January 12, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[4:02] [Music] thank you [Music] and channel 8 is ready to go um so let's go ahead and get this started good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's study session of the Boulder City Council I am council member Nicole Speer and thank you for joining us mayor Aaron Brockett is out tonight due to a family emergency and mayor Pro tem walek will be leaving at 8 pm we have on tonight's agenda three items our first item will be providing an airport Community conversation update next we will have a discussion on the membership application to the Rocky Mountain Airport airport noise

[5:01] Roundtable and our last item is a presentation on community broadband we will start this meeting with tonight's announcement I feel like this should come with a song and dance as well but 2023 board and commission's recruitment is now open if you are looking for an opportunity to get involved the recruitment period is now open from December 19th through January 30th the end of this month you can find board and commission descriptions and vacancies online at bouldercolorado.gov boards Dash commissions if you have any questions or need assistance please contact the city clerk's office at cityclerk's office at bouldercolorado.gov or call 303-441-4222 thank you before we get into our work items I

[6:01] would like to outline how the meeting will be conducted we will first review staff's presentation for each of the items and then following the presentation for each item we will have a time for questions at the end of the presentation we'll conduct our Council discussion with staff if you have any questions for staff along the way please wait for stop to complete their presentation the one caveat that I will offer there is when we get to our conversation about Broadband I was given permission that if we have questions about technical terms if there is jargon or something that we're not understanding we may ask questions about those terms but please wait for more substantive questions until the end of the conversation now we will turn to our city manager Nuria Rivera vandermeid to introduce our first item thanks so much council member and uh I I will just say that the topic of the airport has been one uh that has been around for a while and super excited to

[7:02] be talking about it but just wanted to note and I'll send it to our uh interim transportation and Mobility director Natalie Stiffler in just a moment but wanted to lift up John uh the work that you've been doing with the airport I know you've done a lot of conversations and had a lot of great uh talks with uh the folks in the airport and folks in community and just um you know not all of that goes um is seen in the public and just wanted to thank you for all the work you've been doing in that regard so with that I'll toss it to Natalie first thanks Maria good evening Council I'm Natalie Stiffler the interim director of transportation and mobility and I'm joined Here Tonight by John Kinney the airport manager Allison Moore Farrell she's the project manager and Amelia Andrews from Kimberly horn with the consultant team that's helping us with this work I wanted to take a few minutes tonight to address a couple points that are important to highlight as we move forward with this process the purpose of the community conversation is to hear from the

[8:01] community about the desired future of the airport the ask for this came out of the Boulder Valley comp plan update in 2020 from section 6.23 where it states at the time of the next airport master plan the city will work with the community to reassess the potential for developing a portion of the airport for housing and neighborhood serving uses staff's perspective on this request and the comprehensive plan was that we take a step back to hear from the community broadly including on and off airport voices to understand Council and the community's desired future for the airport having this understanding prepares us to begin the FAA master plan in late 2023 the FAA master plan is a federally prescribed process that requires us to plan for various levels of capital investment in the airport staff wants to go into the FAA Master planning process with a strong understanding of city council and the community's desired future for the airport and this community conversation project will allow us to do so

[9:00] this is not a process to respond to individual requests for repurposing the airport or to noise complaints prior to this evening we heard strongly from some airport tenants their concern was some of the content that you will hear tonight and that was also shared in the memo I want to clearly state that the snapshot of feedback that was provided in your memo and that you'll hear tonight is just that only a snapshot for various reasons that Amelia May elaborate on we ended up only conducting a small number of interviews with off-airport stakeholders as we prepared for this item tonight so you're only seeing feedback from a small number of interviews there is much much more work to come we fully expect that there will be varying voices and feedback from on-airport stakeholders about the desired future of the airport that you are not seeing represented in the comments tonight for example we haven't had a chance to conduct interviews with the business Community we've engaged with John tare and he will be helping us facilitate those conversations in the near future please rest assured that we will have a robust engagement process that ensures all airport stakeholders are represented

[10:02] so with that I will hand it over to John Kinney to highlight a couple other things that we're working on concurrently with the airport Community conversation and we'll inform our next steps sorry Natalie thank you and uh good evening to the members of the city council um as Natalie described the community conversation as a preamble to the airport master plan which we've accelerated from 2025 up to 2023 and it's an update to the last master plan that was conducted in 2006 and is an IOU to the FAA the master plan's design and format will not answer all the questions of the boulder comprehensive studies ious to the community nor do airport Master plans in general Define the character of an airport complementary to its Community it's simply outside of the scope of an

[11:00] airport Master plans design and conversely the community conversation study will not address all the questions and issues of the stakeholders from on or off the airport excuse me a technical computer is freezing here good I apologize slow connectivity or something so conversely the community conversation will not answer the all the questions as well but collectively the two studies along with a future strategic implementation plan which mirrors an industry approach to how you operate develop of an airport through Community Partnerships and consistent with City vision's goals will and that Collective process begins in Earnest tonight with our presentation to you

