddenly and mercilessly kills community members who are engaging in everyday activities our hearts go out to the victims and their families to the people of Colorado Springs and to the lgbtq plus communities around the world the names of the five people who were murdered at Club Q are Daniel Aston Kelly loving Ashley Paul Derek rump and Raymond Green advance we remember their lives we mourn their deaths and we grieve with their friends

[9:01] and families who've suffered such deep unimaginable losses 22 others were injured at Club Q that night we recognized that the road ahead for the survivors will be difficult and our wish for them is that they may begin the process of healing we empathize with the people of the City of Colorado Springs as they grapple with Collective Community trauma and we stand with lgbtq plus people across Colorado throughout the United States and all around the world who far too often face hatred condemnation assault and death because of their sexual orientation or gender identity as a society we have a moral obligation to work together to create a welcoming place for everyone our lgbtq plus community members should not bear this burden alone it's incumbent on each and every one of us no matter our own identities to join together to protect and support people who face exclusion discrimination and inequity because simply of who they are

[10:01] if we do not all stand together then we ourselves are complicit in that hatred and violence therefore we the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado declare our solidarity with those killed and injured at Club Q on November 19 2022 with the City of Colorado Springs and with all lgbtq plus people wherever they may live and for those in our own Community who are in need of additional support in this hard time queer asterisk is able to help direct people to resources you can find them at queer asterisk.com and the students faculty and staff at CU Boulder can also reach out to their pride office for support and resources by emailing them at Pride colorado.edu thank you our next our next item

[11:04] is an international day of persons with disabilities declaration to be presented by council member Tara weiner and I'd like to introduce you to Bella Bella is a participant in our expand program which you'll hear about shortly in 1990 the federal government passed the Americans with Disability Act the Ada which underscores the values of equal access and equal opportunity for people with disabilities and upholds that all people are entitled to a set of fundamental freedoms and protection regardless of ability status we acknowledge the long history of isolation and discrimination of people with disabilities and esteem the Decades of activism and advocacy by the disability Community to to combat systemic exclusion and Injustice these

[12:00] Champions have paved the way for more individuals with disabilities to pursue their full measure of happiness despite the Ada there are enduring challenges for this community that require ongoing support so that they may enjoy the same levels of protections and Service as others they face physical social and attitudinal barriers and are more likely to experiencing to experience co-occurring health challenges and higher health care costs and as a result many live in poverty and are underemployed or unemployed the city of Boulder strives to exceed the requirements set forth in the Ada and to create a welcoming and supportive Community this is in line with the importance the community places on being a city that supports those with disabilities as affirmed in the recent Parks and Recreation master plan where 92 percent of respondents said

[13:00] that serving our community members with disabilities is very important and essential to that end the city's expand program has been providing Recreation and leisure activities to propone inclusion health and connection since 1980. despite the isolating nature of the covid-19 pandemic expand participants were able to stay connected through online programming which provided an important space for rich company building skills and Community as well as promoting emotional and physical wellness expands Mission creating a community of all abilities through Recreation is strengthened by a strong community of participants athletes parents care providers partner agencies Boulder Park and Recreation staff and the Boulder Community who continue to support programs and services for people with disabilities with over 100 programs

[14:00] three camps and 2 000 participants in 2022 expand continues to grow and change to best support the inclusion of people with disabilities we the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado declare December 3rd 2022 as International Day of persons with disabilities day and urge our city government and community members to commit to the ongoing work of advancing the experience and protection for people with disabilities get to know these Unique Individuals and their lived experience so that we understand how systems could better serve them share and listen to their stories of joy and Community significance lead with compassion and empathy so that we create a city for everyone to thrive now I'm going to introduce you to Bella and by the way she made this really nice bracelet I'm very excited about hi my name is Bella Larson I have

[15:05] developmental disabilities in a proud participate in the city of Voters experiment program I'm honored to accept this declaration for on the behalf of expand I like to think City count so in the city of border for this declaration and for your support of the disability community expand is a very important part of my life I've been participating and expand for 21 years since I was eight since participating

[16:00] and expand over the years I have done a lot of activities including silly Saturdays gymnastics for for hockey basketball swimming but soon Beyond cooking dancing and much more expand as big part of my life it's for my friends too almost everyone I know has a disability participates an experience it's a great place to exercise socialize learn new things and come together as a community but volunteers and the people who work for expand are amazing they're

[17:02] are my friends more than anything it's a lot of fun experience is awesome thank you for recognizing International Day for persons with disability for your support with the people with disabilities and for the experience programs foreign Bella that was just beautiful thank you so much for joining us tonight that was wonderful

[18:01] all right our next item of business is item 1C we need a motion to suspend the council rules or procedures to allow for three substantive public hearings so moved second great thanks and that's item four a five to be clear in Council rules and procedures uh so we have a motion in a second we can do a show of hands here all in favor okay that's unanimous our rules that rule is suspended for the evening all right now it's time for open comment and I believe Brenda rittenauer will be doing uh reading our rules of participation be joining you from our Zoom call today um to share our meeting guidelines together and to facilitate our virtual um participation this evening so Emily

[19:01] if you wouldn't mind bringing up those slides that would be great where I could also do that wonderful thank you Emily so I know that many of you who are here with us tonight may have seen these many times and we appreciate your patience as we go over them again for folks who may not be as familiar the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive Civic conversations this vision is designed to support the physical and emotional safety of community members staff and Council as well as supporting democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives for more information about this vision and the community engagement process that went into developing it please go to our homepage bouldercolorado.gov and in the search

[20:00] bar search productive atmospheres next slide please the following examples of our rules of decorum found in the boulder Revised Code and other guidelines to support this Vision these will be upheld during the meeting tonight both online and in our virtual atmosphere I mean both in person and in our virtual atmosphere all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they are commonly known by and individuals online must display their whole name before being allowed to speak currently only audio testimony is permitted online in-person participants are asked to

[21:00] refrain from expressing support or disagreement verbally in order to keep it a well welcoming space for all perspectives traditionally support is shown silently if you wish through American Sign Language Applause or jazz hands like this thank you I think we're ready to begin with our in-person testimony first so much Brenda all right so we're going to do all our in-person folks first I'll read uh three names at a time and so when you're like the next one up please get ready and come on down so and people get two minutes to speak our first three speakers are Jess Lou van Bruce arant and Todd Hatfield my mic is on but maybe I need to speak closer to it so Jess you're our first speaker

[22:05] as you'll see the slides I presented and I'll go ahead and speak your welcome to look at them good evening mayor and city council my name is Jess Liu and I am the owner of a small business a cafe that will be opening on East Pearl I'm here to speak to you about the broken state of the city's planning and permitting department and its failure to serve business owners like myself in the community today December 1st is sadly the anniversary that of I've been in a year in permitting review with the city of Boulder I submitted my land use application lur 20210056 December 1st took seven and a half months to process I'm now waiting for the city of Boulder to issue me a building permit my applications have been through five reviews none of which have been delivered on time and for the past six months of building permit review three of those months have simply been waiting for City staff to get caught up on their queue as a first-time small business owner who represents an important demographic here

[23:00] a woman and a minority I have been utterly disappointed by the process from the lack of responsiveness of City staff as you can see in my example one of many takes four emails two phone calls to get a response if any the average response time is 15 to 20 business days Jess I should have said earlier if you can bring your bike down so we can hear you yes of course sorry about that the most disappointing part of my case is that I'm just one of many who feel victims of the city of Boulders permitting and planning process um over the past few days I've actually been collecting signatures in support of my beer and wine license I've spoken to over 50 plus businesses on Pearl Street not one of them has had a positive thing to say about the city of Boulder I quote it's a shame to say but it's the truth small businesses thrive in spite of the city of Boulder not because of them in your November 16th meeting council member Yates declared to support a small business Saturday quoting 90 of businesses in Boulder have less than 20 employees I can tell you with confidence small businesses don't feel supported I'm asking you today to hold the city of

[24:01] Boulder planning department accountable to do better to be better and to actually serve its community it's just I think we have a question for you Jess thanks for coming out tonight thank you for that information can you tell us the name of the proposed name of your business and the address yes it's 1647 Pearl Street um unit 2 and it will be called Creature Comforts great thank you Jess yes thank you thanks hey next we have van Bruce around Todd Hatfield and Kent welley hello van Bruce rant Morrison Colorado I just want to make you aware and give you notice that there are some ordinances on your books that are more than likely uh would not be able to uh sustain being challenged uh and could be illegal and definitely or unenforceable the majority of them in title V under

[25:00] General offenses come under the 5.8 Weapons Part of your code uh 5.84 8 9 10 11 12 21 27 28 39 40 and 41. uh would are all this is very challengable and would probably not survive in a in an appellate situation maybe locally they would but unfortunately they won't and I understand you're probably thinking Bruce this is the majority of our Common Sense gun control why are you saying it's unenforceable it's a matter of four different Supreme Court decisions that have come down the first one was in 2008 District of Columbia versus Heller uh in that one the court provided U.S citizens with the individual right to possess arms unconnected with service in

[26:01] the militia so they took the militia part out of it and the Second Amendment is extended to arms that are not that were not in existence at the time of the founding then two years later McDonald vs Chicago they said the second amendment protects against state infringements that would be you guys uh also that you could possess arms for self-defense outside the home then came in 2016 katano vs Massachusetts and then finally Serpa versus Bruins Bruce I'm afraid your time is up but if you'd like to email us the rest of your comments please do all right will do okay thank you I have uh Todd Hatfield Kent Welly and Mary Wright hello my name is Todd Hatfield with two D's um uh I moved here from Chicago in 2019 I

[27:01] was on several board committees within the city of Chicago and I'm just here to discuss the public safety and homeless issue that seems to be continuing to develop within the city Boulder we have two major assets here within this town that would be Boulder Creek and Pearl Street and these are becoming further and further overrun I'm going to comment on the homeless shelter strategy from 2017 written by uh your predecessors possibly and I want to point out that one of the goals here within this is to it's goal number six it would be to protect people in uh interest of going down to these public spaces and I think that these things are you know frankly not being uh occurring with the homeless people uh I'm not here to bash homeless I understand I've also read and we use this in Chicago quite a

[28:00] bit by the National Law Center of homeless and poverty that talks about criminalization of homeless people and your testimony here or status for the homeless strategy talks about wanting to use other local communities for data testing on things like that so I have some data this is from 2021 and it simply talks about bans on you know sleeping in public you have laws here in place too for encampments that I know that we process the most fines in the state on but you know we had a public camp right here across the street for three weeks with seven or eight tenths people burning fires I work downtown every day and I see people urinating defecating doing drugs in public space and it just seems to be allowed to happen so I'm just asking a challenge that when are we going to take harder stances on these issues okay

[29:00] thank you for your comments Todd next we have Ken yeah and in sick with covid he's also from my office he came in I have a letter from him and then Mary Wright as well we had some sickness going through oh I'm so sorry to hear that but if they could email us their thoughts we'd like to we would appreciate hearing from them so it sounds like Kent Welly and Mary writer not present so we will move to Lindsay Boyd then Laurie Boyd and Evan ravitz Mary Wright who wasn't able to make it tonight um dear City Council Members I moved to Boulder in August of 1976. I spent four years at the University of Colorado I've been a property owner since 1982 I currently work for Morgan Stanley on the downtown corner of Broadway and Canyon and have been with them for 25 years I've loved the city dearly for over 45 years I'm very disturbed by the change our city has experienced over the last five years or so we must call on our

[30:00] leadership to address the homeless and safety problems in the city I did not used to feel unsafe in my community and now I do I'm a single woman who now on a regular basis experiences people lurking in dark Corners defecating on the street in broad daylight shooting up drugs and smoking pot in our community park and Bandstand this is completely unacceptable specifically I have seen a person laying on a bench on Canyon Boulevard at four o'clock P.M in the afternoon shooting up drugs on my way to my car after work I have had a stranger jump out of a bush on the Boulder Creek path and scream right in my face in an attempt to scare and threaten me I've seen a child at the farmers market pick up a crack pipe and ask him ask his mother what is this these are just a couple of horrifying events that I'm witnessing on a daily basis I no longer feel safe and this is not right I'm a taxpayer and a law-abiding citizen and should not have to be at risk on a daily basis the city must do something about the state of the downtown area the current situation is unacceptable people should not be allowed to set up tents downtown even for a moment people should not be

[31:01] allowed to congregate in the Band Stand they use profane language they use their Garb they leave their garbage and they accost people on a regular basis we must clean up our city for the safety of all I currently live at the Peloton at 33rd and Arapahoe the problems of homeless and strange people lying in the foyer and threatening people around the property is also present this property is on the same street as the police's Police Department it doesn't seem to help and it doesn't seem like our law enforcement is doing enough to protect our community I don't know why this is not a top priority for our city that's Mary Wright now we have Laurie Boyd Evan rabbits and Alex Cassidy I also am here for Lori Boyd and have a letter from Lori Boyd that right okay yeah from Lori Boyd I would first like to thank the council members for providing a platform and giving us the chance to speak we appreciate your work and all that you're doing to help make Boulder A Better Community my name is Lori Boyd absent

[32:01] and have worked in the city of Boulder for close to a decade I wish I could represent myself in person I've loved working in a Vibrant Community and have enjoyed seeing it grow and prosper with such a wonderful growth that has come quite a bit of challenge for Boulder County in general as a resident of Louisville I have seen the horrific impact of wildfire as I lost my home in the Marshall Mesa fire I've seen the impact and strain of resources on my local government and community Through the wake of the fire but it felt blessed and thankful to have a city council who is supportive of building back our devastated neighborhood over the last few years especially as coveted shutdowns prompted Community challenges I've noticed significant changes in the city of Boulder specifically around my workplace near Walnut and Broadway the Vibrant Community that has shaped so many people's experiences of the city of Boulder and the area around Pearl Street has become mirrored by an increasing transient population that seemingly has little regard for the community we support specifically outside of my office near Walnut and Broadway it seems I witness weekly public urination random

[33:00] people being accosted panhandling on all sides of our Professional Services building and general harassment colleagues of mine have been attacked on and our customers clients employees no longer feel safe coming into our place of business most recently I saw an encampment encampment along a pathway blocking a public way near Canyon and Broadway commuters and Walkers were forced to walk around and avoid being harassed by some folks who decided to put their sleeping quarters in a public walkway two weeks ago I was confronted by two individuals in the hallway of my workplace clearly on some sort of drug pleading pleading with me to you as a private bathroom in our Professional Services Suite I can only imagine what they would have needed that restroom for and I encouraged them to ask the security desk in our lobby to seek help I've seen needles surrounding our building our building as well as folks found in sleeping bags camped under our awnings on our first floor Lori Boyd now we have Evan ravitz and then Alex Cassie is our last in-person speaker Evan ravitz North Boulder everyone

[34:01] should read the news story at boulderbeat.news titled founding member of Boulder's police oversight panel resigns in protest she called the protest the process fake and its transparency to the public a pinhole that's the city I've protested here for years with baby talk every week before open comment about co-creating a vision for productive discussion when Council actually against unanimous testimony in 2017 cut our time here from three to two minutes less than any other large city in Colorado there's the city's blatant lying cheating and defrauding taxpayers of 490 000 to obstruct the country's first online petitioning for ballot initiatives that I spearheaded and which has been in the city Charter since 2018.

[35:02] all the proof is at tinyearl.com petition story there's mayor Brockett flip-flopping from years of advocating for a legal camp for the homeless like Denver has eight of to twice voting Millions instead to sweep them from illegal Camp to Camp endlessly now that he's seeking higher office just another tool in the toolbox I'm increasing my reward to a hundred dollars for the suppressed camera article from 10 or 15 years ago in which the Colorado Municipal League or some other civic league said that the real decisions in Boulder are made in quote smoke-free back rooms while Council puts on a show for the public one way to restore some truth and accountability here would be to get rid of this elevated days which has only been here

[36:00] for 12 years thanks Evan Alex Cassidy uh I wanted to thank Bob for talking to me last month thank you so much I also wanted to thank Junie for uh responding to my emails um I'm here to talk about 6 500 Arapahoe annexation uh and so first I wanted to make a quick clarification uh the last council meeting there was a mention of a phase one environmental report and what we had what I had mentioned and what I believe this project really requires is an environmental impact assessment which is substantially different from an environmental phase one environmental just looks at I don't know gas bills things there's

[37:02] there's a long list you can look it up if you want but an environmental impact assessment would look at um uh wildlife in the area and people in the area and it's also part of that is looking at alternatives for the project so this project this annexation project and the factory in particular is really begging for a traffic study so why no traffic study I believe the reason why there's no comprehensive traffic study looking at East Arapahoe and the BV bvsd campus existing conditions and Factory impacts a traffic study like that would likely not be favorable for the project also like to point out there's been no mention of Arapahoe Avenue updates in any conversations and uh looks like I'm

[38:01] running out of time here so I would appreciate uh no traffic on 60 on 63rd a noise assessment study should be completed if you get an acoustic engineer involved their comments should be incorporated into the project that's it thanks Alex and feel free to send us some follow-up comments via email all right we're now going to move to our virtual participants and my understanding is that Edmund Noyes and Mark Eller have withdrawn so our first three speakers are Vicki Sama Lynn SQL and Chuck Hardesty Vicky you should be too unmute now okay thank you hope that didn't eat into my time I'm here to address a public safety emergency that involves the use of motor-powered devices on the multi-use pathways around Boulder I hope

[39:00] you received my email last week to city council providing the details of a collision in October where I was hit by a motorized scooter which is often called an e-scooter the scooter involved is similar to the lime rental scooters around the city it's large bulky metal with a throttle to move the forward the scooter forward it's not a scooter that you push with your feet this is a scooter that's powered similar to a motorcycle with a throttle on the handlebars over our multi-use paths are becoming highways for lightweight motorized vehicles unfortunately the number of motorized devices far exceeds the room available for all users the city needs to take immediate action to provide safety for the community before more people are seriously injured or killed I urge the city council to take the following immediate action first revise the boulder municipal code to reclassify lightweight motorized vehicles to be immediately banned from multi-use Pathways with the exception of wheelchairs and other devices necessary for accessibility secondly revise the code to require licenses for motor-powered vehicles and devices

[40:01] including e-bikes e-scooters e-skate boards any other motor-powered device devices that are powered by throttle are particularly dangerous and need additional licensing requirements especially given the number of people driving them on our Pathways thirdly add private motorized e-scooters to the municipal code where shared e-scooters and lime scooters are referenced and lastly revise the law to add financial and other penalties just like we have tickets and fines and other consequences for vehicles on the road in my case the person who hit me causing severe injury is still able to ride around on her scooter today and hit someone else I urge the city council to address this public safety emergency immediately to avoid further harm to the public and potential liability for the city thank you thank you Vicky now we have Lynn Siegel Chuck Hardesty and Clay Thompson can you

[41:01] thanks Sombrero annexation no for manufactured housing um Factory there um the 8 000 foot house that's being demolished the hunter you know it's like the library it's it's fireproof you're probably going to have to take a bomb to take it down how could this happen in Boulder 8 000 square feet perfectly perfect perfect shape building um and with all the retained uh from the very beginning from 1941 um it's just stunning that something like that could happen how can you allow ldrc to to to just okay a demolition like that I have no idea something's wrong here um Brewhouse this was part of 311

[42:02] Mapleton The Academy of 311 as affordable housing for 95 seniors they were able to opt out of that I remember going there for hours and hours of taxpayer pay city staffers you know working with them to get this Brewhouse Senior Center perfect and all of that to waste because you can you can violate the city of Boulder if because you're if you're less than three stories which apparently they work 311 you have the right you can say you're going to have on-site facility which was their affordable housing they're at Brewhouse but you can get rid of it in a Flash so Bob what happened we talked on the street about this where's Brewhouse I want to know um now as far as light tech funds low-income housing tax credits these are

[43:01] costing the city of Boulder it's not free money from the federal government for affordable housing done okay thanks Lynn now Chuck Hardesty and Clay Thompson can you hear me it is my slide up uh yes there it is thank you for your consideration and questions about the habitat Factory at the meeting two weeks ago the significant discussion about trucks on 65th instead of 63rd were the approximate the 10 trucks per month and less production scales up operational delivery trucks did not include the approximately 2 000 very big trucks just in 2023 these will haul out old pavement bring in the 20 000 cubic yards of fill new pavement construction equipment and Factory materials we will hear constant construction noise in 2023 comments about moving trucks to off hours or

[44:01] weekends May violate draft IGA hours and won't work for neighbors or the factory Builders also please push to get the openings closed during operation clause in the IGA we will hear that noise forever given all the present bvsd traffic congestion it seems like there is no place for 2 000 big trucks in less than one year the comment from open space that staff had not considered the construction year should require a do-over since some of the 20 000 yards of dirt will be blowing into open space in March and the backup beeps can't be turned off we're still wondering about another site for the factory but I've not seen a list of other places considered and why they would not work bvsds buses to take the students there is no sign of a Good Neighbor policy in the two months since the site visit the Q a session was closed after receiving no answers to some of the questions and some people with their hands up were not given time to ask their question the second session should

[45:02] have been scheduled but has not I would not have bought my house if I knew a factory could be put in a public Zone next to a residential neighborhood it seems that zoning designations don't matter wondering how the neighbors can get a seat at the New York cruciating table instead of being left in the dark for several years thank you for your time Thank You Chuck and our last speaker is Clay Thompson hi can you hear me yes uh hello my name is Clay Thompson and I'm also calling about the 6500 Arapahoe annexation and proposed industrial Factory I'm having a hard time understanding what the point of the factory is and why you're circumventing your own zoning code I think we need to be transparent and clear that you're abusing your Authority by allowing an industrial Factory that is prohibited in an area that is zoned a public Zone you also have a conflict of interest and and an internal conflict of