[12:01] the exciting news is that the last time that this time last year uh last year the airport stakeholders and community members were passionately at odds it was simply cat dog data was absent from any discussion emotions ruled today solid operational and noise compliant data now exists it is beginning to drive discussions and efforts to identify problems causes and solutions this information is shared widely with tenants issues are quickly becoming identified by the tenants and solutions are just beginning to enter the brainstorming phase of an emerging group of tenants this was espoused at yesterday's tenant meeting by a pace setting group I believe this is progress I thanked him yesterday I thank him again today this I think is going in the right direction also serving as a preamble to the

[13:01] community conversation staff invited 12 thought leaders from the airport tenant group to join a technical noise committee and that took place in November we challenged them with reviewing the data and identifying how to best Fly Quiet over the city of Boulder while preserving their air safety enhancing community relations and retaining the success of existing businesses after three meetings of reviewing this new data which is now about six months in its duration they came back and said This is complicated but the exciting part is their narrative towards community relations started to change and I think momentum is building by the tenants to embrace a goal of creating long-term relations the data brought clarity noise issues at airports are not solved they're simply managed it is not an issue that has a destination but so long as you can get both sides of the coin to the table off your port and on airport

[14:01] with attitudes of I won't understand but I also want to be understood by both sides that is the secret sauce that brings success to community relations and ongoing operations of an airport and that's what this process is trying to get us to and I think that we've made some big progress in the last few months but we have much more to achieve completing the city the community conversation study and the airport master plan process will provide staff with a clear understanding of desires and vision of the boulder Airport from City leadership and the Greater Community allowing staff to design and deliver a responsive program for Boulder's bright future and allow us to make decisions and pending issues identified in the city council IP submitted to this body in October and access critical Grant dollars we're simply at step two of 20 with more interviews to take place as Natalie said

[15:01] that you then received the full 360 degree picture I'd like to introduce to the Boulder City Council now Amelia Anderson with the National Aviation planning consulting firm of Kimberly horn Amalia will walk the council through the specific engagement effort Amelia Anderson and listen Natalie I put it back to you uh no I we send it over to Amelia thank you John usually people have a tough time with my first name but my last name is actually Andrews so we're very close you did so good on the first name we're almost there on the last name John my apologies it's okay I'm just about to share my screen here I just need to be allowed to share my screen it looks like I'm not allowed to do that Emily do you want to present your presentation this is Elisha the city

[16:00] clerk do you want to present your presentation or do you want us to pull it up for you I'll go ahead and present it if that's okay all righty will do Emily we'll give you the option to share your screen thank you okay do that now okay can we see the screen John again thank you all right good evening Council thank you for the opportunity to be here with you this evening my name is Amelia Andrews with Kimberly horn and I am the project manager for the boulder Airport Community conversation project joining me this evening is Olivia Perez part of our community engagement team and Andrew Scanlon our Aviation technical expert thank you to Natalie Stiffler John Kinney and Allison Moore Farrell from the city for also joining us this evening we're excited to engage with the Boulder Community and City staff throughout the project during our presentation we will review

[17:02] the background and goals of the project and provide an overview of the community conversation strategy we're going to share this schedule and next steps and then allow some time for questions at the end let's dive into some background on the airport and the goals of the project the city owns the airport in partnership with the FAA the Federal Aviation Administration BDU is a general aviation airport that offers business private recreational and emergency response and Recovery Services to the City and surrounding communities it has two published runways and supports training flight schools and also has heavy glider operations John discussed the technical noise

[18:00] committee at length in his remarks the current work at excuse me the current effort that is being carried out will provide a valuable context to our community conversations building on the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and to prepare for the future airport Master Plan update we will carry out a series of community conversations with the Boulder Community to understand the goals and aspirations for the future operation or development of BDU we will conduct an engagement process that includes Community conversations with both on and off airport stakeholders resulting in an alternative analysis effort to provide a better understanding of the desired outcome of the airport foreign let's review the community conversation strategy in more detail again this effort is intended to provide a process

[19:02] to hear from both on and off airport stakeholders and the broader Community about their desire for the future of the airport keeping in mind the goals of the project we will conduct Community conversations with stakeholders we'll listen to understand the impacts on surrounding communities and the desires for future operations of the airport we'll also be very mindful of the city's racial Equity plan and are committed to meaningfully applying it throughout this project we'll collaborate with the City's community connectors and internal engagement team to get feedback on our process and hear their perspectives on the issues at hand the community conversations effort will kick off with one-on-one stakeholder interviews this portion of the project