[46:00] non-transparency having a city of Boulder employee jasonet being paid by bbsd to facilitate bbsd's portion of the factory process before it's even made public most of us want reasonable housing and appreciate the idea of modular housing but this prohibited industrial build in a public Zone would be the last plan that you would use if this was your goal there are much better options for spending eight and a half million dollars and here are some of them you could put effort into allowing higher densities along high traffic areas you could allow more adus you could increase your height limits in these high traffic areas you really need to focus on policy because you're not a home builder number two if you insist on being a home builder go east and buy any number of cheap commercial buildings and employ a competent module or home builder that can guide the process or create a partnership and buy homes from a modular Builder who already does it the fourth option would be to go buy a commercial building in Boulder that is

[47:00] already zone for industrial we have these areas set out in our Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and at least when we could possibly not be a home builder you would have an asset and speaking of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan which is supposed to be used by the city of Boulder and Boulder County to guide long-range planning where does becoming a modular home builder fit a plan it reminds me of 26 million dollars spent on an unusable building at the boulder res for a 100 million dollar vacant live which you will own for the Boulder Community Hospital project on Broadway thank you clay all right that concludes um that concludes our open comment for tonight thanks to all the speakers we have a staff responses to need to open comment uh yes I'd like to just uh thank everyone for uh both being in person or virtual to speak tonight one item I just wanted to address was our first Speaker tonight

[48:00] miss Lou who spoke about her application with pnds I did hear from our director of planning and development services as well as our interim Chief Building official that they've been in contact with her and have another follow-up meeting scheduled for uh this coming Monday it's good to hear and I just wonder if we might in addition get a little bit of information on kind of service response times these days because I think there's some maybe larger issues she was talking about yep we can follow up on that okay okay that would be good uh yes Jenny thank you mayor bracket I think that's exactly where I wanted to add as well because she mentions small businesses and it sounds like the issue might be systemic and I'm wondering I can understand bigger businesses may have they have the money to not be in business for six seven eight months a year but when you have someone who's a small business a woman who's trying to make it here in the community they should not have to be dealing with

[49:00] a process that's taking forever and then for them not to be in business so it's almost like somehow or processes has taken so long so maybe I would like to know from you what are some of the equity guidelines that you have in place for smaller businesses so that they can enter a market and also be able to stay there thank you great so if we can get that as well thank you Judy seeing no other council members I just had one thing one of our the speakers was saying that a city staff member was being paid by bbsd which I wasn't familiar with out yeah I can address that and I know uh I think I saw um Kurt in the audience as well so Kurt correct me if I get this wrong but um Jay stugnet who works in our housing and Human Services Department was served essentially as the project manager for that annexation so he was not paid by bbsd but did assist bbsd in their application got it and I guess any applicant to the

[50:00] city will pay fees right but he was not actually paid as a staff member correct he was not paid by bvsd okay okay thanks for clarifying all right so Alicia can we move on to our consent agenda please of course sir of course our consent agenda is item three through tonight's agenda and it consists of items a through f and before we get to council questions I understand we're going to get a little bit of a staff presentation on item e about the design and construction standards foreign Shuffle here Natalie Stiffler our interim director of transportation and Mobility as well as Garrett Slater from our capital projects group and transportation are here

[51:01] thanks and I'm going to just hand it right off to Garrett to get going okay

[52:01] do you have it on your computer I do if you just want to do it from yours and I can I can just tell you to advance all right um so my name is Garrett Slater I'm the principal Transportation projects engineer from the capital projects division of the transportation and mobility department and happy to be with you here this evening to provide an update on the design and construction standards and I thought it might be helpful to talk uh for a moment about what the design and construction standards are they are a document that tell us how to implement and construct infrastructure within the public right-of-way within the city and so all manner of our infrastructure assets whether it's Transportation or utilities or planting and Landscaping are to abide by the standards found in the design and construction standards and if you could go to the next slide as a part of the uh the document we

[53:00] recognize that times change and standards evolve and so our document the design and construction standards should follow suit and because we have a transportation master plan along with corresponding plans such as the low stress walk and bike Network have come out with new goals and Visions for what our transportation system should look like we should have corresponding standards that help us to be able to implement facilities that will replicate our the goals of our community and so to that end the DCS is recommending updates for various sections to include Street geometric design Landscaping standards site triangles found within the boulder Revised Code as well as corresponding engineering standard drawings in chapter 11. and so I'd like to note that this is what we're calling the phase two update which is one step and a larger broader effort to bring more full-scale updates to the entirety of the document next slide

[54:03] so the specific goals that we have with this update is to make sure that we have a uniform application of the document for both private as well as public projects and an example of this would be the 30th and Colorado project which we all painfully know has been under construction over the last two years and is nearing completion I promise you that that is a public investment and if we were to find ourselves in a place where there were adjacent property that were under development and had some sort of adjacent obligation to prove that we would have no means to be able to exact an obligation to which they could build those improvements to our desired standard and so we need to make sure that we've got consistency so that as private development comes online and they're required to implement Implement infrastructure that they're doing it at the level our Master plans want us to and the next goal is to make sure that our street street geometric design is

[55:00] decreasing the potential for a conflict between all all modes and users and creating landscape standards that are consistent with our overarching goals and objectives as well as site triangle requirements for multi-use paths that may make it easier for code enforcement and staff to be able to enforce these site triangles where they're located throughout the network next slide and I I so just to make sure that we're clear on terminology I thought it might be useful also to talk about the difference between a goal and a policy versus a standard so in general terms a policy says this is our goal and the standard says this is how to accomplish our goal and so uh just a very generic example would say we want sidewalks in the city to be usable for everyone that's a policy the standard says sidewalk should be four feet wide that's just a generic example I'm not prescribing that as a minimum standard should be six inches thick of Portland cement concrete and should not exceed an eight percent grade so just to help you get an understanding of the type of

[56:00] language that's found and the design and construction standards is a document next slide all of these updates that we're bringing to you tonight tie back to our our overarching goals found in the transportation master plan Envision zero goals which is to reduce through and turning speed separate conflicts with users and also to tie back to the sustainability framework of improving the fiscal ability to maintain our plantings and increase the resilience of the Urban Tree canopy next slide of course a vital component of this effort over the last year and a half has been engaging with the community with those who will be both impacted by as well as use the design and construction standards and so to that end we conducted an online questionnaire we conducted office hours with the staff that have engaged with this update and we've reached out directly to key stakeholders in the community such as the Chamber of Commerce Community Cycles

[57:00] the center for people with disabilities to make sure that these updates are reflective of the the goals and values not just of City staff but also the broader Community next slide so key items that are included in this update and were items that we heard specifically from the community that we should incorporate into these updates are narrowing Lane widths to slow vehicle traffic um that was something we heard at the onset mid-stream throughout the process I just wanted to note the the agility of the team to incorporate additional comments as we were going as we heard a desire to minimize the number of left-hand turns and intersections to minimize Crossing distances for pedestrians we made that revision as well we incorporated race Crossing standards as a part of the update and so other items that we've also heard about including some recent communication over the last few days are items that we've identified to be incorporated as part of future updates concerning ways to

[58:03] accommodate pedestrians excessive signage sidewalk standards radii private driveway and traffic study language next slide so another important step and the community engagement was making visits to the transportation Advisory board at which their September 12th meeting they unanimously approved and appreciated the work that was done to carry forward these DCS updates and next slide on October 11th the planning board also unanimously approved the recommendations to update the DCS and the BRC revisions they did make one purpose and intent language Amendment this was not a substantive standard update but more a preamble if you will modification to address the need and purpose to protect Urban's Forest canopy next slide so I'm going to provide a very brief overview of some examples of the type of standard updates that are included here

[59:00] I won't belabor this let's go to the next slide so an example would be Lane widths for vehicle Lanes we are looking to reduce Lane widths which we know has an effect on reducing travel speeds for bike lane widths we are looking to have more standardization across the various bike lane types whether they're standard or buffered or protected next slide we are also going to have a more consistent application of separated bike Lanes whether they are fully protected or partially protected we want to make sure that we are providing consistency there next slide we also know that intersections where we have a high prevalence of conflict points between cyclists and pedestrians and vehicles we want to make that a safer environment for everyone so we are reducing Corner radii to slow travel speeds and make it safer for people walking and biking next slide we are also providing better standards

[60:00] for points between cyclists at driveways as well as at intersections and enhanced figures and drawings and standards to bring the stiff Russian next slide we've also added a new chapter on traffic calming which speaks to neighborhood traffic circles and introduce raised Crossings as a new standard drawing next standard excuse me slide then related drawings so we updated a number of existing drawings related to multi-use paths and separations and then introduce new drawings for curb extensions floating bus stops and a variety of other elements that uh that help us and implement the low stress bike Network next slide chapter 3 and 10 were updated to bring the standards to be consistent with the green infrastructure plan for transportation landscape nearly every Capital project that's undertaken for transportation has a landscaping component and we want to make sure that that significant

[61:00] investment that's going into this green asset is sustainable and something that will last for for many years and that's something that we can take care of and is also consistent with best practices from our partners in parks and rec and pnds next slide and finally updates to the boulder Revised Code include changes to multi-use path intersections at alleys and driveways as well as the sidewalk triangles from how they're how they're measured at sidewalk interactions and protection specifically to trees and plants as addressed and the boulder Revised Code next slide and that is the uh the overview that we wanted to provide to you tonight and happy now to answer any questions you might have thanks so much Garrett that was very educational my opening question is to the floating bus stops those are anti-gravities sorry just had to get them in there any other questions for staff on this one mark

[62:02] yeah I have about three questions um when you shrink the uh the car Lanes I'm sorry when you shrink the lanes for automobiles will you be monitoring that to see how they perform for Boulder in terms of accidents and that sort of thing I'm I'm not sure everybody's going to get the message that a narrower Lane means slower traffic um I've seen a number of Boulder drivers who put their their feet on the pedal either way so is it going to be any kind of monitoring to see how successful this is there will be as part of the vision zero efforts there's Safe Streets Boulder report and as that effort is conducted we could overlay where Lane wits have been narrowed to see what the corresponding effect is okay okay thanks um in chapter three all of the decisions with respect to trees are made by the city manager uh

[63:02] yet in Chapter 2 most of the approvals are to be made by the director of Public Works um it seems to be a little inconsistent and I asked the question um is that the best use of our city manager's time sure Mark I'll jump in and answer that question um the way we construct and write the city code is typically it will always refer to the city manager um and then we delegate the authority that the city manager has two various positions and staff within the city so it's I'd need to check our delegations list but my guess is for many of the tree decisions is delegated to the director of Public Works okay then it would probably be more accurate to say or her designee yeah yeah and in the code we typically will refer to the city manager and then it's through those delegations just so it's consistent throughout the whole code and my last question um

[64:00] relates to the requiring a traffic study for all developments anticipating an increased traffic of 20 cars during rush hour looking at the standards and the and the information that's required in that traffic study um it seems kind of burdensome for small projects that increase traffic by one car every three minutes and when you hear people complain about the difficulty of navigating the process it makes me wonder if that might not be too restrictive as standard so I can say the traffic study section was not updated as a part of this Space 2 effort and so the language that you see there is the current standard and has not been proposed for a revision and that could be something that would be considered for a future update okay I'm again I'm just looking at you know

[65:00] a small project with with 20 rental apartments that's not generating a lot of additional traffic and having to go through that process because it's a fairly burdensome process as as I read it thank you for the feedback other questions Lauren I have a request for inclusion in a future section of DCs standard updates one of the things that I would really like to see is a can a curb and gutter standard for when we have a bike lane that is different from our Standard carbon gutter so that we don't end up with a concrete to Asphalt seam in the middle of all of our bike lines for those of us who aren't always the most balanced it can cause some tricky situations

[66:02] it's not a question would that be willing to consider that in a future absolutely and I'm not sure I understand the detail of your comment but be happy to follow up with you individually to make sure we can clarify that thank you great well I'll I'll chime in here calling myself so we had some advocacy from the community specifically from Community Cycles about times when we might do a safety study and you put out some language on hotline this afternoon to address that interest is it possible to bring that up do you have that handy the presentation uh okay it's it's actually a crash analysis I believe rather foreign

[67:02] if you go to the questions slide and then go to the it's either the first or second slide after that slide so this yeah there we go one more I'm sorry the not this one there this one here great so uh so this is some proposed language and you so you feel like this is a manageable addition to do and like what what kind of a time frame would this involve if we were interested in pursuing this so if we were to go back and revisit this my matter with tab as well as planning board we're probably looking at about a six month time frame because we're in December and we're looking at a time of Staff time vacations and so forth we wouldn't realistically be able to jump into this until January so

[68:01] January February to do the work and then we're looking at March and April time frame to visit Tab and planning board and could come back to City Council in Maine okay well thanks for that um so I'll just uh maybe if if that's it for questions I might move to comments if that's all right so I'll I'll just call myself here again and and say that I'm interested in this proposed change uh because I think you know a crash analysis particularly for bicyclists and pedestrians uh could be really useful in certain circumstances so I appreciate your flexibility in coming up with this approach student coming back with it back to it sooner rather than later um and I don't know if it's you know five months feels more doable than six that's awesome but I understand you got to work it through with your schedules there also was there were some mud very recent uh additional language from Community Cycles uh asking adding language to say that the um that we make sure that the criteria were

[69:00] consistent with the vision zero racial Equity plan and transportation master plan goals do you feel like that is accommodatable as well I I think so yes yes great so then I would just look to my colleagues and maybe do a kind of a quick straw poll if people are interested in having um this language plus those few additional words I just mentioned um included in this maybe a show of hands and people like this idea okay clarify unanimous but Matt yeah it doesn't change my position I just had a clarifier if if we're I'm just wondering why this may have to go back to planning into tab if we're making this change ourselves normally things sort of work up to us and we make a decision so if we're making a decision do we need to go through all that again for something that's not massive but but a substantive change that we feel is important so I'm just wondering in terms of process and streamlining do you want to address that if uh so

[70:00] I'll let Natalie speak to the procedural aspect of that if so if we don't need to revisit Tab and planning board that we could be back here in March so well I'll say procedurally I think we we aren't required to go to tab before coming back um I do believe we need to inform planning boards so it would need to be presented in probably some type of informational item to them so that's possible to expedite it but if I can just dialogue here I so these are about specific criteria I'd be interested in tabs feedback on those specific criteria but but maybe it could just be an information item for planning board since it's not so much in their wheelhouse I'm okay with that I'm I'm just looking for ways to trim six months so I'm and if there's somewhere in the middle if it's an IP if it's less than having to schedule meetings and those things I I think that works but whatever we can do to shrink that timeline down being mindful of Staff timing and all that stuff of course thanks Fair Point

[71:00] anything so I think we configured this out uh any other things else on this before we go to the rest of the consent agenda not seeing anything um I will call out one other thing which is item well I'll call it a couple actually but item 3B which is the resolution 1325 establishing the public Boulder Public Library District and appointing two members of city council to the board of trustee selection committee at the end of and thanks so much Madeline Garrett at the end of our last meeting we had Nicole and I raise our hands in with interest in this did anyone else want to put their names forward for for selection to this I was willing to do it I'm willing to do it but I don't want to cause a fuss about it so I don't think I'm gonna put my name forward appreciate your willingness I mean I'm interested Nicole how about you sir are you right if it yeah okay thanks for your flexibility so I just when we make this motion I think

[72:00] we'll want to include the names specifically then of rocket and spear yeah I am not throwing my name in the Hat uh but I do have a question maybe for Teresa on aside from the ordinance to a point is it appropriate to offer any Guidance with regards to um how the statute is written using sort of phases of appoint the initial Board of Trustees versus recommend can we give guidance to our two Representatives as to how when they meet with their County Commissioners colleagues of how we as a body might prefer that to be rather than of them and pointing the initial board directly versus bringing a recommendation to us or is that legally just semantics and and not a different process uh well Olive law is just semantics isn't it um but I'll I'll look to my colleague Janet Michaels senior assistant City attorney in my office who's worked extensively on this area and uh defer to

[73:02] her her thoughts on this yeah thank you Janet Michaels with the city attorney's office there's nothing in the statute that prohibits you from Council from Talking amongst yourselves to identify what criteria you might want to apply in making the selection of the trustees so that certainly is a conversation that you could have you could have it tonight we could um you know schedule another time for you to have that I appreciate that Clarity I I just wanted to raise whether or not we had a when we appoint this group of two to join our County Commissioner colleagues whether we want that process whether we want to shape it so that the appointments or the nominees come back to this body for us to approve the initial Board of Trustees or that the four people on the selection Committee just do that upon their own on behalf of our body so I wanted to just know if there's a question about whether or not there is a preference towards one of one or the other and plus maybe provide

[74:00] Direction so I just want to clarify if that is indeed what I we could have that conversation about not exactly that way um because it's the committee that selects the initial Board of Trustees and then it comes back to council for ratification so you could have a conversation just saying these are the this is these are ideas we have you want to take those back to the committee you could have those conversations tonight at another time but the way the statute is set up is for the committee to make the selection and then for the the two governing bodies to ratify that selection and I'll just comment then I'll go to Junie the uh the or the intent to I don't think our intent would be to go Rogue so I'm very interested in council's you know input on on the process but we might calendar a short discussion at one of our next two meetings for Council to maybe weigh in on this and give us some guidance you know that's amenable to folks did you want to say something Judy okay sorry I misunderstood and just for motive the only reason real reason is because there

[75:00] was a you know if the County Commissioners and this body were aligned on the formation of a Library District I think that might be a different conversation there was some non-alignment and so I think having a little bit greater clarity as to what our general goals are and what some of those criteria are might be a better way to make sure that we're shaping this with the right outcomes we want and Empower you and Nicole with what you feel you need in order to achieve those outcomes with regards to selecting the sort of inaugural group of Trustees all right so why don't we why don't we take that as a CAC Elisha if we could take that as a CAC request to find some time this month to check in with Council is that for just one meeting sir just for yeah one meeting too all right I'm making that thank you addresses though okay good on that any other questions or comments on the consent agenda right I apologize I feel like I'm talking a little too much but I'm going to call myself one more time which is about item C ordinance 8556 use table and standards phase two module two just

[76:01] wanted to put out there I know um planning staff is is listening carefully we've gotten some interest from the community in some additional stakeholder engagement just wanted to support that request and um you know I know you're already working on that and hopefully that can continue so just wanted to get that message out there and feel free to respond to that or I just you know just wanted to get the point out there okay great we all know that thank you okay thanks so much all right that's getting your steps in there Brad all right so that brings us to the end of our consent agenda discussion if anybody wants to make a motion incorporating our discussions or I could keep so moving well I think we're gonna have to be a little more explicit

[77:00] all right I I think I can pull this one together so if I miss there'll be probably an amendment if I miss this one so we'll give it a shot um so I make a motion to approve the consent agenda with um the appointment of uh our colleague Nicole Speer and our mayor Aaron Brockett for item 3B as well as perhaps setting forth the um with the also the amendment to um bring forth Greater Community in stakeholder engagement with regards to item 3C and use table review and as well as the amendment with regards to the DCS standards and those modified changes that we had proposed with language that was proposed by staff on I believe um with regards to the crash studies that was at the end I don't know if they use the right term on that but I think we know what we mean by that so I think that covers the four items that we were going to revise on the consent agenda nicely that I just would add one thing is that the staff language but potentially with the addition of the

[78:00] final language of being consistent with vision zero the racial Equity plan and transportation master plan goals you got it that's why you're the mayor clean that one up nicely Aaron thank you so moved thank you Matt uh we have a motion a second there's a roll call vote all right sir thank you we'll start this roll call with council member Joseph yes yeah spear yes yes wire yes yes Benjamin yes mayor Brockett yes councilmember Falcon yes and mayor Pro tem friend yes the consent agenda is hereby approved as documented and amended thanks so much everyone and we're now joined by our esteemed city manager I hope you're you had a phenomenal concert with your your child I did thank you so much

[79:01] you wish if you could take us through our call-ups please yes sir thank you our call up and check-ins are item number four on tonight's agenda item 4A is the water services agreement with the Mapleton Home Association calling this one up question on it um I I'm fully supportive of the agreement uh with respect to the Mapleton water meters but why were eight inch meters installed in the first place if that's creating the problem uh good evening Council uh Christopher I'm the deputy director of operations for utilities so council member Rock if I heard your question correctly it was why were the eight inch meters installed initially yes well there were a few options I believe of how to

[80:00] upgrade their infrastructure and and what ultimately went forth was one option which included these large meters it was driven by the the fire flow requirements in the DCS primarily there's nowhere and in essence we're correcting a problem of our own well there could have been a separate unmetered fire Loop installed that was one way it could have gone but in this in this instance that's not what occurred okay and this is the best solution in your in your view we believe uh rectifying this this um Bill and Equity through this water service agreement is the best solution we we did in uh entertain other options such as undoing some infrastructure removing some of what was installed that didn't feel very appealing or or desirable I'm good with it thank you thanks Chris you're welcome thanks yes Nicole I just wanted to mention that I really appreciate the residents raising these