[20:01] will allow participants an opportunity to discuss topics of primary interest and concern to them we received participant recommendations for these one-on-one interviews from airport and City staff during the meetings held so far which is just a handful as previously mentioned with several more scheduled we've asked participants if they had additional recommendation for other participants keeping in mind an equitable approach City staff has recommended names of potential participants to include traditionally underserved communities during the initial one-on-one that we have heard we've we've heard considerable feedback so far and again we've just had a handful of interviews this feedback is preliminary and we expect to hear much more feedback than this I'll call attention to a few items we've heard so far more noise restrictions enhancing flight tracking

[21:02] software capabilities more citizen involvement and accountability through restructured governance creation of a citizen board with updates to city council availability of web-based real-time flight data desire to remove leaded fuel from BDU enhancing safety of runways implementing lending fees rules regulations and leasing policies discussion of airport repurposing or alternative uses questions about the economic benefit and cost of having an airport we have connected with only a handful of people to date we are still in the process of collecting Community feedback from several other people we have prepared to meet with Council to discuss this process we have also been working concurrently to get our interviewees to the table it is Our intention to speak to both on

[22:01] and off airport stakeholders for this effort and have made progress in scheduling times with additional participants in the coming weeks in each of our meetings we're asking interviewees if they have additional participant recommendations using information gathered in the one-on-one interviews we will convene a community working group or cwg which will consist of key stakeholders this group is scheduled to meet in February April and May or a total of three meetings the composition of the cwg is expected to include interview participants from the one-on-ones airport tenants Aviation community members and underserved community members we'll host three meetings to create a discourse between all impacted groups further refine recommendations identify the alternative and optimally select a preferred alternative

[23:01] at this time I really want to stress that we are very early in the process we have not made any decisions as to who will sit on this committee or how they will be selected the selection process is still undecided and this is something we would appreciate council's input in as we prepare to move forward the interviews and the cwg will help identify a range of Alternatives and Define the preferred alternative in order to allow The Wider Community to participate in the process we'll host two public open house meetings these open houses will coincide with the cwg meetings in February and April using the information gathered in the community conversations will develop a range of four Alternatives these Alternatives will be mindful of community feedback state and local requirements FAA obligations and

[24:02] emergency support services from this range of Alternatives will optimally select a preferred alternative now that we've reviewed the goals and strategy of our project I'll briefly go over the schedule and next steps excuse me engagement will be ongoing throughout the project we'll also work we'll also be working on developing the Alternatives throughout the project as we engage with all the stakeholders and the public we will optimally identify a preferred alternative in May or June and will prepare to present to council with a final report in June for review consideration and potential budgetary impacts this slide is a more detailed look at all of the elements of the schedule I will leave it up for a moment for your review this will likely this really

[25:00] concludes what we have prepared for Council today and I'll just move into the next steps so our next steps either really highlight the next steps we will continue our stakeholder interviews which I previously mentioned and some have taken place with several more schedules we will then convene our cwg meetings followed by our public open houses all while a developing a range of alternatives we are our primary focus areas for the next couple of months and we plan to be back to present to council at a later date we'll turn the time over uh later our discussion for questions for Council from the council and I'll go ahead and pause there thank you looks like we have a number of questions and I'm happy to just call on people if that's the best format I can just go ahead and call on people but um thank you so much for your presentation I'm

[26:00] wondering if we could get the slide down okay sure I'll go ahead and stop showing thank you that was a little bit easier to see um so thank you so much for the presentation um and Bob do you want to go ahead with your questions uh thanks Nicole I appreciate that thanks thanks for being here or virtually and you and your colleagues I appreciate it um first I just had a suggestion uh as you go through this process over the next few months and just on some of the language you might consider using um um and then I do have a couple questions um I noticed that both you and and John um use the terms um on Airport and off airport stakeholders my suggestion is avoid that distinction um I don't first of all I don't know what it means I don't know if I'm in on and off I live I live near the end of the runway and I've been up in an airplane before I don't know if that makes me an on Airport person or an off airport person so let's maybe not make the distinction it also kind of implies an adversarial relationship between the off people and Beyond people so let's

[27:00] just maybe not let's just we're all we're all part of the same community so let's uh listen let's try to move that out of our vernacular the second is and I know this may be a foreign to somebody who doesn't live in Boulder but we don't like to use the word citizen we have a lot of community members who are not citizens and we don't make a distinction between those who are technically U.S citizens and those are not we're all community members so maybe um avoid that term as well a couple comments um a question uh two questions two broad questions um I saw uh in the memo and then on your slide presentation this this concept of a I'm going to use the exact words preferred alternative for future of the airport um I'm not sure what that means that kind of implies that there's something different going to happen at the airport so when you I heard the word alternative it sounds like we have something and we're going to go to something different so what is alternative to Preferred Future of the airport mean Andrew maybe you could help walk us through a bit of the Alternatives

[28:00] process sure and John feel free to jump in as well excuse me as we go through this as John articulated at the beginning the master plan process that will be a subsequent process to this is really prescribed by the fa and the the process is really focused on growth on the airport what this community conversation is intended to do is help understand what the community's vision is for the airport do we want to see a continuation of recreational activity at the airport but we like to see that transition into some more business aircraft activity that would help enhance revenues of the airport or is there an alternative option where maybe the operations are scaled back completely so it is trying to help frame what that vision of the airport would be going forward for when that Master Plan starts

[29:01] that's somewhat helpful Andrew but is is the status quo is that one of the Alternatives or is that off the table it is a potential we haven't defined what the alternatives are at this point okay so when we say Alternatives we don't mean to presuppose that we're going to do something different at the airport it just is we could do something different at the airport or we could maintain the airport more or less as it is is that is that my understanding correct okay good good it wasn't very clear from the matter and then you did um Amelia did you did ask for us to make some recommendations I I'm um a little surprised that we're gonna have our first meeting of this community working group but we haven't figured out how to convene them who they are um so you did solicit from us um input on on on who those might be that you'll point in the next couple weeks I guess so I'll give you a little bit of a list I have here on my computer I would I would suggest the community working group that you convene here in the next couple weeks include people from Emergency Services which are you which use the airport pretty extensively Wildfire flood rescue air ambulance you

[30:02] mentioned the business Community particularly as organized by the chamber I think that's great I understand that there's some interest in perhaps I'm launching an air taxi business out of our airport connecting to DIA and other places so that would be certainly something to be interested in hearing the scientific community of course has a pretty big presence there at the airport and they do a lot of uh scientific research around weather and climate change and emissions and I think CU even has a presence out there so I think having the scientific community at the table would be helpful um we'd use the airport pretty significantly for printing commercial um pilot student Pilots particularly younger people um so obviously having uh them at the table and their their flight instructors and understanding what their needs are including you know what times a day they need to fly given the fact that some of them are transitioning from from uh maybe a day job to another profession I'd love to hear from people I don't know if these are people at the working group but I'd love to hear from people who understand the future of Aviation

[31:02] maybe that's you guys as experts but I want to hear a little bit more about um you know what's going to happen in the next 5 10 15 years is this master plan enrolls as far as distribution of um of items um Air Taxi I mentioned um obviously there's a phase out of leaded gas which I think is great I'd love to hear more about what the future of electric um planes are and I've even heard that there's some interest in self-plane flying planes or automatically fine planes just as we're starting to do with cars and of course we have County residents who um even though the airport is technically in the city we do have a company a lot of County residents who rely on the airport for those emergency services so I want to make sure that we include the County residents both those who maybe feel their adversely affected by noise from the airport but also those who depend upon the airport for their emergency services so I think if you you asked me or ask us who we thought should be at the table and those that's a partial list I'm sure my colleagues will

[32:00] have other suggestions but that's um that's my input on on who you might want to make sure to include I would be I'll say it differently and maybe slightly negatively I would be disappointed if those constituencies and those cohorts were not heard in the community working group presentation that you make in in June so that's all I have for now thanks thank you council member Yates thank you Bob um and I also just got a reminder to have folks introduce themselves for people who are listening in the public just so so folks know who they are and also and I apologize this was uh my my misunderstanding um I was I was thinking we were taking questions kind of on the presentation itself but there are also three questions that staff had posed to us in the memo so I am going to drop these three questions in the chat I'll State them out loud here as well Bob I think you just you went through them all very concisely thank you um but so for folks who are responding uh if you would please just

[33:01] if you have any questions you know please get them out of the way and then I would like to focus on these three questions which are are there any additional stakeholder groups not already identified that should be included in the process do we have any additional feedback about the process defined here for the airport Community conversation and are there any additional conversations that the project team should be aware of so Bob I think you kind of hit hit on all three questions that um folks moving forward if you could address those three questions that would be very helpful that's just so we can give staff some very specific feedback there thank you uh Matt you're up next oh you're muted Matt ah that helps doesn't it um thank you for the presentation and thanks for bringing some of this information forward um Bob touched a lot of where I was going to head so I won't repeat that but just shocked me up for a ditto on just

[34:02] about everything Bob had said there um I'll add maybe a little color to a couple pieces um one in particular is just I I can't stress enough in reiterating where Bob was in terms of I think everybody needs to be at the same table and we need to not be dividing into groups for one that's I think where the best ideas are and some ideas might be given context of other groups knowledge and understanding will help modify one particular group's ideas so I think everybody's got to be at the same table it might take a little longer to synthesize things but I think the overall end product will be well worth our while um and then I want to sort of also piggyback a little bit on I just do not like the word Alternatives here because to me it's it sets up that we have predetermined outcomes and that's not really where we are so I think talking about Airport word Evolution or or modifications I think is a more palpable uh way to phrase things because the status quo could be this in which case