[81:01] concerns about the disproportionate water service charge increases after these infrastructure improvements as well as staff's quick realization that we were out of alignment with our equity and affordable housing goals I know that moving quickly by City standards isn't always within weeks or even months so I was really glad to see that we weren't charging folks for additional fees while we worked on this agreement and I am just really glad that we were able to arrive in an agreement where the Mapleton homeowners association's 2023 service charges will actually be lower than they were before the infrastructure improvements to me this was a really great example of our city listening to lower income residents when they told us that one of our policies was having a disproportionate impact and then working in true partnership to find a resolution so just wanted to say Well done to everybody involved well said right seeing no other comments on this one and go to 4B okay thank you sir 4B is the concept

[82:00] plan review and comment for the Redevelopment of a 2.33 acre area including the properties generally known as 2504 2506 2536 and 2546 Spruce Street 20 55 26th Street and 2537 Pearl Street with 101 residential units and 160 parking spaces and amenities for residents The Proposal includes 88 market rate and 13 affordable on-site Condominiums this is reviewed under case number lur 2022-00033 any questions or interest in calling this one up I see Bob's hand and got all kinds of people Bob you start yeah I like to call this one out I know that we called a earlier version of this up several months ago and and provided the um the applicant with the number of comments I think the applicant um heard us and made a number of changes and this is a big enough project I mean so over 100 units and that's um that's a pretty

[83:00] substantial development for the city of Boulder and I think that it would be appropriate for the community and for the applicant and for this Council to call this up provide feedback on this very different version of the concept plan thanks I met Tara Rachel uh thanks Bob for bringing that I'm going to Echo some similar pieces but I think sort of holistically um Ali and Chris heard our feedback and drastically changed their project to meet our general requirements uh we I think I mean it's income we have to so not reward but we have to follow through with our end that if you meet what we are asking for we'll help you get the project done so I think it's important for us to call that up and find a way to make this happen otherwise we're just bluffing up here and I think we have to be consistent with the goals and the actions that we set forth for the community in order to meet our goals so this is just right in line with what we should be doing so I'm glad we're going to hopefully get to pull call this up Rachel

[84:04] it would just add that the applicant actually wants us to call it up good um and I'll I'll ditto my colleagues comments as well so maybe we someone might like to make a motion on this uh make a motion to call this up second Lauren gets it motion second all in favor of this show of hands uh that was unanimous and and it's also windy yes yeah right very good all right so next on tonight's agenda our next and Final Call up is 4C it is the vacation of a shared access easement at 5330 Sterling Drive that's referenced under ADR 2022-00270. any interest in this one seeing none I don't I don't think so

[85:03] I think that completes our call-ups so we can go to our first public hearing oh and actually before we do that I was remiss Natalie and Garrett thank you so much for all of your hard work on the design and construction standards I know it's been a long time coming there's a lot of great details in there so really appreciate all your work on that yeah thank you and your flexibility working with us tonight but now if we could thank you sir tonight's next item is dial number five our public hearings 5A is the Dr Cog board update and a consideration of a motion to approve the proposed list of projects for submittal to the Denver Regional Council of governments for the 2024-2027 transportation Improvement program sub-regional process there we go great thank you so much uh we have Gene here who's going to kick us off as we move forward did not know if we were going to have a

[86:02] are we going to do that I have an update yes I appreciate that sorry thank you so council member spear you were going to provide a brief update and then we'll move to staff thank you no worries and thank you for giving me um time to do this everyone really appreciate it I think there are some slides that I'll just wait a second for them to come up it should be enough and we're hearing from you because you're our Dr Cog board rep yes which we're very appreciative of my apologies councilmember spirit I actually do not have your slides on this computer if I send them to you does that work or can we send it to Emily yes thank you thank you

[87:09] Gene do you remember who we sent them to before the break was at Emily it was right before the break and I we sent them to somebody the slides I don't know I can find them real quickly yeah well I may be able to get them no they weren't sent to us by the way I did just learn there was a high wind watch for Boulder County for this evening so gusts of up to 75 miles per hour possible hence the shaking

[88:08] thank you I was just looking for this okay um Emily they're heading your way thank you I apologize for not checking on that beforehand I think I checked out after the after we got him ready before the break no problem thank you Emily thanks I think well while they're coming up I was just going to make a couple of preliminary comments so I can just get started on those um thank you everyone for giving me time

[89:00] to share these updates from Dr cogg they're important for all of us to be aware of before I get started I just want to thank Gene Sanson for in our transportation department for putting these slides together and to Gene and Natalie Stiffler and all of our incredible Transportation staff for getting me up to speed on Regional Transportation issues over the past year I also wanted to extend a big thanks to our transportation Advisory board members and our mayor for their work in my Transportation education too it really does take a village as you all know but I'll state for any members of the public still on our meeting Dr Cog is the Denver Regional Council of governments it's a regional organization whose directors are council members and County Commissioners from across the Denver metro area the board of directors works with Dr cog's staff to establish guidelines set policy and allocate funding for transportation and personal Mobility regional growth and development and aging and disability resources all right on to the presentation so next slide thank you you may remember that in

[90:01] 2021 Senate Bill 21 260 established greenhouse gas reduction targets for state and Regional Transportation plans what this meant for the Denver metro region is that we were required to come up with a plan to reduce surface Transportation greenhouse gas emissions through our Dr Cog Transportation Planning process so this year Dr Cog spent a lot of time working on changes to our Region's Transportation plan the 2050 Metro Vision Regional Transportation plan I'm going to call it the 2050 RTP the changes not only included updates to the 2050 RTP they also committed our region to further action through a mitigation action plan and the Dr Cog board adopted the 2050 RTP and mitigation action plan in September just a couple months ago next slide please the changes to the 2050 RTP resulted in some pretty major shifts to how we plan transportation across the region we're

[91:01] planning to meet almost 90 percent of our greenhouse gas reduction targets by changing how we spend Transportation dollars so rather than spending billions of dollars on Highway expansions we'll be investing instead in building the multimodal infrastructure we need for more Transit biking and walking so in the coming decades we'll start seeing changes like removing several Highway widening projects like along the I-25 Central Corridor C470 and so on Expediting bus Rapid Transit corridors like our Colorado 119 bus Rapid Transit project adding 900 million dollars for multimodal projects and adding investments in pedestrian bicycle safety Transit complete streets and so on these changes along with some changed assumptions about how many people in our region are teleworking now that we're all more used to working remotely weren't quite enough to get us to our goals so we'll accomplish the remaining 11 of our reductions through some

[92:00] voluntary for now changes to our land use and parking management strategies let me first show you what some of these strategies are and then I'd like to say a little bit more about what I mean by voluntary for now next slide please Dr cogg identified several mitigation strategies that will make a big difference in our Green in our Region's greenhouse gas emissions increasing residential density increasing job density more mixed-use Transit oriented development reducing or eliminating minimum parking requirements and adopting local complete straight standards you can see the anticipated annual reductions under each icon in the slide the latest intergovernmental panel on climate change report lists increasing density as critical for saving the planet you can read more in the latest report about how increasing housing and job density is a key transition that will help the planet avoid more than 1.5 degrees of global warming and you can go back to the slide with the little icons

[93:00] Dr Cog will be providing technical assistance to communities that are ready to work on these mitigation strategies in the coming years as usual Boulder is already out ahead on climate and our new East Boulder sub-community plan actually meets a lot of these requirements already and I'll share more on that in just a moment to get back to what I mean by voluntary for now because I think this is really important for all of us to know the region has some check-in points on how we're doing on our greenhouse gas emissions targets the first one will come up in four years if we're not on target additional mitigation strategies will likely come into effect which will tie transportation funding to this mitigation action plan what that means is that to be competitive for transportation funding we would have to show that we're making progress on these changes and this is a big deal in this current funding cycle we've had over 47 million dollars come into our city through Dr Cog for res for transportation projects so it really matters for a city that we stay competitive for this funding which is

[94:01] why I wanted to make sure we had a heads up on why we need to be proactive in our planning Transportation staff and I are all doubtful that the 2050 RTP and mitigation action plan are sufficient to get us to our goals by the first checkpoint in four years so we can remain a little optimistic so these more stringent regulations on funding really may be likely to kick in next slide please the good news is that we're already coming out ahead you may remember that our East Boulder sub-community plan addressed this issue directly and we're anticipating a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions due to increasing the number of people who make trips closer to home and work and by creating a well-connected walkable and bike-friendly transportation system paired with 15-minute neighborhoods we can not only improve mobility and quality of life we can meaningly meaningfully move the needle on our broader climate goals our East Boulder sub-community plan addresses three of the eight mitigation action plan strategies that Dr cogg created so keeping up with the SB 21 260

[95:02] greenhouse gas emissions reductions really just means doing more of what we're already doing does anybody have any questions about this all right um so we can move on to the the next topic that's not quite as uplifting um next slide please as you all know and this is this is about RTD so as you all know we had quite a few RTD Services cut during the pandemic RTD has been trying their best to get back as fast as they can but Workforce challenges and budget shortages have impacted the restoration of services RTD is expecting significantly reduced Services through 2027. right now there's a lot of uncertainty around when those services will come back what RTD is working toward is getting us to 80 of pre-covered service levels for routes that are serving Boulder one example of these service Cuts is at

[96:00] Boulder Junction the transit center is closed and five routes are suspended only the ff4 and ab2 are expected to return in the next five years next slide please right now there are plans to figure out a path forward given there is some uncertainty about when services will be restored and these are a few of the things that are being created there's going to be a sub-regional service Council that will advise our TV on service changes and our city staff will be participating in that there's a partnership program that's going to be implementing pilot programs and cost share programs like the Hop funded by CU Boulder and RTD and the Dr cogg sub-regional forum is going to be working on starting a county-wide strategic Transit plan to think about what we're moving toward this forum is made up of a county commissioner and County staff and city council members and transportation staff from cities in Boulder County so that is the other part of the update does anybody have any questions

[97:04] um thank you Nicole that was very informative and we really appreciate your service on the board there and for advocating for our city come back to staff thank you so much mayor and with that we'll go to Gene good evening council members and particularly council member spear thank you very much for that Dr Cog briefing and RTD briefing all very important information that informs a lot of the work that you're going to see this evening so again my name is Gene Sanson I'm a principal Transportation planner with the city and I'm joined this evening by Garrett Slater our principal

[98:00] Transportation projects engineer and tonight we're going to be presenting a set of projects we're recommending to submit to Dr cogg for the 2024-2027 transportation Improvement program or what we refer to as tip as an overview Dr cogg opens up this funding opportunity about every four years and the city of Boulder has submitted for this funding since the program's initiation in 1990s Dr cogg uses a project selection process that splits available funding into two shares their Regional projects which comprise approximately 20 percent of available funds and then there are sub-regional projects which comprise approximately 80 percent of funds and we the city of Boulder are part of the Boulder County sub-region so for this current process Dr cogg has programmed projects in four tip Cycles or four calls for projects as you see here to meet and these meet the spending time frames associated with different funding sources like arpa American Rescue plan

[99:02] act funds state multimodal and mitigation option funds that is new funding that was created by the state transportation funding bill and then I'd also note that each tip cycle also has different anticipated funding requirements spending requirements and dates associated with them so as you can see from this bulleted list Dr cogg has completed the first three calls and we're now moving to the call 4 phase of the tip shown here in red this 2024-2027 tip call for sub-regional project applications was issued this week and applications are due January 27th so we've got a couple months to pull them together this fourth and Final Call for projects is the topic of this meeting's presentation but before diving into the list of recommended project applications for submittal and call Four I'd like to share progress we've made this year in secure in securing funds for calls one

[100:00] two and three so what this table is showing are two things the projects that we the city of Boulder have secured for funding in the first three call for projects earlier this year as shown in the yellow brackets and you'll notice that they're all part of our core arterial Network or can as you can see we've had quite a bit of success in securing funding for a good portion of the core arterial Network and we hope to get even more so we hope to secure even more funding in this next call the rest of the projects shown are those regionally funded tip projects that were directly benefiting from by collaborating with our partner agencies for example 27 million dollars has been secured for multimodal improvements on Colorado 119 diagonal Highway that connects Boulder to Longmont these improvements include Capital investments in safety enhancements bus Rapid Transit and construction of a commuter Bikeway along the corridor and over thirteen and a half million dollars has been secured for Colorado

[101:00] seven connecting Boulder to our neighboring communities to the east this funding includes approximately three million dollars here locally for final design of East Arapahoe improvements between 28th Street and Foothills Parkway it also funds high frequency bus service that's going to run between I-25 and Brighton and Boulder starting in 2024 so there's an example of how we're getting creative about providing Transit without necessarily leaning on RTD which has such limited resources in the coming years so in total as council member spear mentioned we've secured over 47 million dollars in Dr Cog funds that are directly benefiting us and we now hope to build on the success by securing additional funds through the sub-regional tip call for with 19 million dollars available to the Boulder County sub-region so that includes the city of Boulder in all jurisdictions within Boulder County so how do we the city of Boulder select

[102:02] sub-regional projects to submit for funding and call for well essentially we replicated the process we used to select projects for call two which were brought to council earlier this year we started with a long list of projects from our transportation master plan and with a great deal of input from our transportation Advisory board over the last several months we narrowed down the list to those projects that further the adoptive Transportation master plan are competitive in terms of the tip scoring criteria and importantly Advance the safety improvements to the boulder core arterial Network and our vision zero goals I'd also note that we also look for those projects where we can leverage partner funds when they're available okay so here is the map of the recommended projects shown in blue the three projects are shown in solid blue lines on this exhibit and the core arterial network is showing in the glowing yellow behind them here's a closer look at the projects so from the north we have the Folsom Street

[103:00] multimodal improvements project between Pine and Colorado moving south we're looking at West Colorado Avenue multimodal improvements between Regent and Folsom and then 30th Street multimodal improvements between Colorado and Baseline and I'll provide a little bit of detail about each one as we move forward I'd also like to point out that there was a fourth project included in your Council memo that's not shown here or being recommended at this time for a call for submittal its improvements to the Canyon Boulevard and 28th Street intersection and later in this presentation I will share our rationale for removing the project for a call for submittal at this time so as shown on the map the Project's recommended here for this fourth tip call for projects complete key connections along the core arterial Network and aside from scoring well in our project selection methodology these projects are also of high value to not only the can but our transportation master plan goals of creating low stress connections that will contribute to the

[104:00] mode shift thereby reducing vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions and it's really exciting how this focus on 30th Colorado and Folsom will address some pretty important parts of the network and give us the capital dollars that we need to continue to build our world-class Transportation infrastructure these projects have also been extensively workshopped with our transportation Advisory board over the last several months we have reviewed and discussed potential potential project applications at four separate meetings with tab between August and November of this year and staff is extremely grateful for tab's role in shaping this project list we're also grateful for our community members who have been a vital part of the project selection process over the last several months we have sent out mailers to folks in the project areas produce project fact sheets and informational videos and posted all of this on our City's webpage there we offered an online feedback form and virtual appointments for office hours with staff we also sent out a City press

[105:02] release and use social media so what have we heard well from this engagement we heard a range of comments and some core themes emerge across the projects respondents expressed the desire for more protection at Crossings and intersections for people walking and bicycling and a desire to see more separation from vehicles for people walking and bicycling community members also expressed a desire for improved Transit facilities and a few comments mentioned support for these projects with the caveat that there'd be close attention paid to ensuring that traffic flow continues adequately so overall we did see broad support for the project Concepts and we also asked how people we also asked respondents to indicate how they typically travel mainly to get a sense for the spread of responses and we saw participation from all modes as you can see in this pie chart so now let's switch gears and take a closer look at each of the three projects we're recommending for tip call

[106:00] Four let's take a look first at the Colorado Avenue multimodal improvements project so as Illustrated in this exhibit we have a lot of work going on along Colorado Avenue it's Garrett is much too familiar with as shown in the salmon color particularly between Regent 28th and 30th and 30th Street we have active projects underway either in design or in the construction phase so for this call for tip project we're looking at completing improvements to the west side of the corridor between region and Folsom as shown in blue at the West end with the yellow brackets around it specifically the West Colorado Avenue project will extend the multimodal complete Street cross-section that you see to the East and will include improvements like hardened separation for pedestrians and bicyclists from Vehicles intersection enhancements at Folsom Street dedicated Transit lanes and construction of what we call a super Transit stop a Transit stop that would

[107:01] be adjacent to CU to accommodate the high volume of Transit users in this corridor we're also in communication with CU Boulder to discuss the potential for them to be a funding participant and provide a donation of land for this project okay moving on to the next project for Folsom Street we're looking at the can identified segment between Pine and Colorado meeting up with the existing protected bike lane and Crossing improvements north of this segment between Pine and Valmont as shown in this illustration because we've not yet completed any pre-design or conceptual design work and Associated Community engagement we're seeking design dollars in this tip call as we would not have a competitive application if we had sought construction dollars due to the Readiness application criteria in other words we're not quite ready to move into any sort of final design or construction but we'd like the dollars to actually do the pre-designing community engagement work I'd also note that tab has been instrumental in encouraging staff to

[108:01] consider tip as a source of funding for the scan priority Corridor recognizing that securing pre-designed funding for the 2024-2025 time frame aligns with our overall can work plan schedule hey next so moving on for the 30th Street Corridor the segment of focus for a tip call for project is the south end of 30th Street between Colorado and Baseline Road as a reminder we're currently designing and we'll be constructing improvements along 30th from Colorado to Arapahoe and we receive tip call to funding for the design of multimodal improvements from Arapahoe North to the diagonal highway so this would really complete a very long extent of 30th at the south end of 30th Street this project will also construct raised protected bicycle Lanes improve sidewalks and Transit stop enhance enhancements to essentially make biking walking driving and taking transit in the area safer and more convenient for

[109:00] our community so that wraps up the brief description of the tip call for projects but as I mentioned earlier in the presentation there's one project we had previously recommended for a call for project that we are no longer putting forward at the November 14th tab meeting staff recommended a fourth project for consideration and that would be the 28th Street and Canyon Boulevard Transit signal priority intersection project the intersection Improvement is one element of a larger Regional call 3-tip application that the city of Boulder jointly submitted with the city of Longmont to construct Transit and bicycle facility improvements connecting to the Colorado 119 diagonal Highway the regional project was not recommended for funding by the Dr Cog project review panel but it did score very well and it will remain on the call 3 wait list so as funding becomes available it will move up through the waitlist so at the November 14th tab meeting in an effort to be nimble and to respond to

[110:00] the outcome of call 3. staff recommended pulling out this one intersection improvement from the regional call 3 project and submitting it as a sub-regional call for tip application this was supported by Tab and is also what you see reflected in your Council memo this evening however over the course of the last several days our staff has been working to refine the project scope and budget and has determined that the cost of this intersection project would be significantly less than originally estimated and it's therefore not prudent to seek Federal tip call four dollars for for what will be a relatively low-cost project but rather we will retain the project as one component of the larger tip call 3 project which is waitlisted at this time so as mentioned earlier at the November 14th tab meeting the board held a public hearing to consider the four projects or the three I should say that we just

[111:00] reviewed and made a unanimous recommendation to council to approve these projects our request to council this evening is to the consideration of a motion to approve the proposed list of projects for submittal to the Denver Regional Council of governments for the 2024-27 tip sub-regional process with the projects you see before you on this slide if counsel approves this list the next step for us will be to submit applications in late January with scoring by the Boulder County County sub-region forum and recommendations expected in April of next year with approved projects being formally added to the Dr Cox tip in August of 2023. this concludes our presentation and we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have thank you thanks so much Gene questions dude no okay I did have one not seeing anybody else um so on the the transit uh

[112:01] signal Priority One That Got got removed it's great news to hear that we've got a lower cost version of that what kind of uh price tag are we looking at for when we eventually so at this point in time we're looking at approximately a 50 000 project that would require some signal modifications and restriping awesome yeah that's pretty affordable dude do we have a sense of one we might be able to get to that at that lower funding amount um there is a possibility well we don't know if and when it would come off of the wait list so we just don't have a sense of that but um but we do know that there is a possibility that as we finish improvements to the 28th Street Improvement project that there is a possibility that we could then make those improvements to connect with the 28th Street project but it would only happen once the 28th Street Improvement project is completed thanks Matt yeah thanks Aaron your inquiry raised a question in my mind fifty thousand dollars if I heard that

[113:00] correct I'm gonna guess okay I I mean that's an exceptionally small amount of money for our budget I'm wondering why why can't we just fund this ourselves and just pull it out entirely and then just save staff time and processing and maybe put something else in the queue that maybe has a higher tag that's maybe perhaps and if I'm speaking out a place remind me more applicable to the resources that Dr Dr Cog can assimilate so I'm just sort of wondering if this is something we want to just do and get done and move on and tackle the other things yeah no that's a really good question and we looked at it I know Garrett has looked at this project several ways so that larger Regional three regional call 3 project includes this intersection Improvement as well as an intersection Improvement to the north at 28th and Iris so in other words kind of relieving some of the congestion for buses at those two pinch points to allow for better travel time it also included creating Transit only Lanes on IRS or the what becomes the diagonal as well as

[114:01] some Bikeway improvements connecting to the commuter Bikeway so all told all package that's a fairly large project so we did look at you know were there other pieces that we could Cobble together to propose for a call for and we just didn't see any that really made sense for the amount that we would be looking for right not seeing any other questions we will go to our public hearing we had one person signed up Jess Lou but I understand she has withdrawn so we actually have no one signed up so we'll close the public hearing and bring it back to council for uh discussion maybe motion any anybody want to kick that off I don't really have discussion but I would like to make a motion great they might make a comment before you mention please I just want to say thank you for the great work that you've done uh to staff and also to my fellow