[35:00] Alternatives seem to rule that out by the virtue of how that word is defined and used so I think we can lay some of those semantics out a little little cleaner so everybody has a clear understanding of where we're headed and where maybe we're not headed or what is clearly unknown in the process um so with regards to the questions that sort of answers it's a ditto on Bob on a lot of that especially those uh groups if I mentioned um feedback about the process again bringing everybody to the table and the last thing is sort of additional considerations it's a question that may be related maybe slightly not um and and by we have some FAA related folks here at least know the process but would we go about engaging the FAA with regards to some general like safety concerns with not just BDU in the surrounding region one thing in particular in some of my experience flying is there's not a whole lot of coordinated communication because we don't have a succinct set of towers between BDU and a bunch of other Regional airports and so I'm wondering if there's ways in which um there's some

[36:00] greater communication because I do understand that for some Pilots that becomes somewhat of an issue in terms of understanding where they need to be in space and certain other interactions so um it might be a little separate but it might be part of that larger Master planning conversation we have is is how do we evolve that airspace to be a bit more safer and and dealing with the increased volume of traffic and use in that area and moving from What Might Have Been originally more of a rural airport to a more um you know really more Metropolitan but really a stronger municipal airport um and some of the amenities that sort of demand uh go along with that so that's maybe a future question but I just wanted to pose that certainly to John and um and others that are focused on those pieces as well so that's my input I appreciate it thank you thank you so much Matt Mark you're up okay um a couple things first I wanted to thank John for the efforts that he's making to create a better atmosphere and environment at the airport um it's obviously been the subject of a

[37:01] lot of complaints and I think the steps John is taking are going to be helpful I certainly hope they will be I would first suggest that we the term preferred alternative um is a little odd to me essentially I think it's our job to select the preferred alternative um and and that sounds like it's getting into the policy making that we ought to be doing um and with respect to the groups who should be at the table I thought Bob's list was um very comprehensive but it was essentially comprehensive with respect to those people who either operate at the airport do business at the airport and have a deep deep connection to the airport I would like to see some people at the table who are uh neighbors I'd like to see some people from Vista Village who are neighbors and have have felt disproportionate impacts from the

[38:02] airport and um and I'd like to see some people who might even consider an alternative use of the airport if you don't expand the group at the table you're going to get a fairly predictable outcome and I would like to see a less predictable outcome um one that is is not just put on our plate and said here we we've talked to a lot of people and this is what we've got so I'm I would like to see a much more diverse num a set of people who are participating in this um you know whether it's whether it's the Vista Village residence um or people who might have a different Vision or a different view of the airport and don't depend upon it for either their Recreation or their business because if that's the only if those are the only people at the table you're not going to get much in the way of diversity of thought okay that's what I got tonight

[39:01] foreign you're up next thank you Nicole thank you so thank you I want to first thank staff for uh the presentation and also the memo which was very succinct thank you very much for that uh I do have a question which as I was reading I didn't felt that was answered as part of the memo so I was thinking again for our community especially when we have fires my question if we were in need of a fire retardant plane I had to Google that um does it land at that airport because I know Bob mentioned the emergency services that as part of the use of the airport so I just wanted to know if also that's another uh that would be the airport that we would be using

[40:02] Judy so there's a variety of uh aircraft size uh in the fleet of the U.S forest services and its respective contractors the smallest of those aircraft you can almost think of it as a crop duster size aircraft and a lot of times it's used as an advanced spotter for the larger aircraft to hit the target uh accurately but they also do drop retardant those type of aircraft as well as rotor aircraft of pretty much any size and I would think there's pushing probably half a dozen different types of rotor aircraft in their Arsenal Fleet during firefighting could also operate out of the boulder airport so a fair number rotor and a couple fixed Wing but for the most part the fixed Wing they're just simply too big for Boulder and they would come out of Rocky Mountain that has a dispensing mixing station already in place okay thank you for that and um I appreciate that so I have a few other questions as I was reading

[41:01] here's a question as I was reading you talked about consistent on page number three you talked about have Community engagement which I appreciate a lot you talk a lot throughout this really small report how much Community engagement that uh you intend to have as part of this process and including different groups of people of neighbors the underserved underserved communities and also you mentioned the racial Equity plan all all things that I believe are extremely important to us as a community uh but my question to you I saw as you were talking about underrepresented communities my question was what type of questions are people from these communities would be asked and I don't I want to be careful how I ask this question because I'm not saying don't ask them but I'm wondering what type of feedback would you be looking for from

[42:01] them because as I read the document and having been on Council for about three years and we've had this conversation before on repurposing the airport for housing for instance and reading this document that was not my impression and it could be as you heard tonight it could be the status quo so I'm wondering what type of questions I suppose this could come later but what will you be expecting from these communities I didn't get that sent from reading this document I'm just sorry I was on the wrong button there so we are trying to ask the same series of questions to everyone that we talked to in the one-on-one setting I was just pulling up my questions that I typically ask in those meetings but we ask people generally try to understand what is their connection with the airport you know are they a tenant do they live nearby whatever it may be we

[43:01] that's helpful for us to understand that context of their involvement we also asked them to think broadly about things they'd like to see at the airport whether it be same things that are happening or change and it is a very broad question so we we like to understand you know if they have concerns or if they have ideas to make changes and generally those are the questions we're asking people again some of the Comfort we've only had a few meetings with people right so far and the conversation are kind of just people elaborate how they choose to elaborate and we just make sure that we're asking very similar questions so we're getting that same set of information from everybody I'd be happy to provide the list of questions the council offline if that would be helpful I don't know Allison did you have anything to add sure yeah Jenny thank you so much for asking that question and um and thanks Amalia we have been

[44:02] reaching out to underserved folks in the community there's two mobile home communities near the airport both San Lazaro and Vista Village and we've actually been building off some of the work from the East Boulder sub community plan um even though the airport is not in the East Boulder subcommunion planet is adjacent to so um in in speaking with the project manager from from that project we learned that there were some conversations about the airport and concerns and um you know and so we looked into those comments and concerns and so that did provide some additional background um into some of the underserved communities that um that are are directly impacted by the airport so that was important for us to gather that understanding um and then and then kind of learn more from these um interviews and continue on with our engagement process from there yeah yeah thank you for that and I to answer your questions I just I agree um when it comes to the stakeholding and

[45:01] I agree with the list that Bob mentioned the business Community emergency Support Services uh flight instructors oh that sounds good but also I think Mark mentioned that earlier having community members as part of this process which you've already mentioned and you I looked at in page four you mentioned the common comments or aspirations and desired outcome most deaf certainly people who live in there this area we get a lot of emails from community members who are very unhappy with the noise level there so having them part of this process would be very important and also as I was thinking through this I thought maybe X because if the plan is to keep the status quo it could be ultimately how do we how maybe having experts in noise reduction when it comes to these

[46:00] flight patterns which you mentioned in the document you talked about introduce traffic pattern modifications so again traffic Management program having those type of people involved as part of the process as well because ultimately we don't know which way we could go but oh but hopefully as you consider this this uh process you you um you engage you know people from various parts of the community but also there is a balance I think that's another thing percentage of stakeholders ensure that there is a balance as you're considering that uh it's not heavily one-sided based on One's group involvement which is very likely you you know there are people who that's their job to get involved in um and uh government processes so reaching out to those community members who are at least likely to be involved as part of this process who are often the people who are most impacted by uh by living in those

[47:02] areas so yeah that is my comments and thank you thanks so much Jenny Tara you're up well first I want to take a minute to thank John and Natalie for teaching me all about airports for this past year and how much time you spent I really appreciate it there's things I never thought that I would know that I do know now so I am very happy that Allison already answered my question the only thing I was going to bring up I don't want to need to reiterate all the other things my colleagues have said but I have been thinking about the East Boulder subcommunity plan uh and how it how will the airport will affect it since we've started talking about these Boulder sub community plan because nobody on Council wants hundreds of more letters of people complaining so how uh we would rather fix the problem first so I'm very happy to know that you've already been thinking about that and I was going to say how are we going to

[48:01] know what they think ahead of time but I think you've already solved that problem and you are including people that are involved in the East Builder sub community plan correct but yes the project manager she's she's on the meeting right now actually she's on our um for the East Boulder subcommunity plan we've asked her to join our internal City team for this project so um I think she's probably one of the most knowledgeable city um City staff to to be sharing that perspective that's great news and since we are putting so much effort into housing into more housing in East Boulder it makes me very happy to know that we're going to be dealing with this now ahead of time and I'm hoping for um everybody involved to there's nothing better than a working group in my opinion I was involved involved in two of them before I was on Council and we actually solved problems and we worked together just like we and they were very specific problems so it wasn't General

[49:00] so we were able to really you know really hone in on the specifics so I'm extremely excited about the future of the uh working group and all that we have planned thank you Tara um does anybody else have questions otherwise I will just jump in with a couple yes Bob yeah thanks Nicole just a couple clarifications first of all I really appreciate Mark and Jenny calling out the community I I meant to include that in my list it was already in the list in the memo so I was trying to supplement that list but I should have mentioned members of the community of course members of the community to be part of a community working group and I'm glad that they clarified that the second is um we actually haven't received very many emails from community members complaining about airport noise in the last few months I don't know if it's the weather and people fly Less in the wintertime or or maybe this noise um kind of reduction committee has already started to take some effect I know that there's guidelines at the airport and I know this committee has been working on making sure to inform Pilots about what the those guidelines are and I just