[115:01] council member for this great work in on Dr Cog and also I have to say I read the memo I was very happy and I told her I was pleased because it was an easy read you just follow the process as well and I appreciate how you try to throughout try to go through the process in a way that meets the objective of Dr Cog just from reading the memo so it was very comprehensive thank you thank you Gene thanks for that great work and I just want to tell you my favorite sentence it's really exciting to be a part of a world-class Transportation infrastructure I think that is one of the most exciting things we're doing on Council right now across the board all right then I would love to make a motion to approve the proposed list of projects for submittal to the Denver Regional Council of governments for the

[116:02] 2024-2027 transportation Improvement program sub-regional process second right Motion in a second we got a roll call here yes sir and appropriately we'll start this roll call with councilwoman spear yes wallet yes Winer yes councilmember Yates yes Benjamin yes mayor Brockett yes councilmember folkerts yes mayor Pro tem friend yes and councilmember Joseph yes the I'm losing my space my apologies the motion to approve the proposed list of projects for the Dr Cog 2024 Transportation Improvement program has been approved unanimously wonderful

[117:00] and then I'll just add my thanks uh Gene to you and to the whole department for your extraordinary work on this and we've done so well in this tip cycle and it's because of the incredible work of our transportation department so just very grateful for all that you do thank you and now we're on to our next public hearing so our next public hearing is item 5B on tonight's agenda it is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8558 approving supplemental Appropriations to the 2022 budget and discussion of the Opera funding priorities and setting forth related details thanks so much Alicia and while I let Mark get himself settled as we move forward today we really are initially uh coming to talk to about a supplemental Appropriations but as we heard a lot of conversation during the course of the budget approval process we certainly got

[118:00] questions about arpa funds and the possibility of reusing those Public Health funds in different ways so I wanted to take advantage and come back and talk about those so Mark I will pass it on to you thank you Nuria good evening Council Mark Wolfe senior budget manager slides up happy to be with you this evening to discuss arpa again our third tranche of spending and our last adjustment to base of our budget for this year so as I mentioned and appreciate that this item is coming to you in multiple parts and so to just be super clear before we get going this evening we're in two different parts for this agenda item the first one will be ordinance 8558 that is the budget adjustment and then separately is our arpa discussion and I'll get into a little bit more detail on that but we'll have a few parts of the arbor presentation we'll

[119:01] provide you a little bit of background of all the progress that we've made with the initial two tranches of arpa spending we'll discuss the proposed recommendations for tranche 3 and then talk about that remaining funding and the public health Reserve that we've spoke about all right so that first part is 8558 our supplemental Appropriations just very quickly on budget adjustments you all are Pros now we have budget adjustments throughout the year in addition to in separate farm from our adopted budget those are typically scheduled twice a year in May and November we have circumstances that dictate other amendments we call those special adjustments for various circumstances we're likely to have our next one in February which we'll talk a bit more about later I'll spend just a brief time talking about the budget adjustment but we do we

[120:02] are available and have other staff available for questions on the budget adjustment itself budget adjustments generally fall into two different categories we either appropriate from additional Revenue so that's something like grants coming in throughout the year or we appropriate from fund balance in the general fund what this budget adjustment proposes to do is appropriate approximately 7 million in funding that's a little over 6 million from fund balance and just under a million dollars from additional Revenue in restricted funds that's all other funds other than the general fund the ordinance will appropriate a little over 10 million 10.4 million in funding including 4.4 million from additional revenue and a little over 6 million from fund balance and again to be super clear arpa funds are not appropriated through this ordinance and the reason for that is that if we appropriated the arpa funds now they would lab with the fiscal year so essentially our authority to spend

[121:00] would go away December 31st and we'd have to be back in front of you anyway so we are seeking final Direction on the our funds and hopefully that special adjustment in February is is a formality at that point with just a kind of recap of this conversation tonight at least that's the goal so some highlights of what is in the adjustment so actual appropriation that we need funding for um to finish out projects or spending in 2022 include additional funds this is a theme you've heard throughout the year inflationary costs related to capital projects that includes the North Boulder library branch 2.3 million needed to complete that project one million for the completion of the flat irons golf course and lastly the North Boulder multimodal enhancements project will require an additional 2 million other unbudgeted costs include police claim settlements these are previously approved settlements throughout 2022 approximately 2.8

[122:00] million software replacement for permitting software and planning and development just shy of a half a million and then a purchase of a Wildland fire engine a little under five hundred thousand dollars as well all right so that was uh the super brief um recap of the budget adjustment and now we will shift to part two which is our arpa investments um so to set the stage a little bit I wanted to recap a bit of how we got here so I'll talk a bit more about process you'll remember that we last discussed tranche three recommendations as a part of our package that we discussed in February of this year we went ahead and then did the appropriation for tranche 2 but in that initial study session we had a series of tranche 3 recommendations where we were seeking Council feedback you all provided some feedback that allowed staff to go and refine those proposals and so that you're seeing the results of that this evening

[123:01] so to remind Community we have received a little over 20 million dollars in local relief funds through arpa the left side of the screen there is our tranche one which was approved in September of 21. it's just shy of 4 million that we have either spent or committed a little under 500 000 in that public health Reserve is spent we'll talk about the remaining portion a little over 2.1 million in immediate needs and then 868 600 in what were called service Restorations at the time and I'll recap that in a moment tranche 2 recommendations tranche 2 spending that was approved in March of this year 4.8 million within tranche 1 and 2 that remaining portion which is essentially that reallocation of the public health Reserve is that 547 and change which we will cover as well so the remainder of

[124:01] our funding is that 11.37 million that that is all included in the tranche 3 recommendations and we'll outline each of those and you'll hear from our staff experts on those specific recommendations this evening so a lot of stuff up here on the screen but I think it's really important and exciting to recap all of the investment 20 million dollars that we're investing in the community a lot of which about 8 million we've invested or are in the process of directly investing in the community and so to recap some of those Investments as to where we're at 868 600 the city service Restorations that included some one-time service Restorations including Recreation programming severe weather shelter and public art uh we provided a large Grant to Boulder housing Partners to improve high-speed internet access free high-speed internet access at BHP sites that project is in

[125:01] progress currently 11 sites are complete or nearing completion that provides access to over 300 affordable housing units across the BHP sites we provided immediate and direct support to some of our hardest hit Industries through our small business and Local Economic recovery it's included art support our tourism and hospitality industry we worked on delivery fee subsidies through to support restaurants programming and support underserved businesses and our outdoor dining program uh we set up a program in partnership with the county to provide assistance to our water customers that support has been provided through a combination of County and City resources to date and the remainder of that funding is still available for that type of financial assistance we've provided immediate assistance for rental assistance the continuation of Investments that we made all the way back to the coronavirus Relief Fund and

[126:01] then we also made some investments in our workplace transformation to accommodate hybrid work we've also set aside that a million dollars and again we'll talk about the details we did invest in the city employee vaccine incentive to get employees vaccinated to provide that incentive and also help small businesses purchase masks for tranche 2 4.8 million again a lot of these are in progress or we have made investments in a number of these areas starting with our continued housing and Human Services recovery programming this includes rental and financial assistance that we've provided including the Left Behind workers fund the remaining funds will be allocated for food assistance including hotel vouchers and other basic needs uh for emergency response connectors this has allowed us to continue that program and maintain Outreach and engagement related to recovery efforts this will continue into 2023 and four as

[127:01] funds allow we will talk more about guaranteed income in a moment but we have begun consultant engagement on that pilot project we have finalized two contracts with service providers for peer support and daytime programming for housing retention Services as a part of the building Home Project in tranche 2. we have provided small grants to businesses we did another round of small uh Grant small business grants in addition to small grants for child care providers as a part of tranche 2 Investments we provided direct Arts industry support in areas such as programs for artists and venue safety and vaccine check funds all right so that's all the stuff we have done or in the process of doing which is a great list and now we'll start talking about tranche 3. so you all are very familiar with the process but again just to emphasize we go

[128:00] through a very um uh I would say rigorous process to provide recommendations related to arpa funding this includes working with our Partnerships that we have established throughout the city across our networks to make sure that we're hitting those gaps that exist We are continuing to work with our community and emergency response connectors to make sure that we're correctly identifying the need in addition to our connectors and partners we have used available data from peer cities to help inform some of our recommendations and all of this is put through the lens through our Equity lens right and if you remember back to our prioritization criteria and how we would arrive at these recommendations those that set of criteria was based in our our racial Equity goals so for instance we were looking at

[129:00] impact uh within we were looking at impact related to our outcomes and sustainability equity and resilience goals we were making sure that these outcomes were aimed at needs that were exacerbated by covid and that these needs were informed as we moved forward through by community so that kind of led us to those tranche two and three recommendations and then we received input from you all as I mentioned in February uh the time between February March and now allowed us to coordinate with Boulder County to ensure that our funding was not duplicative and it also in many instances allowed us to do some public engagement including through our community connectors to help inform the scope and that additional scope was completed and helps inform those final recommendations that you see this evening all right and I won't explain all of these in detail because you're going to

[130:00] get them in detail but this is the list of the tranche 3 recommendations this should look very familiar it is refined from the tranche 3 recommendations provided back in February but again it is informed through that process through that additional scoping and our work with community over the past several months and now I get to hand off and we're going to start with housing and Human Services Elizabeth Crow is joining us thank you Mark good evening Council Elizabeth Crowe deputy director of Housing and Human Services good to see everyone this evening so I'll be providing some context and some details for the first three of a few more HHS recommended recommendations for allocation and then turn it over to Kurt fernhuber to close it out with with our HHS recommendations so to start I'll talk about the strengthening behavioral

[131:00] health safety net recommendation which is really rooted in our HHS core values principles and many of our priorities goals and strategies as you all know HHS has for many years been supporting mental Behavioral Health Services and outcomes through our Direct Services and through our investments and as part of our departmental strategic framework we focus on creating access and removing barriers so that all community members especially folks who are experiencing systemic disparities get what they need to live and thrive in Boulder long term our HHS outcomes related to mental Behavioral Health include decreases in the disorders the mental Behavioral Health disorders that community members are experiencing particularly with a Health Equity lens a reduction in people experiencing crisis and a reduction in the number of people who lures who lose Services

[132:00] um due to mental behavioral health problems and on this slide you can also see some of the shorter term outcomes we're after in addition to those arpa considerations we have which Mark already alluded to making sure that we're not overlapping rather adding value to the Investments that we already make and making sure we're really looking for services that are complementary to what other government agencies are investing in with our arpa funds primarily Boulder County which is making a lot of investments in areas that that we're not necessarily proposing tonight so going to the next slide our recommendations are 2.5 million total and this will really focus on Workforce capacity and support throughout the pandemic I think you all are well aware that nationally we're really experiencing a shortage a professional service providers relative to the number of people who really need Services the

[133:01] number of people in need and particularly the number of folks who are experiencing more extreme need and more urgent needs when it comes to mental Behavioral Health so these Investments That We're recommending will really address the need for capacity building among our local organizations and also independent providers who are working as part of networks with our non-profit agencies to help provide um services in a more flexible way to community members particularly folks who are in need there's a lot of overlap I think we can all acknowledge throughout with covid the Marshall fire the heavy winds The Table Mesa incident so just to say it happens during covid but in our community there have been a lot of compounding factors there are some transformational elements to these recommendations that I'd like to point out such as addressing systemic challenges that a lot of these private providers have in accessing Medicaid and

[134:03] administering Medicaid those are the things that are really preventing them from being able to provide more services to our low-income community members so some of these recommendations recommendations are really trying to get at that problem and with we hope that if the we get the results that we want through some of these Investments it can also give us some insights as to how to continue to improve our services Investments along with our partners um one of the other elements here that we believe is transformational is being able to include the mental Behavioral Health case management for people who are experiencing um who are already experiencing and engaged in HHS services such as eviction prevention but they really need more temporary support just to get through that process and can be a good example of where investment in this short time frame could again really help us look at

[135:02] ways that we can transform our system and serve our community members better um lastly I would just say for this slide and Mark already shared that we have been engaged in community with community and getting their input all along and I'd just like to really call out our appreciation to some organizations who really did provide some good input and feedback on this strategy they include Mental Health Partners out Boulder County queer asterisk Rise Against suicide Clinica Jewish Family Services El Centro mistaden and many others um and lastly I I did mention this previously but a lot of the Investments that we are making here are complementary to what we know now that Boulder County is making that includes some grants out to local organizations to expand their services which is maybe a different shade from expanding Workforce capacity but we check in with

[136:01] them pretty carefully including which organizations have supplied a request for information how much are they planning to give out what gaps do they have where are they holding back strategically so we can help fill that so if Council affirms some of these these recommendations then we'll work on um with each other with our own staff at HHS and with our Community Partners to advance these ideas so then moving on to child care this is definitely another area in which our community and our nation have really experienced so much strain and stress and severe impact not only to families who are really in need of these services but the providers who are trying to meet those needs locally we know that many of our child care agencies have struggled to make Financial ends meet they're facing staff shortages they're challenged to deliver Services when families and their own staff are still getting sick

[137:00] unfortunately our HHS department and Community Vitality departments have a history and current experience of supporting child care providers and HHS funds several Direct Services and investments in communities every year to support providers and Families so to frame our arpa investments I just want to draw your attention you may not be able to read the the fine print on the big screen there but this slide really describes our high level outcomes that we want to see through our arpa investments and these outcomes are really Evergreen but where we really want these arpa dollars to make a difference and so they include things like increasing the diversity on the pool of child care providers sustaining existing supports child care provider centers and increasing these options enabling agencies to recruit and retain staff that staff retention piece has been such a huge part of the problem

[138:02] um increasing the level of quality Care oftentimes if a child care agency can actually increase their their formal level of care that enables them to be able to take more families to serve more families with kids who are on the child care assistance program for example so it's this very particular benefit to our low-income community members and lastly what's all about again like we're just really making sure that community members in Boulder are able to live and thrive in this community to try to by solving some of these Child Care issues um so next slide we'll talk a little bit about what the specific recommendations are we're looking at 1.5 million total and there are three main components to this a bulk of the funds 700 000 we're hoping to actually use to renovate a city facility that's managed by Parks and Rec the salberg community center it's been underutilized and we've had a

[139:02] situation over the last couple of years where several providers have actually had to at least temporarily move out of one space into another and it's been really hard if not impossible to find a place that they've been able to go so we'd like to work with Parks and Rec to renovate this facility for our care for kids is two and a half to seven years of age and that will at least provide initially some temporary location in case we have a situation where a provider has been kind of put out from another location and ultimately this would be about creating more slots for child care then the next two categories kind of similar to mental Behavioral Health are about to really trying to support the workforce so one of the things we'd like to do is utilize the city's existing Child Care Subsidy program and actually expand that to include people with even greater diversity of income what we know

[140:01] from all of our Family Resource Centers and other assistance agencies Child Care Facilities is that you know more people who are are experiencing income challenges and economic challenges that they've never had before and that includes with child care where a family can be experiencing a lot of financial pain but not quite be eligible for the federal child care assistance program maybe they're not even quite eligible for our own Child Care Subsidy but they really need the financial help so we want to look at just expanding that program which actually helps providers as well as families and then lastly we want to be able to invest in some additional training opportunities for community members who are providing Child Care at home and these are primarily providers who are lower income themselves they are Latina they are reflect other immigrants and

[141:00] people of color populations and they're also serving disproportionately that same population and so this kind of training and capacity building gets at several of the outcomes as well as the other the other items here that are about diversifying the pool and just creating more access points for care so I know there's going to probably be more questions and comments about this one so really excited to also provide an update with some more detail on where we are now with the guaranteed income project pilot project and again kind of share what our recommendations are for the trunch three allocation so just to review guaranteed income is a term that's generally used to describe the transfer of cash provided to people who are experiencing low-income or Economic Security for a temporary or fixed period of time and unlike other forms of financial assistance such as

[142:00] for rent or food or child care for that matter guaranteed income Pilots mean that these financial assistance is provided with no strings attached that community members are really trusted to make their own decisions about what they need for their families so when we last connected on this issue is back in May the very end of May during the study session and we noted then in that presentation that the initial 250 000 in tranche 2 Funds would be used for a project manager consultant position funding associated with the community task force to recruit to outreach and to communicate with them possibly a stipend for people who are giving their time and we want to focus on people who have that lived experience with what it means to live in Boulder with low-income or economic insecurity and then a process to begin developing other elements including research and evaluation reporting so these do still remain the

[143:01] primary areas of expenditure for tranche 2. next slide please so here's some of the staff activities of how kind of how we've been spending our time since May we have been um well the list of activities on this slide are are a summary and the results of which is that we're continuing to build our own knowledge base and understanding about pilot project best practices and what some of those hurdles are and how to overcome them and examples of that are again we talked about it with May and I promise I won't rehash the entire study session but just the ongoing challenges or of how we would run a pilot in such a way that avoids a benefit Cliff where people actually experience a disparity because they're getting a little bit more income and as time goes on there are more and more examples of how to resolve and even avoid some of those challenges so time has been on our side in that sense uh in

[144:00] this same time frame the momentum for guaranteed income has certainly increased there are more pilot projects in place and increased recognition on a federal level including from our own Colorado delegation of the profound impact of things like the 2021 expanded child care tax credit which lifted so many thousands of families out of poverty and participants in these pilot programs continue to share about how transformative this kind of process can be just in the last several months there are more dashboards available from existing Pilots including St Paul New Orleans where they're really now being able to report on on some of the outcomes that we'd like to be able to see for our community so next slide please um Mark I'm very excited to be able to share that this week we were able to get the contract in place for our project management consultant I'm pleased to announce that it is impact charitable this is an organization some of you may

[145:01] be familiar with we actually have had a relationship with them already as a city because they manage our Left Behind workers fund which is the state fund we we made some investments in this program back in 2020-21 and are using some of our Arbitrage 2 Funds to support it as well and they've got such deep knowledge about guaranteed income projects they are one of the groups that's working a lot on the Denver basic income project and I really don't think we could have done better at having them interested in working with us and being able to choose them so in may also we just shared very high level the kind of projects that we wanted the consultant to be able to undertake and the scope of work that we now have in place includes setting up the project design supporting and guiding the implementation and ensuring that we have the data that we need to determine possible project sustainability if we

[146:01] choose to do that post-arpa the Consultants will be working really closely with myself and a team of City staff on this project for the entire time frame so kind of not just helping us make some of these initial decisions but actually working with us for the full extent of the project and even though we're coming up on the holidays and end-of-year activities we are planning to advance really quickly to get that Community task force in place again this is the body made up largely of folks who have the lived experience with low income or are really familiar with financial safety nets that we have now to really inform the key elements that we know are are important to us and also to you um you know as we move toward the final kind of formality of the allocation in February so one more slide for guaranteed income just to show again what the recommendation is so to recap for tranche 2 Council allocated 250 000 so

[147:03] that we could get the con consultant in place and begin to advance in all of the design work and our tranche 3 recommendation is 2.75 million for a total of three million dollar budget and the vast majority of this funds we anticipate around 2.4 million would actually be what would go out in the Direct Cash payment assistance and initially when we're creating this budget of course we wanted to create a draft budget but even before we had the community task force input so this might change but pilot projects can include um it's it's it's very common for the monthly amount to be five hundred dollars they go anywhere from one year 18 months to two years to kind of make sure we set the bar at the outer level depending on what we would hear back from community members we created that 2.4 million estimate on 200 participants at 500 a month for two years so again we

[148:03] might hear differently from Community participants that would change that number but really comfortable making the vast majority of these funds going out to community members so it's not just a pilot project to prove a point it's actually helping a lot of families at the same time and the remainder of the funds in total would include things like that which we need well the consultant expenses obviously that which we need to provide language translation interpretation Media Services knowing that most Pilots have a storytelling element people want to know how are people being impacted throughout the project making sure we have at least a base amount for evaluation critical right for the success of a pilot and to know whether it would get the results that we we think it will um so staff research on other pilot projects that we've done you know starting you know back a couple of years

[149:00] ago continue to keep in touch and keep tabs on a lot of the best practices and Norms are that it's it's pretty common and accepted for around a quarter of a total budget expenses to be allocated for administration or operations if you will and so given that this initial budget that we've outlined is is pretty close to that Mark so be happy to answer questions at the appropriate time about this project I would be remiss if I did not add for council member Yates that we have not forgotten your request to not have guaranteed income in the project name and please be assured that coming up with a name that we all really like is inspiring and avoids those two words is also on our charge and with that I will turn it over to Kurt to share about the rest of the HHS projects thank you good evening Council and

[150:00] community members Kirk fernhofer and I support the Department of Housing and Human Services so I'm gonna I'll be talking about two aspects of the uh the arpa funding this evening um the first is the winter Sheltering support and you will have remember you'll remember from the the homeless update that we had this Summer that we outlined some of this as well so it's 435 000 and it's primarily going towards additional shelter beds um uh from the middle of November to the end of March and it both increases the number of beds that we had last year that are available but it also provides staff and capacity support to manage that manage the food and we've also changed the the location of the of the hotel has actually changed this year as well which requires additional coordination transportation and support as well

[151:04] um it's also increased the cost of the of the hotel rooms pretty significantly this year as well um but we're we're excited to be able to provide this additional support both within the hotels but also at the shelter as well on critical weather nights with that I think we can go to the next slide so the Ponderosa Community um you've you've hopefully heard about that for years I think there's two or three of you that were on Council when this this community was annexed into the city at that time the uh the community was quite active in expressing some of their concerns one of them is that they wouldn't be that they'd be able to stay in their community and that the solutions that we would work with them on would enable them to stay so there was a real

[152:01] commitment made by by council at that time and so one of the uh so the the infrastructure has been completed on on Ponderosa when we purchased the property I think it was in 2017 it had infrastructure that was built in the 1950s that wasn't even built for a mobile home park it was it was built for summer travelers to uh to Boulder to to park their uh their Caravan um outside of way outside of the city um and so that infrastructure has been replaced roads have been installed we now have water quality uh in place with the tension and um so it's it's changed significantly over the last couple of years now we're we're commencing on the construction of homes households are working on you know building their own homes and and soon

[153:01] they'll be moving into their homes so one of the challenges we have um and we're talking about second mortgages here and a second mortgage essentially in simplistic terms covers the gap between what they can afford and what the house is sold to them for so an example I will give of a a house that they can move into for about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars that's the affordable price with their income they can afford eighty thousand and the second mortgage would would cover the the one hundred thousand that money would be paid back at the time in the future that they would sell their property to another um affordable household um or when their mortgage is complete in in 30 years so this is a this also becomes a revolving fund not just for Ponderosa but for other communities in the future

[154:01] as well and I'm I'm quite excited about the opportunity for for these individuals to obtain a home that's that hasn't even been a dream for them in the past a near Net Zero home we have an off-site solar farm that's already in place helping those residents right now and that will have an even bigger impact when they move into these into these homes and um so this um in part fulfills commitments that were made by previous councils as this project was developed over several years and with that I will pass it on thank you Jennifer Pence senior program manager economic economic Vitality with the city so I'll briefly outline some of the

[155:02] staff recommendations for how we can continue to invest in inclusive economic recovery as well as creating more economic opportunities for individuals and small businesses our first recommendations are 250 000 for continued implementation of the outdoor dining pilot and part of those funds will be used to help more local small businesses participate in the pilot and two hundred and twenty thousand dollars to implement programs such as special events and interactive public art to help activate commercial areas within the city that have lagged in economic recovery and then a next slide please we're also looking at recommending Investments to address persistent challenges and to increase opportunities for women in minority-owned businesses and individuals from historically

[156:02] underserved communities and that would include 380 000 to create more affordable commercial spaces also 225 000 to increase opportunities for Bolder businesses to participate in government and corporate contract opportunities as well as Supplier Diversity programs there's a lot of work that's going on at the state we would enhance that and and make sure that some of those opportunities are taking place right in our Market and then 110 000 to enhance small business support for minority-owned businesses as well as additional training and employment opportunities and with that I'll turn it back to mark thank you thanks Jennifer and Team all right so to come back in for a second um now you have a chance to hear the

[157:01] overview of the transitory recommendations so that's that 11.37 million now we'll move on to that green silver the remaining funds again that's the reallocation of the public health Reserve that we spent some time talking about in October uh the current available funding for that is that 547 321 and as outlined in the memo we have a couple different recommendations uh for reallocating that funding uh based on that discussion in October Matt thank you you're up first uh evening Council Matt josanski with the city of Boulder office of arts and culture and um I wanted to talk about the um or is it not not good enough how's that sound you like that okay um based on the feedback that we've heard from Council in previous meetings especially on the aspects of the Arts community that are not keeping up with the recovery of the rest of the economy um we were um particularly listening to the discussion of the vulnerability of

[158:01] artists and the affordability of Arts venues for uh for the community and that's why we have a proposal here to allocate 150 000 from uh from this portion of uh the unspent funds to two Grant programs that are specifically targeted to the outcomes that you discussed first another round of the artist hiring incentive for non-profits to hire Regional artists and get them paid to do new work to perform or to exhibit their work and then a second an additional uh additional funds for the venue affordability fund this is a long-standing fund to help with rental assistance and the affordability of online programming both these programs are existing processes they have a proven track record they're easy to mobilize they've been successful in the past and will be utilizing the robust

[159:00] equity and transparency tools that the Arts commission already has in order to execute on those and so you know we'll talk more about the other part of the funding here in a second but I just want to take a moment to call out that we did hear the testimony of members of the community who were talking about some of the organizations and the need for General operating support and we heard that very strongly and so um even though these recommendations don't include General operating support um that uh it is very important and we understand the need there and want to talk about that some more so thank you very much you're up next thank you uh me again uh just talking a little bit about this additional amount or the the remaining amount I suppose from the public health Reserve so we're also recommending the remaining 397 321 to

[160:01] really maintain those funds to be make them available for a wide range of basic needs one of the things that we're really watching carefully along with our colleagues at the county folks across the state and nationally is what might happen when the federal public health emergency order is rescinded it will happen eventually right now you know Congress has continued to renew it keep it going for a while yet but at some point we know it won't be there and that will leave some number of community members who may have a gap because they've been covered by Medicaid they've been receiving food benefits now they're not because they're just no longer eligible under the under the public health emergency order we don't know when that will happen but it's a kind of situation that we really want to be prepared for and in some ways with some of the original intent of the public health Reserve so we may be in a situation where we actually need to help people in an insurance gap or help them

[161:01] with covid testing or vaccinations that the state has so far been providing we're really thankful for that but we don't know if they will what we do know for sure is that the need for rental assistance other financial assistance food security all things that are being increasingly experienced by community members that have never been in this situation before so while there are a lot of benefit Nets safety nets that exist we would recommend kind of continuing to be able to tap those resources for the remainder of our arpa timeline come back I should have remembered that so okay last slide uh at least for me is um just to let Council know uh for those of you who will remember back in 2020 when we had um funds through the cares

[162:01] act the coronavirus Relief Fund we set up a really simple dashboard to provide that information and public transparency as to how the funds were being utilized we really just focused on three main categories of funding and then more information as it came down if you want to click through one more time the three categories that we use then were City operations business support and people and our team has been really working on putting together a draft dashboard for our arpa investments as well so this currently is just a mock-up but we would really like to be able to provide this on our website again and be able to use it just kind of as a focal point to let people know what's happening with these funds and Link it to the outcomes that we have in place or will have in place for all of the investment categories so people not only see here's what's going for it but what are we actually getting

[163:01] from it and even though the expenditures have to be completed by 2026 it may be sometime after that that we're still really gauging the impact so we do intend to to get this up and running as soon as possible for the tranche one and two and then given the results of council's approval and allocations for tranche 3. thanks Elizabeth all right last slide is just to say we have future touch points so as Elizabeth mentioned we'd like to periodically report out on our open Investments and the impact and to again mention that these Investments we will need to appropriate those funds in February we're hoping that is a brief conversation or briefer conversation so we are seeking that final Direction tonight on those tranche 3 initiatives as you've heard this evening a lot a lot of complicated Partnerships and contracts and it's so it's really important to receive that direction to get the ball rolling on a number of these Investments that's not to say that

[164:01] you couldn't certainly make alternative recommendations recommendations or make changes has been suggested now would be the time to do that so we can make those adjustments between now and the appropriation in February and with that we are done with our presentation great well thank you for that comprehensive set of presentations appreciate all that we have questions for City staff we've got Judy out of the gate well this was a really great presentation but I have so many questions um I have four questions based on the presentation on behavioral Child Care guaranteed income in Ponderosa for the behavioral my question is once that money spent what is next thank you so much um for that I think that's that's a question in all of our minds quite frankly for almost every dollar in arpa

[165:00] funds because you know what we don't want to do is set up ourselves or any other organization or or people um for a cliff effect in a sense and um what we've we've been working on so far with these recommendations for Behavioral Health is looking for those opportunities when we talk to our non-profit Partners about if you had a one time what would you do with it and there are actually quite a few things that fall into that category some of them are to be able to provide like a retention bonus for staff to be able to pay for the costs of increased training and for some organizations they're really working on increasing the kind of their level of certification as an organization so that they can receive different funding be able to serve a broader number of community members Etc some of them really want to focus as well on their own inclusivity work again

[166:01] diversity of services is a huge problem in our community and as it is nationally finding people who are bilingual bicultural who have the range of experiences that can include serving people who are immigrants you know who just have so many other kind of layers of harm and Trauma that they're experiencing so those are some of the one-time costs that we've heard about from our non-profit organizations and that's what we're really trying to focus on similarly the being able to try to step in and provide some support for provider networks who want support with things like being able to um be able to administer and access and get reimbursed for Medicaid that's more um there there would obviously be a time at which we invest in those Services we won't be able to anymore um the arpa timeline is out

[167:02] um but we hope that we'll really gain some insight as to what kind of assistance that will provide is that the kind of assistance that really makes a difference and if so maybe it actually isn't that much money like maybe it's not a large investment if we were to want to continue that moving forward so um we're also looking at some of these Investments as an opportunity to learn more about how we can sustain organizations and providers yeah I think I have one last question because you mentioned working with the county and I understand that but is the money being spent would it be spent in the city of Boulder or would it be spent in the county yeah definitely benefiting City community members there are a lot of organizations whose scope is far beyond the city of Boulder but just like it is now when we allocate a grant to you know Mental Health Partners a Boulder County Rise Against suicide any of those organizations our dollars go to

[168:00] support their work in the city and we have the ability to track that pretty carefully with the arpa reporting thank you you know I have more questions but I'll Reserve comments for later right okay thank you I do have I suppose that's not a question for a slight 18 for the non-english speakers I mean for the Spanish speakers I understand that you know because of a population we have a large population of Spanish speakers but if somebody who doesn't speak Spanish or another language want to apply just having Spanish speakers they might not apply so having non-english speakers might be more welcoming to other people as well so just consider that for for the update or whenever you decide to um get this particular program going for the guaranteed income I love it I want to start that I really love the idea I think it's great and I think Maria for bringing this forward

[169:01] but I'm wondering again and this type of program and I think even here it's even Starker what is the sustainability being Beyond 24 months especially if you're giving people 500 right for some people that's a lot of money and I support that but beyond that how do you intend to continually support them or how do you transition them to be able to get that 500 themselves right thank you for that um I think that the desire to have a project that is successful and we hope it will be to be able to continue that as I think something that's really deeply felt I think among our staff and our partners as well there are a handful of Pilots that have that are in place now that are planning on extending for a period of time but one thing that we we have learned from other cities that are that are already putting these Pilots into place is that

[170:01] it's really important and and critical and baked into the design to let people know ahead of time that this is only temporary and even if we were to continue the pro the program further we'd want to probably get to different folks so um so if they're not designed and to be forever programs they are designed to be temporary and that is also just the nature of a pilot we need to kind of have a beginning and ending so we can see what happens and I know you know that so I think that's really kind of the answer right is is that um that the model is to of these nationally is to get them up and running see what we can learn to really build that understanding and capacity on a national level and there are a lot of advocacy tools that are happening or advocacy initiatives that are happening at the same time I just mentioned one earlier in the in the presentation where there's quite a national movement to try to get

[171:01] the federal government to to look again at that child care extended child sorry expanded Child Care Credit which was so impactful did come to an end and you know there's more momentum for trying to get that on the table again and supported and so these Pilots also just have the ability to let us learn so that hopefully there is a sustainability element from my readings like with the Mayors for a guaranteed income Network what I remember is that the they they have completed some of these Pilots of limited duration and my understanding is that the Studies have shown lasting impacts even though the programs were temporary that's that correct yeah absolutely so it's not just that we're trying it out I mean we want to learn from it right but we also there is evidence in other communities that temporary programs still have lasting impacts yes that's absolutely the case

[172:01] and I think some of the um the kind of the best known examples of that are for people who are able to use at least some of their kind of this additional income um to take I mean one example of a person who I've met um so it sticks in my mind is three jobs you know partner with three jobs multiple kids he was able to actually uh quip that one of those jobs uh to enable him to look for better employment opportunities so full-time one-job employment at a better rate um he's spending more time with his family it just overall just helps so much there are other people who have utilized the funds for many other similar situations where they knew it was limited and were able to kind of knowing that it some more was coming every month make different decisions and really kind of change their life in a more transformative way thanks for that go ahead Gene thank you

[173:00] I just have one last issue which is the panderosa I was I started thinking and you can tell me if I'm crunching the numbers wrong three million dollars one hundred thousand dollars per person so that's about 30 people right for the duration of the program or the life of the fun that we have how big is the park do you remember I think there's currently 52 or 53 households there right now okay so it would help a lot of people that's correct okay and we've done some initial um you know assessments of what we think the incomes are from the information that we've received from them so it's sort of based on um on on that information it also went from about 80 000 average per household to about 200 just simply based on the changes of interest rates that have occurred okay thank you for that and you know I uh I once had a real estate license and I'm

[174:01] gonna try to put my real estate knowledge to the test here my understanding the people who live in the parks in these mobile home parks they do not own the land they're leasing the land right that's correct they do own the house which is the house that but if we give them a loan for one hundred thousand dollars I my understanding these homes they don't appreciate in values based on type so a hundred thousand dollars today is worth more right than let's say in 30 years so how do you expect someone to pay you a hundred thousand dollars thirty years from now on a depreciating asset so the asset actually does appreciate it appreciates that about two and a half percent per year so it would stay in line with that well because these are the new fixed Foundation houses that's right they're not the mobile yes oh yes I'm sorry that's correct it's not for the mobile homes okay it's not for the mobile homes thank you because that's

[175:00] what I was saying sure yeah yep thank you that's um that's my thank you my only questions thank you call Bob and then Mark I have a question that I think is probably for Elizabeth this is just about the child care and it's just a curiosity um I noticed the the renovation of the Sauber Community Center is really to make it a child care facility for two and a half in ages two and a half and up and I was just wondering if there was some discussion about having it available for younger kids or anything like that so imagine we all talked about that thank you so much um we here in C every day how there's a dramatic need for infant care one of the challenges we may encounter with trying to get that solver property to infant care and I'm ever going to pretty quickly get to the you know the bounds of my knowledge um is that with that property the footprint it would take a lot more

[176:01] investment to make it accessible and available for for infants but because there's so much infrastructure there because it's been used in the way it has getting the two and a half to seven years old is is quite achievable and we do have that need as well um we do we are kind of mindful as a department about what other options may exist for um enhancing or being able to support more infant care as well but it doesn't seem like it's a good fit for that particular property pushing more infant care would help in that way especially new mothers quite possibly I mean I'm I'm sure it would is there a way to put that on the list so to speak infant care thanks

[177:00] Nicole for for increased infant care or find I know I mean you're starting from nothing right you have no yeah I mean we we actually um as a department there's there's some other projects that we're tracking um we also have Investments going out annually to support a lot of child care facilities Boulder day Nursery um the ywca's persimmon Early Learning Center there are a lot of other child care centers that we actually do support annually um so I think we're we're kind of watching that as well we know that the need exists one of the interesting things speaking of like complementary Investments city of Longmont is using some of their arpa funds to engage in some research to get more specific information about the actual supply and demand because it's actually really challenging sometimes to know exactly what that is and we're really interested in seeing what results they have from

[178:01] that investment and whatever methodology they they put in place is something that we really want to look at because that's that could be a huge um a way in which we can know better what the needs are with our community in our community and where some of our other Investments are going so it's a long way of answering I I don't we haven't kind of seen um the same kind of opportunity for infant care in terms of you know renovation a facility getting more providers with the amount of arpa funds that we would have available but we're always looking for that and I think we're we'd really love to you know hear if Council has any suggestions or or leads or ideas for where else we could be looking the culture of anything else yeah I just had another question I think this one's probably for Kurt I'm gonna make you all play musical chairs a little bit thank you hi Kurt my question is just about the winter Sheltering and

[179:00] one of the things that I was wondering about so I know what on critical weather days the um the shelter the boulder shelter is open during the day right that's correct and for folks who are in hotels too does the additional money for winter Sheltering cover the cost of them staying in the hotel for the day as well so they would okay yep okay thank you um and then Junius yeah sorry no Judy Judy got my other question so I'm all good thank you Bob just one question this is for you Elizabeth sorry to call you back up there was something on one of your slides on the guaranteed income program that I wanted to make sure to highlight because I think I understood what it was but I want to give you an opportunity to maybe elaborate on it a little bit going back in time I think um it was the I know we talked about the guaranteed income program at several stages of a good discussion in February again in March you get in May it may have been the March discussion where we talked a little bit about the 250 000 that you were investing in the um the exploration and the study or the the work you're

[180:01] doing right now and then the potential for 275 for distribution sounds like that's more like going to be 2.4 I think you said something on your slide about um at the bottom of your slide you didn't talk about too much about getting some of that information the the information you're Gathering right now through your consultant through the the community connectors the other folks you're talking to about getting that to us release as much as you have before the actual allocation of the remaining our funds in February can you talk a little bit more about what you think you might be able to deliver yeah um so uh uh shocker it's taken a little longer than originally estimated to get the consultant in place and underway but um we do want to get the Community task force in place as soon as possible given the holidays it'll probably be the beginning of the year and that's really the group that we want to hear from respond to some thinking that we've had in the among City staff already about what's our Target population are we

[181:02] going for a particular income bracket are we focusing on other sub-populations again existing Pilots have a wide range of Target populations we just want to we have some ideas as staff but really want to hear from those community members how much money per month duration frequency that sort of thing also the outcomes so when we came to you in in may we kind of presented like these are the main outcomes we're looking for but the community task force will let us know are those on point what is success actually going to look like and maybe to council member Joseph's question how will we know if this is something we might want to continue and what what are all those impacts there are also some other other information we would hope to have for you by February really informed a lot by our consultant who's very familiar as as well with the kind of data like hard data that a lot of other pilot projects

[182:02] are generating such as what are people spending this money on so a lot of the dashboards that are coming out are pretty consistent so I don't think we'll have any surprises with that you know people are spending money on groceries food household items car repairs utilities and and you know Rental rent what have you um but that we want to know from the community task force are these the kind of things that that you want to know like what other metrics do we want to measure as a community I'm interested kind of in hearing from them as to are there other impacts we want to measure like what is our community um how what might change for all the rest of us who are not participating in this program program about what it means to be poor um and the sense of trust that we have in people to make decisions with their money so those are the kinds of things we would that's the kind of input we

[183:00] really want to have from this community task force and I think it's reasonable from talking with our consultant so far that we would be able to have some of that they've worked with a lot of other organizations in other cities on pilots and so far they've been pretty impressed with the amount of thinking that we've put in put into it so like wow we could actually go pretty quickly on some of these steps um just based on the work that we've had in the input we've had from Council as well so is that is that kind of what you really yeah I think so just to play it back to you it sounds like um you you believe you'll have a lot of the information by the February allocation you may not have all of it but you're gonna have a lot of it is that right good good that's pretty consistent with what I think we were hoping when we would talk to you about late late winter early spring last year great thank you yep it's a couple of questions and I want to key off of something that that Juni said that I think is very important can somebody estimate for me the amount or percentage of the what is it about 20

[184:00] million dollars in total Opera funds um is a one-off versus something that's going to require continuing funding um because I you know if we're going to be amending our budget as a result of arpa I think we need to know that um and I'd like to know how much we're going to be amending our budget by because there are there are a lot of programs involved here none of which I disagree with but I I would like to know um let me make the the question of Carl Larry what percentage of our total Opera funds is going to programs that we will discontinue after the money is spent and that's just something we need to know um it's not a judgment on the ways in which we're spending the money but it's raising a very significant issue that Juni expressed how much of this is is something that we

[185:01] are going to have to account for after this money is spent as opposed to say the your you know the renovation of the salberg community center or the Ponderosa program or the grant to BHP where it's it's truly a one-off um Can Can you address that and tell me what those numbers look like yeah thanks Mark I appreciate that question it's an important one and it's something we've highlighted in the past of the some potential ongoing impact of arpa Investments to your point all ARP Investments have to end do they have to end by the end of 2026 that is when we have to spend our our allocation so what what our general strategy is that we'd like to work with Council on is to have those conversations about which arpa Investments have that are implicating ongoing funding and add that to the list of ongoing needs we'll have part of this

[186:00] conversation as we gear up for this Library reallocation discussion but more more specifically through the 2024 budget processes given all of these needs and adding some certainly through these armpit discussions that we know may be important into the future once arpa funding is no longer a possibility where do they follow a list of priorities what are those one-off Investments as Elizabeth talked about that may have impact and that's good enough and that's a great great investment for Recovery versus what we need to look at in terms of long-term longer term sustainable funding but can you estimate now what what portion of the 20 million represents programs that will need to be addressed in terms of sustainability versus Investments that we're making that that are over and done with I can't I think we had a rough range back in March but it depends it depends on which programs we Council Community decide to extend in which we decide or more of the recovery

[187:00] efforts associated with the ARP related investment so is that something you can provide to us subsequently I I would appreciate understanding that I just wanted to add too I mean I I think what you're getting to Mark and I and I appreciate your um your comments is the depends really is about I mean most of how we've come to arpa is that it's one-time funding we know this right we know that moving forward the question isn't so much are we anticipating that we're going to continue it necessarily we're going into it trying to set expectations that at some point this is temporary and it could end not necessarily creating ongoing obligations however if the data and the evaluation and the information then we get makes us rethink and say hey the benefits we've gotten long term about this is something that we may want to invest in the future then we will come to council with a program because the pilot has proven itself to be something that we want to

[188:00] sustain so the expectation as we go in and I know it's a delicate dance right as we're talking about people and providing particularly with guarantee income but it could be a variety of things setting up expectations and making sure from the get-go that we are not over promising that this will go beyond arpa dollars I think is really critical but we want to as staff give ourselves and and hopefully you and the community the ability to say oh my goodness we have seen great results how do we keep that going because it actually proved the point and then we'll have that conversation okay very uh I have only one more question which is there was a line item it was a line item for 380 thousand dollars for more affordable commercial spaces obviously if you'll remember when we looked at that from a community benefits perspective we ended up with a system that that we it just didn't work are we just looking in terms of Grants to small businesses or is there some other mechanism that we're looking at in terms