[50:00] noticed a very significant Decline and we didn't receive a ton of emails from community members I've been on Council for seven years and they kind of pop up in little little bunches but we haven't received a whole lot recently and so John if if that's as a result of the group that you convened congratulations um we'll see if if that continues when the weather improves and more people are up in the air so I'll give you a two-part answer uh I think it's seasonality um I think you've had about uh 50 reduction in uh operations this last month uh but you still have a extremely high number of non-compliant flights having said that and and I'm only talking seriously less than a week in terms of this this shift by a group of of uh Folks at the airport which is just great you had two people from Gun Barrel write letters of compliment appreciation saying you're going east you're staying High we'll complain we don't comply but we'll also praise you when you do and it's it's that type of getting those very reasonable groups together in a

[51:00] working group that I think will yield the greatest um results so seasonality and uh awareness which is one of your most effective tools and one of the most probably low-hanging fruit that we have on this noise program is to heighten the awareness throughout the Front Range of Boulders issues and hot spots thanks John appreciate it very much all right and Mark you got another question or comment yeah just a quick question for John um I I think what what you're doing with with that group is is terrific uh but my question is if you have somebody who's recalcitrant or non-compliant do we have enforcement Authority or what is the nature of our enforcement Authority Mark I would describe the group as evolving and I think that we've uh uh got some traction uh after each one of those meetings we originally brought this data to the entire group

[52:00] without having a technical committee back in March and it was simply there's not a problem uh but In fairness and they had no data to look at it was just simply hearsay uh and and folklore there was four people complaining about the airport well then we started collecting the data and it was 80 90 100 120 people complaining and they got to see some of the complaints and some were very legitimate and others were just were were a little bit but the vast majority were very legitimate and as that Trend continued and folks started looking at the data they started saying you know we really probably should do something about this and we just didn't realize it was this bad but again the data was not available so now that you do have the data and you're seeing some very specific Trends and you're seeing some very specific operators or type of equipment or days of Opera excuse me times of operations uh you're starting to see that that 12-person group probably be unified about 10 out of two

[53:00] and I think that that was a eight to four before so you're you're just the momentum is gaining but you you not everybody has the same level of awareness or um participation level right now but we hope time will fix that and I think that this community process will help it because it's it's it's real it needs it needs to be addressed in any airport that you go to in this country uh that is successful it has a very strong partnership with its Community it's it's a necessary component so no I think that's great at my but I if you get to 12 to 2 um do you have any ability um to enforce better practices with respect to the two well the program noise available program at the airport is 100 voluntary because the f8 does not allow us to put on those

[54:00] types of restrictions what's interesting is you have in a variety of airports find themselves in that situation yet having some issues that continue and they don't have resolution to them so there is some uh legislation that is emerging for a second time now I believe out of Congressman Jonah Goose's office that is specifically saying let's increase the ability for smaller airports to Institute restrictions uh operational restrictions for those folks who aren't being good neighbors so I think the voluntary is still in place but there's um a fatigue setting in and what are that gains momentum into legislative action uh yet to be seen so that's that's kind of our the tools in our our quiver but you're also seeing the tenants saying we're trying as hard as we can we need everybody to try as hard as we can because it's not to say that the front end of the boat is going to sink and the back end is not going to sink it's not we we're all in this boat together and

[55:00] we either rise with the tide or sink with the wave so um I think time time is is going to be very helpful thank you John appreciate it all right I'm just going to call myself then for a few questions and comments um one of the questions I had is just about the process Alice we're bringing these stakeholders together especially for some of the folks that may not have as much understanding about the functions at the airport and things like that is there kind of a an introduction of the history of the airport its uses and things like that as part of these conversations uh as we talk to people so far there's been quite a decent understanding again just a handful of people we talked to but they've lived in the community for a long time and have their sense of history and so we haven't needed to have that but that's the reason that John Allison Andrew Olivia and I are all on the call because everybody brings a

[56:01] little bit different uh contexts of the conversation depending on what is needed at the time and so the intention is as we continue to talk to more stakeholders their knowledge and awareness of the airports going to be different and so the intention is to have that conversation in a very comfortable and safe way and allow for that to take place so my intention is if people need more information to understand the history we're prepared to provide that we have a you know a list of some general information about the history of the airport that we can we can give if needed haven't had to yet but definitely prepared if that's needed okay thank you um yeah and I can definitely see that as it expands out a little bit um you know for those in other areas of town who aren't that close to it we may not have a thorough understanding of all the different functions and uses so thank you um in terms of thinking about other groups to engage one of the ones I was wondering about was our transportation

[57:01] Advisory Board since this is a transportation issue what will we be engaging with them as well and then the other one I don't know that anybody mentioned it here but I believe it was Matt that you mentioned this to me about engaging our open space potentially and just thinking about kind of some impacts there that that also was leading me to one of my questions about engagement which is really sort of a question about how do we how do we get at um understanding the impact on things like the environment that aren't necessarily represented as a person or a stakeholder organization or something that we can go to um so I'm kind of having The Lorax Flash in my head of who's going to speak for the trees right so it's just that sort of thing and who can give a sense of the um of impacts on you know the environment or um just speak for that aspect of it because I imagine there are some