[189:01] of providing affordable commercial space yeah we're looking at other mechanisms we have a couple of affordable commercial pilots going on right now and we want to expand those and also do more research to look at other communities and what's working and then start to develop other programs we're not sure what those look like but it's it's probably not going to be as complicated as what we were looking at before will you be coming back to us when you figure out absolutely well I'm looking forward to it greatly thanks Aaron uh Mike I'm going to start with a question about the public health reserve and then I'm going to move to a question for Matt on the Arts um I think Elizabeth you brought up the point that there's perhaps a bit of a concern about uh one there's an expiration date so that we know that but also that you know given the potential for the feds to rescind the public health order is is yet another piece of volatility with regards to that fund and the impacts that it has it to me kind of begs the question

[190:02] the impacts of covet and perhaps other things and maybe a positive byproduct of covet is that we're more sensitive to health impacts in our community in perpetuity independent of a pandemic or a public health order do we want to actually ourselves lift up some form of Public Health Reserve that then is independent of the volatility of what the feds do or don't do so it's a question I have in terms of longevity so that we can be nimble to things going forward and in which case maybe the conversation about holding on to this money for what we might need might change if we lift something up with our own criteria with no expiration outside of the purview of the feds and so I'm wondering if there's a way to more or less have our cake and eat it where we can have that in protection for our community while also freeing up money for more immediate use knowing we still have the other part in our back pocket should we need it later

[191:00] um yeah thank you the honestly the first thing that comes to my mind is thank goodness we have a Health Equity Fund so we do and and having said that right like we we have fun runs we get those dollars out um not sitting on not sitting on it um so yeah I mean it's an interesting idea I don't think um I think that goes more to what you know kind of Mark and Nuri were saying about what do we know about the impact of having a reserve like that for whatever might come ahead you know in the future um because it's the arpa funds are time stamped I think from HHS perspective we again like we don't just want to sit on the money and think like well it's going to rain tomorrow no it's my rain tomorrow um but knowing that we still have a few years um a pandemic and knowing that the Cadence of Need for some of our non-profit agencies really isn't that they can kind of as effectively take a whole bunch of money at one time time be

[192:01] able to report on it and then know like well is there going to be anything left can I space this out you know there there are some other state funds perhaps even County funds that are going to end sooner and we know there's going to be a need in 2024. so um I think that that's kind of how we're looking at you know utilization of that I forgot the number now but 397-ish to be able to use that um space it out somewhat not sit on it and if we can learn that it's helpful to have a reserve like that again I think that would go back to nuria's point of how do we want as a city want to approach that in the future is that helpful I'm not sure I answered your question you did but I think it's maybe more of a policy question for us to discuss down the road sure but but thank you for that um so I have a question for for Matt um you know these two Grant programs that you mentioned that this 150 000 will fund um in terms of artists hiring incentive

[193:00] and then the venue affordability and online event uh Fund in in sort of a time stamp of of a year or whatever how many different artists or Arts organizations are impacted by those grants um so for the venue affordability fund we've had that it's pretty long standing and um we get dozens of applications for that over the course of the year that you know we fully fund um and it includes um a a sort of a range of uses right and so um the artists and organizations that apply to it can um have a sort of a set of impacts right so um even though it's you know sort of these uh you know 12 to 20 organizations and artists that get it they use it for online events some of them take advantage of free rent at Mackie which is another grant that we and they apply that to that and so sometimes it's several events in a row

[194:00] um but yeah as far as individual applications go it's it's in that realm of 12 to 20. for the artist hiring incentive that's specifically something that's been mobilized with arpa funding over the you know the past year um I don't have in front of me I'll look it up when I sit back down and get you the answer in just a second but um the um we've had a couple of rounds they're giving away on a lottery and they're given to non-profits to hire artists and so um the um individual artists served is sort of related to you know the nonprofits that we give it to and you know how they divide up that money in in the course of program sometimes it's not just a single artist that's involved in a program so um let me look up exactly how many grants were given out I'll give you that information in a second yeah I appreciate that I mean kind of where I'm leading is is with this 150 that that is currently designated in the plan do you see that helping existing ones longer or to X or just more people I mean is there is there a a number of

[195:02] groups you just can't help because there's too many applicants or do you say no we we can reach them but if with more money we can they can sustain for longer or they can work to elevate to maybe higher premium venues or opportunities so I'm just sort of wondering where the efficacy of that heads um what I can say is that we'll do a little analysis with the Arts Commission on how to divide that money up effectively um the artist incentive um that program um this additional funding I think will basically fully meet need we have just enough of a gap in need that this will fill it in with the venue affordability this will not need we have a lot of people asking for that sort of rental assistance for venues and so um you know can't say exactly what decide on how many grants to give out with the Arts commission right now but I can tell you we can spend all that money on rental assistance and not meet that need um so I'll lead it to comments my question to you if if we were to find a way to provide more than the 150 you

[196:02] would feel that that would be used up almost instantaneously and meeting an immediate need now for for artists that need venue support yeah yeah if you agreed with the direction on venue sport being part of that yeah we would not meet that need even with all that funding anymore okay okay great and so I'd like to do a time check here because we're supposed to do that at nine o'clock it's 9 15. UM still have our public hearing right we have um got four people signed up and then a public hearing after that neither of these are optional right we got to get through it all tonight so um if you haven't asked questions you sure certainly should have the chance but just wanted to call attention to that right because but agree people agree right we we got to finish this all out tonight right uh with that in mind Lauren so and I didn't mean to that wasn't for you focused on you okay Matt it's for you I have a question about um the four venue assistants do we have

[197:00] stipulations that that has to apply to Bolder venues or do we okay yeah it does thank you and while I'm here uh 12 Artis incentive hiring grants so 12 artists were hired up that was fast nice work thank you thank you for the answer okay that was a faster more yeah all right so we get on questions very good so it's now time to go to the public hearing uh I think we are going to revisit our code of conduct guidelines uh so if Brenda is still around so for the that will apply to this and then the next public hearing as well I am still around and uh I was anticipating for the next one but I have them up and ready to share and so I will do that now and save Emily the trouble so can you see my screen yes all right I will actually go into slideshow mode so that's a little easier to read here

[198:00] we go a nice cartoon opportunity thank you thank you my little upstairs home office um thank you for the opportunity to share these guidelines again um just for folks who did not join us at the top of tonight's meeting but are joining us now for this public hearing and for the next um we wanted to share these again I won't read this whole slide again it just highlights that we worked with community members to create a vision um to protect the safety physical emotional and the safety of our democracy for everyone the following are examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this vision and will be upheld during tonight's meeting all remarks and testimonies shall be limited to matters related to the city business at hand no participants shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets other speech and behavior that disrupts

[199:00] or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited and participants are required to sign up to speak either in person or virtually using the name they are commonly known by and individuals must display their whole name if they're online before being allowed to speak I am seeing whole names displayed currently so it looks like we're in pretty good shape for that right now currently only audio testimony is permitted online and we ask that those who have joined in person in order to keep the room safe and welcoming for all perspectives we ask that you refrain from expressing support for disagreement verbally traditionally in council chambers if people wish to show support they've used American Sign Language Applause or jazz hands to silently do so so thank you very much again for the opportunity and I believe this public hearing is entirely in person so um I will throw it back over to Chambers to handle

[200:00] this evening thanks so much Brenda all right so we have four speakers signed up so each of you will get three minutes to speak and our first three are David Folker Carrie pellissari and Christy Gunter good evening good evening and thank you for this opportunity I'm Dave Folker a boulder resident for 60 years this has been a great place to study mathematics to work in scientific Computing to raise a family to dine hike and bike but Boulder also has been my base as a lover and supporter of the Arts tonight I'll focus on those Arts specifically the boulder Philharmonic Orchestra where I'm the a board member a former president and for about half of the orchestra's 65-year existence the principal trumpet player I'm the first half not the most not the

[201:00] latest half I don't envy your task balancing artistic needs against other priorities that have just been described so eloquently here but I ask you to increase the arpa allocation for Arts recovery from the recommended 150k to 250k or with no delay as I see this 100K increment will better align the funding with the needs of organizations that uh I believe there are temporary needs to return to pre-pandemic levels of Revenue generation especially earned Revenue the benefits of Arts support are deep and wide-ranging even if sometimes indirect I'll end with three less obvious benefits that I think the boat or fail yields and I hope that you'll see each of these three actually is related to the impact of the pandemic

[202:01] an orchestra contributes emotionally mentally to the well-being of its Community as an illustration orchestral music can reduce isolation among Elders from Senior Living centers that's just one example the Arts are pro proven multipliers generating economic gains far beyond their costs empowering businesses to recruit creative workers finally our nutcrackers our Discovery concerts and our school visits give five or six thousand children every year opportunities to learn how musical instruments played in synchrony and Harmony tell stories evoke emotion and bring people together as covid loosens its grip City support has never been more important or more urgent thank you thank you Dave now we have Carrie pellissari Christie Gunter and Julie van Dolan

[203:10] good evening my name is Carrie palazzari I serve as the executive director for Studio Arts Boulder I'm actually here to tell a happy story tonight about what city investment in the Arts can do next slide please we manage the historic Boulder Pottery lab on uni Hill the building is owned by the city but we take care of all the routine maintenance and we operate all the programs next slide please this partnership resulted in over 60 000 participant hours last year and even more this year and yet next slide please despite maximizing every square inch of the pottery lab and increasing programs we still cannot meet Community needs next slide please coming off the pandemic people are craving the physical mental and social

[204:01] benefits of community art programs these are just a few of the recent comments from our students other speakers Dave just mentioned economic benefits as well we see the human benefits of the Arts every single day next slide please our mission is to make sure that these impacts are felt across all constituencies in the community so during the pandemic we integrated pay what you can fee structures into our programming in the past we had a few dozen applicants for scholarships each year but you can see on this slide over 500 people took advantage of reduced rates this year because pay what you can was embedded into our registration process that's equity in action next slide please in addition we provide over 450 free classes every year at different locations across the community students in these classes often face multiple barriers to accessing the lab so we bring the studio to them next slide please

[205:00] the result is that our student population is becoming more and more diverse we were fortunate to get a grant from the Arts commission this year grant funding is what makes pay what you can and free classes possible next slide please we were also part of the 2017 class for the CCS tax where taxpayers voted to provide 1.7 million to our Capital expansion we're the first arts project on that list to start construction next slide please which I'm thrilled to say is begun uh just five years 16 of inflation and a global pandemic later we're finally moving dirt and pouring concrete next slide please this beautiful new facility will be a gem for Boulder there's no place like it in Colorado next slide please it's going to be custom built from the ground up for Community programs in five different studio art forms that doesn't exist now next slide

[206:00] the significant investment of public funds also makes it possible for us to install a state-of-the-art green energy technology so that's climate resilience in action as well [Music] so this is multi-layered investment from the city and arpa funding and budget applications are just a couple of those options thanks thanks Carrie and congratulations on your brand groundbreaking now uh Christie Gunter and Julie Van Damme Christy in the room all right not seeing anyone we'll go to Julie good evening my name is Julie Van Damme I'm the executive director at effa the emergency family assistance association I know many of you and I wanted to come tonight to share a few things first what we're seeing at effa we are the Canary

[207:01] in the coal mine for the local safety net and have to say as life returns to normal postcovid we're seeing some really disturbing um signals in our community the vast majority of folks that come to FR still dealing with the negative effects of covid over half are reporting less income than prior to the pandemic the inflation of the last six months is crippling low-income households to give you an idea our food bank is seeing record numbers and it's a hundred year existence in Boulder if on an average day before covid we would see um uh probably about 60 households and then in Peaks during covert it was about 80 in our most recent week with data we saw 134 households per day that week so it's really dramatic um we're also seeing increases in families with kids that are going

[208:01] homeless losing their housing having to be hoteld and a spike in rental assistance demands and unfortunately we expect the situation to worsen in coming months Elizabeth have mentioned a few of the the trends with the finishing of the federal rental assistance money that the county has been channeling and we're worried about that and that ends in the next couple months as well as the possible lifting of the public health emergency which reduced SNAP benefits as well as eliminate our reduced Medicaid Eligibility so there's a number of all things are pointing in the same direction to a very very difficult winter so I came tonight to speak in support of staff's recommendations on reallocating the remaining Public Health Reserve funds to essential Human Service needs the our

[209:00] safety net is going to be sorely tested this winter and the city has been a fabulous partner in quick response for buying essential culturally relevant food for rental assistance Etc so to keep them funded and Nimble is important over the next six months um the second thing I want to support is the items in the packet about the arpa funding and I don't understand all the tranches to tell you the truth but um in particular child care and the guaranteed basic income child care is the hardest thing for us to help families with in this community and in fact that lower income may be attributable in part to the loss and contraction of child care options for low-income families the guaranteed basic income I kind of agree with councilman Yates on the term but uh it's a it's a really important time to inject uh Financial resilience to the lowest income households we have 18 000 jobs in the city of Boulder that

[210:00] pay under five fifteen dollars an hour so they need help thanks so much Julie and for everything your organization does to support families in our community okay so we'll bring it back to council so we've got two pieces here what one of them is the supplemental appropriation to the 2022 budget and the second is the arpa funding priorities so I wanted to start out by just checking in to see if people had comments or changes that they would desire to the supplemental Appropriations the 22 budget any issues there I moved that we adopt um ordinance 8558 motion is second roll call I believe that is correct sir we'll start this roll call with council member Walling aye Winer yes

[211:00] yes Benjamin yes mayor Brockton yes councilmember folkerts yes mayor Pro Tim friend yes councilmember Joseph yes and council member spear yes ordinance 8558 is hereby adopted great thanks so much so now let's turn to the arpa funding priorities and what will we what we will be doing here is giving direction to staff that will lead to an official appropriation in February I believe right so we are more or less making the decision tonight but the actual vote will be in February at the time of Appropriations so I'll just open it if anyone would like to suggest any changes to the staff recommendation on the arpa funding I got yes Tara and then Matt first I want to thank you Elizabeth that was a great presentation and so heartfelt and also thanks for the people that came and spoke I know a lot of you and

[212:01] really those presentations are equally as great and heartfelt and also moving so I didn't speak much tonight I might have a short speech but I'm gonna make it super short for you so in the past few months we've all a lot of us have read many compelling emails and listen to stories during open comment about many of the artists musicians the dancers who are really struggling financially as well as the Arts organizations who really give their lives supporting these artists um some of the Arts organizations have not received gos funding this year which matches sanski mentioned the Boulder Field the boulder ballet the greater Boulder youth Symphony and we know there's a lot more so um to me is this not what the arpa funds are for artists musicians and dancers who because of the pandemic can't really make ends meet um organizations are having a terrible time

[213:01] impossible time raising needed funds and it's really the organizations that provide the jobs also for the musician's dancers and um artists and so they are really crucial um and by the way I want to give a big thanks to the Arts Community for making me aware of this and for your commitment to Boulder as a city that really aspires to be there for our Arts community so the Arts Community is still not out of the woods yet from the financial adverse effects of the pandemic and these are for funds as we know are a one-time um they're a one-time payment and so and they're a one-time opportunity to really help both the individuals and the organizations so as you know from reading my hotline post if you did read it I would like to increase the 150 000 of arpa funds we're going to allocate to the Arts Community to 250 000.

[214:00] now I want you to know ahead of time that I'm not saying in any way that the safety net is not the most important thing so this is my idea to fund this increase I suggest that a hundred thousand dollars of the two million seven hundred fifty thousand dollars plus actually three million dollars allocated for the guaranteed income pilot program be shifted to Arts recovery in 2023 increasing the arpa allocation for Arts recovery um to 250 000 dollars but my thinking is the guaranteed income pilot program is not starting immediately and re we can reallocate this hundred thousand dollars extra and that will still allow us to backfill for the guaranteed income program in 2023 adjustment to base so maybe Mark Cara Mar uh the other Mark can speak into this if you want unless Matt wants to colically first I don't know you want to call it

[215:00] I Love College it's funny to get preempted on your colloquy before you actually do a colleague because Tara likes to alcohol so much and I think we just need to say colically 20 more times and we'll get there right anyway I appreciate that Tara and thank you for your thoughts on uh specifically on the critical needs of our Arts Community we've heard a lot about that but more importantly we don't even need to hear about it we've just it's a it's a common known that they're one of the most disproportionately impacted communities from the pandemic and represent some of our most diverse groups in our community so my my comment really centers around seconding what what Tara says of trying to boost the support for the Arts another 100K and and really stepping back to say I'm generally Financial pot agnostic it's more of let's do it and if it needs to come from one pot that's fine if it comes from a handful of others to meet the total I'm fine with that too and I'm happy to discuss with my colleagues where it comes from but I think my hope is that

[216:00] we can get to a place where as a body we want to and are compelled to invest another hundred thousand dollars and really the discussion is from where and so I'm hoping we can evolve the conversation to uh not uh if we do it but we will do it and then from where do we pull the money so I'm hopeful that that's the the place we go and so I'm happy to have it come from some part of the public health reserve some of this from guaranteed income pilot if there's other places or some of the parts I think it's really critical that we invest another hundred thousand dollars into the Arts because we heard from Matt that it would be an instantaneous need especially to support the um those needing venue affordability and online event funds thanks man so what I'll say is we've got a proposal on the table uh for a hundred thousand dollars in additional art funding to come from somewhere some some discussion on that does anyone else have any other proposals for changes they'd like to get out on the table because I think it'd be good to have the full set that people are thinking of before we go into the discussion any other does anybody have all right so I guess oh yeah Lauren

[217:00] okay but no so it looks like no other proposals so then let's zero in on this one and maybe additional thoughts on that and so Lauren if you have a comment on or and this is more maybe a follow-up question to staff I see that so under the continued economic recovery we also have 220 200 000 that look like they're mostly used to develop and Implement special events interactive public art and other programs to activate and increase the number of visitors and I was just wondering how the allocation of those funds might differ diff be different than the allocation for other Arts funds like it yeah and and I think that they would be very specific to um ways of activating those spaces and a lot of those programs are yet to be developed but we certainly would be developing them um with the office of arts and culture

[218:00] as well as Community Vitality okay thank you Mark and then I'll call him myself this is really more of a question is it possible to approve the arpa funding and give staff discretion to determine where that hundred thousand comes from yes we can take the conversation offline I know that Matt schezanski was talking about Consulting with the Arts commission so that might buy us a bit of time to identify where the 100K could come from we do anticipate uh ending fund balance after Reserve in the general fund when we close out the books we'll have a better idea of that in February when we do that special adjustment so we could certainly come back and identify because because like Matt I'm fairly agnostic as to where we get the money I would be supportive of getting the money and you know I I have confidence that staff will do it in a way that's not harmful to anyone and um will get us to the point we need to

[219:02] get to so that would be my suggestion great thanks Mark I'm calling myself good and then um and then I'll go to Nicole because I was I was going to ask you more or less the same question and I think that makes sense to me my also my impression is that we're likely to have fund balance at the end of 2022 from looking at the sales tax receipts and such like that so I think you know making commitment to get that hundred thousand dollars into the Arts Community ASAP I think is a good way to go and look to staff for in February how we might backfill that you know and and it might be just that you know we could do an appropriation from fund balance or somewhere else in the arpa programs that we've talked about but I would look for staff recommendation so I might if I could look to Tara and Matt who started this off how would you all feel about that approach okay very cool so that's I think what's on the table right now Nicole you want to Bob

[220:01] just everybody who spoke in public comment really appreciate it um and I think you know one one of the things that I'm thinking about um is that the process for how to spend these arpa funds and do it in a way that centered the things we were really interested in centering like Equity was really quite thorough there were specific guidelines for what we were going to do there was a lot of Engagement we got feedback from the community connectors and I really felt like we came out with kind of an approach that's focused on those that are hardest hit and I absolutely see the Arts Community as being in in that group and you know for me I was pushing for keeping all of those Public Health reserve for basic needs because Julie I I see what you're seeing um it's it's bad and it's getting worse in terms of basic just people being able to cost to afford food housing utilities and that was one of the things that I had liked about how those Public Health Reserve funds were were talked about being spent was that it was really

[221:00] focused on basic needs um you know I heard everybody's interest in giving more more of that money to the Arts and so you know staff came back I think with a proposal right where we could still make some of those basic needs but in this idea of you know finding another hundred thousand dollars for um artists which I mean I do love that idea why aren't we doing that for basic needs too right I mean what what is the process that we're coming up with to decide that this one piece gets some extra funds when the others do not and and I think that's that's just where I'm sitting with some discomfort about this um it's not clear to me you know how how we sort of arrived at this one spot versus the many other needs that are out there and that you know Julie told us about um even just with basic needs so it's not it's just kind of where I'm sitting in some conflict right now okay thanks for that Nicole Bob no I likewise it's going to support what um Tara and and Matt and and Mark and

[222:00] and Aaron has have said uh we leave the staff to determine where the best place for the hundred thousand whether it's a reallocation of the arpa funds or whether um we're feeling Rich um after December 31 you guys can kind of figure that out and come back to us in February and I do want to put a final plug um uh uh for um getting as much information as we can before we do the the allocation um on the guaranteed data programs I know you're spending a lot of money to gather a lot of data and I think it'd be really wonderful to see that as we're as we're allocating that money in February thanks Elizabeth great uh Jenny nope Lauren and then cheating um I guess just related to my comment earlier that when I look at this budget as a whole I don't see a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for art I see 350 000 for art I think we've already achieved sort of that goal that you guys are setting out in terms of that um 250 000 but and I think that

[223:02] Maybe it's in how those things are worded and in how you know the latitude we give staff in terms of how those funds are assigned but um I think that this budget includes at least that amount of money for Arts already Ginny thank you so much again I think this is where I wish and thank you for bringing that Lauren bringing that up um I do know when I first heard of the idea I was not 100 of in support of taking the money out of guaranteed income and when I heard today from Julie it cemented that for me um but now I hear that hey let's go back let's look at where the money could possibly come out of so I think if essentially you go back and it's not taken out of guaranteed income right because we see the need

[224:01] and we can find it in other places yeah I would be in support but I I would not be in support if it comes out of guaranteed income because it's almost like we have this program and we start taking away from it and giving it to other things and ultimately we might end up not doing it because we're taking money out of it constantly for other things because we don't see the value in it so um I would be in support if it comes from the budget but I also one thing too I guess you know council member spear mentioned is that you know we um maybe we should find money for other things as well so that are important to us as a counsel thank you it you know it's I'm just about to wrap it up I never wanted to take it from the guaranteed income and not give it back be clear okay I said we can take it for a few months give it to the Arts people and then we're going to have enough money because we're making we're getting

[225:01] money are we not mark okay and then we're just going to put it back in a few months that's all just a few months you can just see how hard it is for the observative fiscal Steward it is to say to nod his head on that one um so I would go probably for a quick straw poll here unless yeah so just all in favor of the proposal on the table for the hundred thousand dollars of additional funding to become from a place of status discretion good hand race we got looks like we got a eight nine okay or eight and a half good does that give you what you need okay thank you and you all have really done an extraordinary job in figuring out what to do with these you know once in a lifetime funds and so huge thank you to all of you it's been a lot of work and our community is going to be the better for it yeah yeah cool

[226:01] and I just had a quick comment um for the public anybody who has done any kind of fundraising for a non-profit likely knows that Boulder has one of the lowest rates of philanthropy around and so I just want to make a plug for the public for those you know who have some extra funds right now we've heard tonight from some organizations in our community that are doing amazing work and providing a lot of support for people who were hit hard by the pandemic and need it now so if you do have some extra funds especially as we head toward giving Tuesday and the end of the year you know please think about some of these organizations that spoke tonight and the other nonprofits in our community because we can we can all really use some extra help right now well said okay well we've got one more public hearing we actually can't start this I think probably without count the Hall of council president because we need motions and stuff I call for a 30 second stretch break not a five minute break but a 30 second stretch break show off your calisthenics

[227:01] maybe two minutes foreign [Music]

[228:18] thank you foreign

[229:08] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

[230:10] all right so I think we're ready to get back get back to things now so Elisha if you could get us going on our final public hearing please all right sir you correct it is our final item on tonight's agenda item 5c is the mayor Pro tem election all right so in accordance with this is a very formal process I got to read all the all the all the words in accordance with the council rules section 9 we will now conduct the election for mayor Pro tem I will first go over the procedure council members Speer and Wallach have expressed their interest at our November 3rd meeting we will hold the public hearing first then I will call for nominations no second is needed for a nomination but I will look to the council member nominated for acceptance you can turn down the nomination

[231:02] after all nominations have been made I will call for a motion and second to close the nominations then I will open the floor to nominated candidates to make any final statements if they choose as well as any other council members if more than one candidate has been nominated for the position I will then ask the city clerk to flip a coin well there it is to choose whether we go in alphabetical or reverse alphabetical order to vote on the candidates we will vote by raising hands unless Council chooses to use paper ballots uh which I think can we just raise hands it's like foreign well you could do it Anonymous huh no no all right let's just no we'll just raise our hands right okay the candidate to receive a majority vote shall be elected as mayor Pro tem for

[232:00] the next year and before we get going I just want to thank uh both Nicole and Mark for putting their names forward the community would benefit from either of your service so thanks for your willingness all right so I will now open the public hearing for mayor Pro Tem we've got uh three people signed up to speak in person and 16 signed up to speak virtually one virtual speaker is in the house so it will be the third in-person speaker so our three in-person speakers are Chase Cromwell Matt Hess and Claudia theme and all speakers will have two minutes to speak so Chase and get us started good evening Council my name is Chase Cromwell I'm the director of legislative affairs with CU Boulders Student Government we're here on behalf of the executive cusg and the broader student body and we're here to urge you to

[233:01] support councilwoman Nicole Speer for mayor Pro tem one of cu's taglines is be bold as we enter the next year we really want to urge you and and urge the rest of our community leaders to be bolder in our leadership we collectively our team spend our time fighting for the needs of our students and exploring ways to deepen the connections that this generation of Buffs have to our community it's critical that our local leaders outside of the University campus understand and believe that our students are welcome here and support our students as they progress through their University experience that means supporting them when they're off campus as they learn how to become part of a community outside of their own age and interest groups we need our local leadership to be as diverse and representative to be as diverse and representatives as many communities that call Boulder home not because we need to check boxes and be performative we know that Boulder at its best is above that we are excited and encouraged by Nicole's deep commitment to bettering Boulder and by engaging humbly with our

[234:01] community Nicole has worked hard to build connections with our team and our students and regularly connects to ask questions Share info or ideas and better understand how her work and consequently yours can better serve us all Nicole spear has been a champion for our students needs and for the place that we call home school work and life we support councilwoman Spears desire to lead counsel in the role of Mayor Pro tem and we hope that you will too thank you thank you Chase now we have Matt Hess and then Claudia theme all right good evening Council my name is Matt Hess and I am here to speak on behalf of Nicole Speer I um currently live in Lafayette but I went to Crestview Elementary then Centennial and then Boulder High um I currently attend first uh Congregational Church of Christ I'm United Church of Christ in Boulder and then I am the executive director of a non-profit that does include Boulder in the service area as well so special

[235:01] thank you to Nicole for shouting out uh uh giving Tuesday that's just definitely an example of her leadership that she can bring to the community as a whole Beyond just even what happens Within These Chambers and I really appreciate that and I'm going to be pretty quick tonight because it's late and I think my point is pretty simple Boulder presents itself as a diverse inclusive Equitable community and unfortunately we still have a ways to go and a vote for Nicole is a vote in that direction thank you all thank you Matt Claudia team good evening Council my name is Claudia Hansen theme I live in the holiday neighborhood I'm here tonight to support my good friend Dr Nicole Speer for mayor Pro tem of Boulder this Council began its term with an ambitious work plan and it will take

[236:00] intelligent and inclusive leadership to see it through and Nicole has these qualities in spades for as long as I've known her Nicole has been committed to making space for the knowledge and needs of folks who no matter how easy we make it we'll never be in the room on nights like tonight to say nothing of having the opportunity to influence the agenda student leaders unhoused people women of color queer folks working parents we need these perspectives to make Equitable and effective policies and our choice of leadership even in what some call symbolic positions sends a strong signal about which voices matter when we set priorities and evaluate our actions as a community Nicole also understands that lasting progress on key issues requires working with City staff the professionals with limited resources working amidst the push and pull of an oft divided community before she was a candidate and council member Nicole had a long track record as

[237:00] a manager team Builder and cultivator of people her attention to organizational culture and institutional capacity is something that we need to bring the best ideas to life in this city I understand that some of you on the current Council majority feel Bound by traditions of seniority and collegiality but in any other setting we in deep blue Boulder would be asking just who these Traditions serve housing climate and racial and economic Justice are generational challenges and we should have leadership at every level that is committed to progress on all fronts the array of speakers here tonight should be evidence that the selection you're making matters to the direction the city takes I hope you will Elevate Dr Speer to Mayor Pro tem to support the commitments this Council has made thank you thank you Claudia all right we're going to our virtual attendees now our first three are Jeremy Reynolds Katie farnin and Emily Reynolds

[238:02] uh thank you and good evening most of you know me as Nicholas spouse however I'm more than that and tonight I'm speaking to you as a community member that leads a large international team for one of the largest and most valuable companies in the world and it's someone who knows and recognizes leadership leadership is the strength to stand up shine a light on and courageously challenge systems and processes that do harm more than that it is also accepting the responsibility of not just identifying problems but also a proposing potential solutions that are aligned with one's principles and values especially when those Solutions may be unpopular as most recently demonstrated by her role in prioritizing and bringing forward even your elections in the work plan and its overwhelming support at The Ballot Box Nicole is the leader that this city needs today and tomorrow she leads through service sticks to her inclusive principles and

[239:01] pushes this city to be a better place for everyone this election is not just honorary or perfunctory nor is it apolitical it will have real impact on the voices that are heard and on how agendas are set this election is a decision of consequence and as such your vote should be values based your vote speaks volumes regarding the values that guide your decisions a vote for Nicole values inclusion over a short-lived tradition that won't be relevant and even a year's time a vote for Nicole values moving this city forward over the status quo please consider your core values as you decide your vote and please vote for Nicole because she's the leader that will help move the city forward to become the inclusive place that we know it can be and that we want it to be thank you thank you Jeremy now Katie farnan Emily Reynolds and Schuler Bailey

[240:04] thank you Council um we have made great strides in this town toward progress and a more inclusive community but we have a long way to go it's amazing that this Council has the opportunity to ensure that its leaders reflect the values of the electorate this is a council whose majority represents Progressive values those include affordability Community safety for everyone regardless of their housing situation or ethnicity diversity Equity inclusion public investment the community each of you serves expects you to continue to advance these values with every decision and today that decision involves who will be a part of your leadership team mayor Pro tem should be chosen on Merit on values on what is the right direction of this city for this city to go in choosing based on seniority reinforces exactly the kind of structures that delay progress and reduce Community Trust please don't vote based on whose

[241:01] turn it is next this Council needs Direction and conviction and we need Progressive leadership to tackle these big issues that is why I urge you to support Nicole Speer for this role she's shown her commitment to inclusive governance and strong outspoken Progressive values which people in this community have worked hard to deliver and which voters have shown they Embrace we just don't have time to uphold a process that doesn't Advance the important goals many of you were elected to advance let's keep going let's keep making progress right thank you Katie now Emily Reynolds Schuler Bailey and Karen holweg good evening Council mayor Pro tem has always been a non-political appointment going to the council member with the longest tenure who has not previously served Mark Wallach has served three times the tenure of his Challenger three years to

[242:02] one year part of serving is having experience with the procedures and processes of counsel over time Mark has earned the position of Mayor Pro Tim serving his second term on Council he's one of our hardest working and brightest council members he fully supports Boulders residents mission of improved Public Safety and he received an historical record-breaking number of votes last fall the stated objective of having public city council meetings is to gather input from the public Mark listens when citizens speak at public hearings and open comment he's not reading the packet or checking his phone or avoiding eye contact with the speakers a fact that is indicative of his genuine interest in doing good for the city and the people of Boulder Mark prepares carefully reads and studies the packet material to ensure a solid understanding of issues

[243:01] you show you saw his pertinent questions this evening he proposes strong arguments and ideas he listens and engages when there is disagreement Mark respects rather than ignoring the advice of City staff on issues when Chief Harold indicates the kind of support she needs he reinforces that with his public speaking and actions instead of ignoring it or trying to counter it mayor Pro tem is an honor typically bestow out on a senior council person and Mark is not a newcomer he knows City business thoroughly please support Mark as our next mayor Pro tem the candidate without a personal agenda thank you Emily now we have Schuler Bailey Karen holweg and Martha Palmer thank you for having me I expressed my strong endorsement for Mark Wallach for mayor Pro Tem Mark represents all of Boulder and

[244:01] recognizes and prioritizes the values of the whole community he is fair thoughtful engaged thorough balanced and inclusive and he votes in a way that will benefit our entire community the mayor and thus mayor Pro tem should represent all of Boulder and be free of partisan influences the fact that Mark received the highest number of votes in the last Council election is a testament to his broad appeal and speaks to his ability to vote based on the will of the people not a personal or Fringe agenda Mark has been willing to engage with all sides on the many challenging issues Council deals with and he does so with an open mind brilliant intellect and sound judgment he is the most senior council member and this experience gives him valuable insight and context to tackle the many new challenges Boulder is facing naming namely Public Safety and crime Mark Wallach is a subtle but strong leader

[245:01] that has the best interests of Boulder at heart please appoint him for mayor Pro tem thank you thank you sure Karen holweg Martha Palmer and Michael Schreiner thank you Erin I'm Karen holweg and I've been reading mark wallach's op-eds on Civic matters for over six years and have followed his work on city council for three years I'm speaking tonight to urge you to select him as mayor Pro tem for three reasons first Mark's values and skills resonate with members of our community I believe that's at the root of why he received the most votes of any council member in recent history second he listens carefully and provides thoughtful comments on the full range of issues before Council he commits the time necessary to fully review and digest Council packets as shown in the substantive hotline comments and

[246:00] questions he posts before meetings and finally Mark's ability to provide in-depth Financial analyzes based on the community's identified priorities are very impressive since we are in the process of coming out of the pandemic with its large Federal subsidies and are now entering a period of decision making regarding how to allocate literally millions of dollars based on our election decisions I want the depth and breadth of his thinking present at CAC as well as Council meetings for all these reasons I hope you'll select Mark tonight as our next mayor Pro town thank you thank you Karen Martha Palmer Michael Schreiner and George Boone can you hear me okay yes hi my name is Martha Palmer and I've lived in Boulder since 2005. I came here

[247:00] to join CU as a professor and for the last 12 months I've been trying to retire I saw my first city council meeting two weeks ago and I am still astonished at how exhausting it was I am incredibly impressed by how much time energy and effort each one of you puts into the job of being a council member and thank you all very much for what you do I'd like to speak in favor of Nicole Spears Candace C for mayor Pro Tem I've known Nicole more than five years I first met her through the university since her neuroimaging lab as part of the Institute of cognitive science which I'm also affiliated with at work she is intelligent organized and efficient she makes a complicated job scene we see I soon realized that we also attend the same church First Congregational at church I've seen a devoted partner and mother who meets others with honesty

[248:00] vulnerability and openness finally more recently I've gotten to see her in more political Arenas uh Democratic party events and that last public council meeting there I see a tireless commitment to understanding every issue in detail and ensuring the best possible outcome for everyone concerned I do not know anyone who works harder or brings more integrity and compassion to everything she does I believe Felder is very fortunate to have someone of Nicole's caliber willing to make the commitment I'm a mayor Pro tem needs to make thank you thank you Martha now Michael Schreiner George Boone and Doug Hamilton good evening my name is Mike Shriner Pine Street Boulder Colorado and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight

[249:01] speaking tonight to strongly urge you to appoint Mark Wallach for the mayor Pro tem position as to Merit as you undoubtedly know by now Mark is smart thoughtful fair and inclusive his posts on the hotline and letters to the editor in the camera clearly show his fair an unbiased approach to all issues before Council is detailed incisive and um and he does a deep dive on all Council issues as you know he gives all sides a fair Shake is very approachable and does not Advocate a specific agenda but listens and decides the issues on what is best for all citizens not just a few when it comes to diversity and inclusion Mark has walked the walk look at his bio online finally Mark earned this position he was on his second term on Council won the most votes in the last election and has

[250:01] demonstrated the chops for the job disappointment should really be a no-brainer the fact that it's apparently not as disappointing and foreshadows increasing local political divisiveness that to now we've been able to rise above thank you for your time thank you Mike I've been informed that George Boone and Doug Hamilton are not present so we're going to move on to Lisa Spalding and Ryan shushart and Christian Kerr Lisa Spalding University Hill I've known and worked with council member Wallach since long before he ran for city council he has a keen intellect thoroughly studies every issue that comes before him weighs facts impartionally and works with all interested parties in an effort to reach the best possible result he's also an excellent listener which is a basic requirement for any elected official

[251:00] it's been the practice of the city council to elect the most senior member who has not previously served as mayor Pro tem to that position which you've heard previously you will be upholding that tradition if you elect council member Wallach as a longtime Boulder Democrat I believe our traditions and Council collegiality are extremely important he is also of course as you've also heard that we heard before the lead um vote getter and the city council and a member with a great deal of experience I can guarantee that Council agenda committee meetings will be a pleasure for all involved since council member Wallach is a genial person with an excellent sense of humor that tempers even the most serious or fractious discussions thank you Thank you Lisa now Ryan shushart Christian Curry and Sarah silver good evening council members my name is

[252:01] Ryan shuhard speaking in support of Dr Nicole Speer for mayor Pro Temp until this race I hadn't given the position of Mayor Pro tem much thought so I reviewed Dr Speer and council member Wallach speeches and then I had to do it again because I felt like I was hearing candidates running for different positions and then I realized yes this is a job that could be different thanks on the one hand the mayor Pro temrel could be mostly ceremonial a job that is not actively seeking to to agitate for change on another it could be a Podium to queue up dialogue about big problems and strategic reforms it could be a voice that reminds us about the ease with which our everyday meeting language and Customs tend to enshrine the status quo and seek to create more practical ways for discussing real creative problem solving one thing that's not is neutral of Politics the decision to say things are fine like they are is every ounce as political as is proposing change No Agenda is an agenda for things to remain

[253:03] and so even if the role of Mayor Pro tem is heavily administrative it carries a lot of power the functions of this position in the body trying to make new changes mean that it is a role that has quite a lot of power that power includes setting the tone among our community on who city council represents and the concerns that have the most priority it includes personal connections with community members who can help to advance the work of the city and it includes being instrumental in setting the table for decisions Council undertakes and how the ideas and the choices around those decisions are framed there's a whole set of things that many of you counselors care about including Safe Streets inclusive access to Transportation solutions for housing scarcity climate action and equity and for those issues this job could be decisive for results Dr Speer is a candidate who brings an incredible amount of force regardless of the outcome I'm grateful to both contestants for their service for uh through this their service and forth through this race prompting more dialogue about what Boulder is and what it can be thank you

[254:00] thank you Ryan I understand Christian Kerr is not present so we're going to go to Sarah silver then Matt bissonnette and Lucy Carlson Krakoff good evening council members my name is Sarah silver I live in Whittier and have been a boulder resident for 16 years I serve on planning board but I'm here tonight in my personal capacity it's a little weird to be on this side of the podium so thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight in support of Mark Wallach for mayor Pro tem in his three years on Council Mark has proven himself to be in judicious hard-working well-prepared and wicked smart I happen to be a big fan of his hotline posts they always give me great insight into the challenges council is working on Mark seeks to understand the factors underlying Boulder's challenges and works closely with staff the public and his fellow council members to identify effective solutions to those challenges

[255:02] he's not driven by ego or agenda but rather by the desire to solve problems Mark will bring his focus on problem solving to the role of Mayor Pro tem he will make sure all questions are asked everyone is heard all ideas are considered and that Council finds points of agreement that result in progress for Boulder Mark will bring to the role of Mayor Pro tem the values of respectful inclusive and productive discourse required for this role I urge you to support Mark for mayor Pro tem thank you for your time thank you Sarah Now Matt Bissonnet Lucy Carlson krakov and Chelsea Castellano Matt I see that you are your microphone is unmuted but we cannot hear you

[256:01] if you want to try to mute again and unmute again and you also may need to adjust the settings of your microphone you can do that using the drop up button next to your mute your microphone icon mayor would you like to go to Lucy Carlson truck off I will reach out to Matthew sounds good we'll come back to him thank you thanks Brenda so now uh Lucy Carlson krakov and then Chelsea Castellano hello Council my name is Lucy Crossing Creek off I'm a lifelong Boulder resident and a current student I have some music to accompany my speaking it's a song from six the musical about women

[257:00] getting to do what they've always wanted to do so I'll play it on my speaker and talk at the same time can everyone hear my song okay no it is with enthusiasm that I asked city council to elect Dr Nicole Speer as mayor pro-10 I met Dr Spielberg while working to translate her city council campaign's social media into Spanish this was Dr Spears initiative which speaks to her strong values of inclusion and accessibility I bring up this example because as a young person passionate about Boulder's future I am concerned with making sure the voice of every bold right is included in city council Dr Speer will uplift and amplify these voices as evidenced by her past work spearheading inclusive inclusive housing initiatives and her involvement with feet forward a direct support Organization for the boulder house list in addition to Dr speer's obvious merits I recommend her election because as a young woman I am dismayed by the possibility of an all-male Council leadership directing majority female counsel we are past the point of gender role nearing structures such as these

[258:01] speaking of the past some say we should elect the most senior council person as mayor Pro tem just based on the amount of time they have been on Council this makes no sense to me instead let us select the person that most represents our values of forward inclusion and love Boulder should be a home for Crime climate resilient and a humanitarian future not a relic of the past Dr spear exemplifies everything I seek in Nightmare Pro tem Progressive values and experience join me in supporting a strong independent woman for the position as we move towards the future thank you thank you Lucy and now Chelsea castellone then we'll try back with Matt hi um so last year abroad Coalition of people and Community groups came to came together to help elect candidates that would move our city in a direction toward progress together we unanimously unanimously decided not to endorse Mark

[259:00] Wallach because he fundamentally does not share our values or priorities and has made that abundantly clear through his words and actions you represent over a hundred thousand people in this community and the most vulnerable of them vulnerable of them are depending on youth to get your work plan done I don't think I need to tell you that this will be undoubtedly harder with the mayor Pro tem that doesn't support that work plan the issues you committed to to tackling are Urgent and yet more than a full year in and only one out of ten of your work plan priorities is complete moving Boulders Off cycle elections to even years which Mark notably opposed while the slope progress has been frustrating many of us have been understanding that there has been a lot out of your control we are coming out of a pandemic and our short staff but this decision tonight you are making is in your control whether you vote to appoint a mayor Pro tem who opposes much of your agenda is on you and the repercussions of that choice would also be on you I've heard the argument that Mark should be blindly appointed as mayor Pro tem because of the tradition that the job should go and whoever has been on Council longus that

[260:00] it would be unfair to not appoint mark But when you think about fairness please don't think about it in terms of which of you gets your turn but instead in terms of what parts of the community have consistently been underrepresented and what it would mean to have an openly lgbtq plus mayor Pro tem and what it would mean to vote against her right now Boulder needs to uplift lgbtq plus leadership Boulder needs to see gender parity in our Council leadership Boulder needs leaders who will stand up and actively fight for renters workers the in-house and the future of young people and families Nicole spear is that person and I hope you proudly join me in supporting her as Boulder's next mayor grow temp thank you thank you Chelsea uh can we give Matt Bissonnet another try please hello can you hear me yes we can oh great I appreciate your patience sorry for the technical um Matt Bissonnet uh uh Boulder City resident and uh I do volunteer on one of the boulder boards but I'm speaking here

[261:01] in my personal capacity and speaking in favor of Mark Wallach for mayor Pro tem and kind of coming at this in a different perspective I think than the speakers I've heard before but um you know my view is that I appreciate the work everybody does on the council and it's a it's a thankless job in many ways and it's a lot of time and a lot of effort and I agree with everything that's been said about Mark and I am a supporter of his um I don't um I don't disagree though with the the points that have been made about um uh council member spear either um but my approach to this is it traditionally has gone to somebody who's who's it's been cited as the most senior and hasn't served and it seems like you know we have plenty of issues to argue about and debate and you know this as I understand the position it doesn't have a significant effect on the agenda of the city council the actions that the city council is going to take the priorities of the city council it seems

[262:02] that everyone gets a fair vote we vote every two years and so this just seemed like another opportunity to create you know to force people to take sides when we have plenty of other issues where we have to do that and I think collegiality is is super important with the board working together and being able to at times set aside politics and just work together and this seems like an opportunity to um you know unnecessarily to force people to take sides so I appreciate the opportunity to speak and it would vote for uh ask for the support for mark thank you thanks Matt all right that brings us to the end of our speakers so I will now close the public hearing and I want to thank everybody who came out and spoke tonight and as well as the people who came out in person your dedication is impressive thank you so I will now open the nominations for

[263:02] mayor Pro Tem let's see I see Bob and then Lauren it's a process question for you um Aaron would you like us to just State our nomination and then hold our comments or do you want us to make a nomination and comments uh just the nomination for Now comments will come in a minute please great thanks I uh nominate my colleague Mark Wallach Premier Pro Tem to accept the nomination Lauren I would like to nominate my colleague Nicole Speer for mayor Pro Tem Nicole do you accept the nomination absolutely thank you very good uh not seeing any others is there a motion to close the nominations motion to close nominations got a motion and a second can I see a show of hands close the nominations all right that's unanimous so the

[264:01] nominations are now closed and so now I'll invite the candidates to make a statement if they would like and then we'll turn to other council members before we then go to a vote so would the candidates like to speak do you want to speak as well okay can we flip a coin for the speaking could we do that because I'm like I don't feel like I don't want to great kids Nicole super short I already spoke on the third I just want to say a big thank you to everybody who stayed up late with us tonight especially those who came in person and actually had to put on real pants thank you but I just I'm really grateful by everybody who's showing up tonight and participating in this process I think we are stronger as a

[265:03] community when more of us are participating in in our decisions so just thank you to everybody who showed up tonight and I hope we see a lot more of everyone in the months and years to come thanks Nicole what well first I'm I'm deeply grateful for those who spoke on my behalf although I'm not sure that I recognize the guy they were talking about um we've heard a lot of impassioned speakers tonight on both sides and in effect it seems to me that we have begun to politicize a designation that should be free of politics and I deeply regret that as I do not believe this serves our Council well there should be spaces in our Council where that should be free of politics and where political considerations should be irrelevant um I am hoping that going forward this can be one of them and other than that I I basically stand

[266:01] on my experience um and uh hope for a favorable consideration thank you thanks Mark and then I'll just ask now ask if other council members would like to speak I'm going to look this way and then that way does anybody else want to speak over here we got the I got I saw Lauren and then Bob go ahead I nominated Nicole from mayor Pro tem because Nicole cares passionately about this community and has shown us time and time again that she is a leader she uplifts marginalized voices even when it is difficult and requires going against the grain she does this with the compassion and empathy needed to help lead both our counsel and our community towards more productive dialogue it was jarring to me to hear that our mayor Pro tem position was likely to be

[267:01] filled based on a council tradition I had honestly never heard of rather than simply based on Merit I believe many in the community will be similarly surprised to find a majority female counsel if a majority meet female counsel appoints two straight white men as figureheads for our city our council is already somewhat a somewhat homogeneous group that fails to represent the diversity of our community on a variety of levels but here we have the chance to uplift a woman that's represented an upholds inclusion as one of her core values Ruth Bader Ginsburg said as women achieve Powers the barriers will fall as Society sees what women can do as women see what women can do there will be more women out there doing things and we will all be better for it I believe this holds true not only for women but for people from any

[268:01] marginalized group in the wake of a shooting that has rocked many in our community we have the opportunity to give more than hopes and prayers to uplift the only lgbtq member of our Council to the position of Mayor Pro Tem I would like to remind fellow council members that the majority of us ran on platforms more aligned with hope and change than with hegemony and tradition I hear arguments that this tradition is egalitarian it benefits us all eventually and I I can't help but question that statement I can't help but think of the number of times I've heard this line used as a justification and seen my mother and my friends passed over for opportunities on so many levels we have rules that are written to resist change and regardless of how successful it has been this is an example of a process that was made to benefit those who have traditionally held power

[269:01] elections have consequences and it is our job to prove that that is true our job to make the change people have elected us to make from housing policy to the budget to a variety of appointments Mark is a great council member his dedication and preparation for each meeting is beyond reproach but his appointment as mayor Pro tem would not Elevate the ideas the majority of us have been elected to advance we have a critical year in front of us that will make or break many of the promises we have made to our community and we can't leave anything to chance for the vision Nicole has for our community for her dedication to transparency and inclusive dialogue and for not only the excellent way she has represented and continues to represent our city at a variety of public events but for what she represents in terms of our commitment to raising voices for

[270:00] marginalized communities I am thrilled to nominate and hope you will join me in supporting Nicole for mayor Pro Tem thank you Lauren Bob that was a great speech are you sure you don't want to run um well I I'll just say that I think that we are truly blessed to have two great people who would like to serve um us um and I want to thank both of you for putting yourself out there um I did the job a few years ago and it's a lot of work right Rachel it's a lot of work I really want to thank both of you for stepping up there um I listened to all the speakers tonight um some advocated for Mark and some advocated for Nicole and um this is a rare public hearing where everyone who spoke was absolutely right I heard about Mark's intelligence and his commitment his compassion I heard about Nicole's intelligence and commitment and compassion and they were all right I mean we have

[271:00] two wonderful wonderful colleagues here who would who would both be wonderful mayor Pro tems um and I hope that each one of them has an opportunity to serve in mayor Pro Tem as a matter of fact I think all nine of us um well not all eight of my colleagues would be wonderful mayor Pro towns and I hope that each of you who hasn't done it yet will take advantage of it at some point in time um Aaron's done it um Jenny's done it uh Rachel is finishing up her service I've had opportunity to do that and the nice thing about our system is um we um it's one year term and it's not renewable I don't think that anyone's ever served Merit Pro tem more than once and what that means mathematically is is most people will have the opportunity to do that during their timeline Council and I think that's really great I think that's really fantastic um and so um I with all that said um I do think that experience matters there's

[272:00] two primary jobs of the mayor Pro tem and that is to serve on the council agenda committee which does require some experience because you're trying to balance agendas you're trying to figure out how long things will take you're trying to determine whether or not things are ready for prime time from staff and then of course the mayor Pro tem has occasionally asked to step in to substitute for the mayor and I think both of those responsibilities to require some experience and and Mark does have more experience than Nicole does at this time that's not say that Nicole won't have experience in a year or two and I hope that she does serve as mayor Pro tem and so for for those Reasons I'm going to I do support and I'm going to vote in favor of Mark thanks Bob others Genie yeah thank you I mean I heard the speeches given I have made my statement public on who I will be supporting which is my council member Nicole Speer I do

[273:01] believe my experience on Council has been enriched because of her presence here and another thing too when I hear a lot of community members said well this job is not political it is very political and I can understand if you're someone who's privileged and who so often you know it's always in an elevator straight to the top you don't have to advocate for your rights but for a lot of people in the community the everyday is political and I did not come up with that so with all that said I supported everything that's been said by my council member folkerts and I I'm voting for my colleague and friend uh council member spear I guess I can go I'm not seeing anybody else's hand raised so this has been a great challenge for me this process and this decision I respect my two colleagues here both

[274:00] greatly I think we would be well served by either of them in this role and um you know we we have had a process where council members have rotated through this role one year at a time you know the generally the people who've been around served the longest you know taking their turns in that role and um you know that's resulted you know Rachel has been the most recent Pro tem and has done a fantastic job I've enjoyed serving together and Juni was the one before that and also did a great job and before that and um and I think that that a primary value of that it's has not been to keep hegemony or the status quo um but to de-politicize the role and I know a couple of us served as mayor Pro tem when we were not in the

[275:01] political majority so we we would not have gotten the votes if it had been a matter of of who people were closest to politically but but were able to to serve and I think do a good job of of serving the community and we have such deep dysfunction in our governments at so many levels right now you know of course the federal government is torn apart um with divisiveness and dysfunction and and our state level governments don't do much better and one thing I've always been really proud of at the local level is that our councils generally work together well that we will disagree on an issue and then come back around the next week and work together anyway and maybe vote together on the next issue and I feel like we have been a very productive body in a Land of governments that are not productive and we're not and this is not true of all local

[276:00] governments there have been cities across the Front Range that have just been driven by Deep political divisions that have had 100 round votes for mayor's Pro tem literally um and so I've I've always been glad that our community has been able to take that different approach um and then you know the the biggest duty of the mayor Pro tem is to serve on CAC which I've done for you know a couple years over the last seven years and and when it comes to that it's it really is is like does this item need 60 Minutes or does it need 75 minutes I mean that that's really the main thing that you're deciding on and having been around a little longer is is helpful for that stuff you've seen more you've seen more hearings more meetings and you have a better sense in general of of how that goes so I think there is a real concrete practical value in having been um serving for a little bit longer uh when it comes to that role

[277:01] um so I uh I have been honestly losing sleep over this Nicole is a friend and a political Ally and I would love to vote for her and I hope to see her in this role in the future or another leadership role um but I think because of how our local system has been well served by the rotation kind of approach that we've taken I will be voting for Mark tonight and I am confident that he will do a good job as as would have uh Nicole if she had if she if she serves right so um so anyway there you are thanks for listening to me and again appreciate both of you for stepping up to serve your community all right I broke the gym loose here Tara and then Matt that looks like a fun crowd up there it's probably more fun than here right right so may Matt Nicole and Lauren came

[278:04] in at the same time we're the I guess the lower classmen is that right we're the lower we're the freshmen Mark Juni Rachel were before us and so how it was was Mark Juni and Rachel already took their turn and Mark hasn't yet taken his turn and the reason why I feel like Mark should do it is because you know what one day I'm gonna probably want to be mayor Pro Temp should I be voted in next year across my fingers and but if let's say we're on different sides but we're really not right because we all work together and we try to solve problems then I would love my opportunity as possibly the one that is most whatever box you want to put me in I still hope that I get a chance to um be mayor Pro tem try it out and see

[279:01] if I can actually say the word so moved in a correct manner so that's why I think this is a great system and I'm going to vote for Mark because I know it's not maybe some people didn't like that but it's kind of his turn and I look forward to Nicole in when we get our chances the Freshman of the city council it'll be her turn too and I'll look forward to that as well tonight I'm going to vote for Mark exterior that thanks Aaron um undoubtedly this is a difficult decision I don't think any of us take pleasure in having to decide among colleagues and Friends and and certainly I take no pleasure in it um but it certainly has to be done I'll speak to what I find is is interesting confluences of life

[280:01] which is how I got to know Lauren and Nicole and Tara when we all and Mark when we all ran this last election and it's funny how you learn insights as to who people are as people who they are as perhaps a potential political leader in our community and every single one of those of us that ran I grew a great fondness for because I realized that when the night that we won and we celebrated there was absolute Merit for every single one of you to lead this community at whatever height and whatever potential you deemed you wanted to Chase and I still think that that's true and I think that's true for the colleagues that are currently and have been sitting on Council that the Merit you get is by being elected to this body and that is all the Merit you really need to serve this community in whatever capacity um you choose to and are fortunate enough for your colleagues to want to

[281:00] support Nicole I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know you in such an interesting capacity of maybe we're competing because we're running for a seat to get endorsed to hey we're on the same team to we have to solve problems we have to figure out ways to reach Community go knock on doors talk to people and I've thoroughly enjoyed that and I've thoroughly enjoyed seeing you lead in this community and I know the sky is the limit there's no question about that and Mark I have gotten to see you on a couple different circuits and gotten to know you first of here's a person I've disagreed with to here's a person I'm actually thoroughly enjoying as a human being as a thoughtful individual and as someone that even if I might disagree with I know that there will be a thoughtful mean of how we could bridge that Gap and that is a really important value and I will say that you know an X Factor

[282:01] for me is the reason I will be supporting um mark because I think everybody is is on equal footing and deserving this is one thing that stood out in the campaign last year it's something that I don't think anyone else here has had to do in the same way Marquez stood up in front of his constituents his base the people that he knew he was relying on to fund his campaign and to get him elected and he stood up the entire campaign and said I am supporting the CU South annexation against every indication that his base of supporters would reject that he stood true to that and succeeded not only in getting elected but winning the highest number of votes and also we succeeded as this community because CU South exists today as an annexation agreement that we get to hold to protect 2300 people's lives the courage to do that to me is is is second to none and until any of us is

[283:00] faced with the Opera the the sad reality of having to face your constituents and tell them they're wrong I know the better path I think that speaks volumes for for for your courage and um your ability to sort of siphon through the hard decisions that we have to make so I appreciate that and Nicole I I appreciate seeing you in great leadership going forward as we serve in Cadence for for many years and certainly many terms to come is my hope so that's why I'll be supporting mark thanks all right Rachel you're back and clean up I hate to not uh say my two cents since everyone else has so I just want to say thank you to Mark and Nicole for running and to all the community members especially those viewers still sitting here uh for coming out tonight um I think that I'm I'm gonna support Mark um and and the reason I think is is maybe a little bit different than what I've heard tonight I I understand this uh tradition which I like many uh people

[284:01] who spoke tonight I'm not a huge fan of tradition for tradition's sake but the tradition of just um rotating this position on a kind of non-partisan non-political basis stemmed from the majority party shutting out the minority political voice to the extent that it was sort of rocking the pro-tem election and causing a lot of council Discord so I'm actually a fan of of that inclusivity of this position being one where a minority voice can be heard and I remember when Aaron was Pro tem and I was a Community member he was someone I could call and say this thing's coming to CAC and it's really important to me that it it not get um you know scooted down the line and and it does feel good as a community member when your minority voice is represented at that table that said politically because our our party progressives is in in the

[285:02] majority and Aaron's mayor nothing's going to happen at CAC that's going to block or stall Progressive agenda items so it is inclusive to have both sides present in my opinion and that's a tradition that is valuable and and I think we all can probably support the notion that um it's good for everyone in the community to feel represented um especially when with Mark as the number one vote getter he does represent a lot of people so um I will be supporting him on on principles of inclusivity thanks all right well thanks everyone for your heartfelt words and so I think it is now time for us to move to a vote so we have two nominated candidates so the clerk will now flip a coin to determine if we're voting in alphabetical or reverse alphabetical order

[286:01] very good so we will now vote on the mayor Pro tem nominees so all those in favor of council member Speer raise your hand I got three and all those in favor of council member Mark Wallach raise your hand I got six so council member Wallach has been selected as the mayor Pro Tem congratulations mark thank you and Nicole thanks again for your willingness to serve and if I may just say that I value your voice on Council in the community enormously and I look forward to it still being present and loud and so important so thank you you certainly can I saved up my words nice so thank you and thank you Mark for serving in this role really and thanks to everybody who made time to talk with me over the past month I just wanted to offer some observations about this

[287:00] process just for some future consideration the first thing is about the mayor Pro tem selection process like councilmember full courts I didn't know until recently that the mayor Pro tem has been based on tenure in the past few councils that was confusing to learn at the last minute so if tenure is the primary Criterion for mayor Pro tem then we ought to make it a formal rule so future council members and the broader Community understand how we are doing this election but we really may want to consider more broadly how we can clarify and improve the selection process especially with an equity lens having tenure be the primary Criterion for a leadership role in any organization has Equity implications and given that one of our City's core values is being a welcoming inclusive even diverse Community I think it's really worth considering how to revisit and formalize our mayor Pro tem selection process this isn't super urgent work but next year we'll be in a situation where at least three and maybe four of us will have the same tenure so it's probably something for us to

[288:00] think about sooner than later because the math doesn't add up and unless we're serving multiple terms not all of us will have a chance so that's kind of the process stuff I also just wanted to bring up some personal observations that for me kind of highlighted a gap in our inclusion not because of the outcome of this decision I really want to be very clear about that but just because of some of the comments that I heard from some of you while I was talking with you about my mayor pro-time candidacy in our conversations some of you told me I shouldn't bring up my queer identity because it makes you uncomfortable or you said it makes you feel like you're not supportive of the LGBT community if you disagree with me I also heard that I talk too much about equity and inclusion and that when I'm questioning the status quo I'm being divisive and creating conflict where I should be creating Unity so I just wanted to share a few Reflections about these comments and it's coming from a place of love for all of us and for our city and from a desire to see us be a more inclusive governing

[289:00] body first of all I am one queer person in a very diverse and very large community so when I bring up my queer identity it's because the experiences that I have as a queer woman are shaping my perspective on issues that we're considering it's not because the lgbtq community made me their spokesperson so I just want to give everyone the freedom to disagree with me without feeling like you're disagreeing with the whole lgbtq community second I want to share with you that when I hear you say that I shouldn't mention my identity when we're making decisions it makes me feel like I can't show up as my whole self that I have to hide who I am and as a bisexual queer woman I have always had to validate my identity it's a privilege that being married to a heterosexual cisgender man lets me hide my identity if I choose to but it's also a burden in that I have to constantly tell people I'm not the straight cisgender woman they think I am so I hope as we move forward we can

[290:00] encourage people to talk about their unique perspectives and identities so that everyone is welcome to show up as they are and if we're feeling frustrated with how often we're talking about equity and inclusion let's lean into our empathy and recognize that while hearing about people's struggles to be treated equitably is hard it's harder to live those struggles every day finally I shared with you all over the summer my perspective that conflict is important and necessary in group decision making and that it can increase Unity when it's done in a healthy and straightforward way it's always more comfortable to agree but when we're free to show up as our whole selves and talk about our different perspectives and healthy and straightforward ways we will be more efficient and better able to help solve the issues our community is struggling with and we can model how to work together despite having different perspectives I know we don't usually talk directly about each other on the dice but I wanted to tip my hat to mark

[291:00] I so appreciated our conversation about both of us seeking the mayor Pro tem position it took maybe three minutes for us to check in on how we were feeling make sure we would both be okay with whatever happened and agree to tell each other if our working relationship fell off at any point Mark you were honest that you'd have preferred an election by affirmation but you basically said I'll be fine you do you it was a great example not just of New York City practicality but of the type of honest efficient and inclusive disagreement that I'm talking about so thank you all for hearing me out thank you for your consideration thank you again to everyone who came and stayed up late with us really appreciate your voice and thank you all for working with me to become a more welcoming inclusive and diverse community thanks for that Nicole appreciate those words and I'll I'll just say personally and from from the seat that I'm sitting in that I do value

[292:02] your queer identity and when you bring It Forward I really do find Value in that I appreciate that about you and I and I'll just say broadly that I hope that all of us feel free to to bring our entire selves to the diocese into all of our conversations because we we all benefit when we hear from everybody and everything all aspects of their identity any other final thoughts but not too many because it's late yeah okay real quick um for anybody still out there listening the winds are far exceeding the windwarding gusts to 90 already at ncar um so be safe if you're out there um and batting down the hatches it's uh it's getting pretty nasty and will continue to be so probably till early tomorrow morning so be safe great well thanks everybody um you know for a good a good conversation and an honest one uh but of course we

[293:00] also um need to say farewell to our current mayor Pro tem Rachel friend who has been a phenomenal colleague over the last uh 54 week strikes he got two bonus weeks and uh right right you said you said you set records um and well it's not none of our first choice to be at CC at 9am on a Monday morning you showed up every week and done a phenomenal job so I'm really just grateful for that thanks Aaron and thanks everyone for the opportunity to serve for a year it was it was um Illuminating and I was happy to do it so thanks all right well I will now uh gavel is closed at 10 50 pm thanks everybody in safe travels back home

[294:00] [Music]