[58:00] emissions related things that impact on our air quality and especially for those who are living really close to the airport so just trying to I don't know what the answer is and I expect that you all know that better than I do but um who's going to be the The Lorax in this situation um and then the other question I had around that and and um Natalie and folks please tell me if this is maybe not the right phase for this question but I'm thinking about along those lines how do we get at the um kind of equity and social and economic making impacts both positive and negative of having the airport as well again these are sort of they're not necessarily at one particular group of people the sort of broader goals that we have as a city that are not necessarily around who is engaged but the types of information that we're getting from people or from the data that we have and I just wanted to Echo also Bob's comment about thinking about the future of Transportation so especially as we're

[59:00] moving to more of these vertical takeoff and Landing times the vehicles and things what does that mean for what's coming in the future because that's another group that's not represented necessarily right now in terms of airport users or people in the community but certainly one that's coming down the road and how are we engaging with those folks too so um that is I think everything then and I think we can wrap up this discussion so just to kind of hit on some of the highlights um we talked about some changes to some of the language that we're using throughout this engagement process um we gave you quite a bit of feedback on who else we we would like to hear from which groups to engage and I think overall what I heard is that we would like a very Broad and inclusive process here um and I think the other theme that I heard was not going in with a predetermined outcome but really being open about what we're going to be hearing from people in these conversations so um is there anything else that you all

[60:01] need from us on Council As you move forward foreign is on our list that remains Natalie Allison John I think we're good I think we're good thank you so much yeah I appreciate the feedback awesome well thank you and thank you Natalie John uh Maria meeting at Amalia Olivia Andrew Allison thank you all so much for being here and bringing us this information and including us in the conversation thank you foreign [Music] so next up then we have our discussion on the membership application to the Rocky Mountain Airport noise Round Table thank you uh councilmember Spear and because you haven't heard enough of them we will have Natalie and John continuing to join us in this conversation as we

[61:00] move forward Natalie thank you that's right I uh turned off my video but I was like oh right we're still going okay um well yes thank you thank you Nuria and this will be relatively relatively brief I just wanted to kind of reiterate the information that we submitted in the memo that Carl submitted to you earlier I believe last week and really the request is of counsel to consider participating in the Rocky Mountain Metro Airport Community noise Roundtable um and really you know the staff's interest in bringing this forward to you is that we've recognized that there are potentially decisions being made at the community noise Roundtable um that we're just not at the table at right now now other areas other local governments around the area that are impacted by our MMA flights Arvada Boulder County Jefferson County

[62:00] Lafayette Louisville Superior Westminster they're all at the table and so there's just the ask of if Council would be willing to participate in this and we can certainly John and I are available to answer questions if you have questions about what that would look like thanks so much Natalie well let me first start with um does anybody have questions for Natalie about what this looks like Matt you have a question two um I I would I guess it's sort of I would assume for some clarification that given that we'd be entering into an IGA would it be like some of these others external ones where it's a council representative and a staff backup is that kind of the structure you're looking at here John John I know you're more familiar with kind of the structure with the other local governments do they have staff backing up their electives yeah

[63:02] thanks Natalie Matt yeah you're correct yes you're correct the uh the attendees at the table are elected officials and then they lean on supportive staff for uh that role I appreciate that I I do have I have some comments but I'll save that towards comment period thank you um together questions is it possible for more than one council member to be on this uh subcommittee since we already have a heavy lift but also this is in terms of Hub committees but also I believe this is a very vital uh committee I think that if you're asking if you can kind of have a backup is that what um yeah I think that that is certainly welcome I imagine the other entities are doing that as well and I just make a I apologize can I make a clarification on that because if we do

[64:00] have two or more council members at a meeting then that could constitute a business meeting and may then need to be notified but if the question is whether or not um Council can elect um someone to be at the meeting and if they're not able then someone else can um substitute in their stead so it's not two at the same meeting but rather an alternate or a substitute correct I'm thinking of an alternate or even sharing committee sharing yes but not being there at the same time taking uh turns Tommy there yeah that unless Teresa tells us otherwise I think that would probably be fine Tara do you have any other questions your hand's still up so just wondering if there's more okay great um then let's maybe go first to the questions that staff asked us um and Matt I know you've got some comments but if it's all right I would

[65:01] like to do that just the questions first and then we can do comments after um so the first question was is Council interested in applying for City membership in the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport Community noise Roundtable could we get a show of hands of everyone who would say yes to that question I'm going to also interject that uh mayor Brockett said that he was supportive as long as we have a volunteer okay thank you okay so it looks like that's almost all of us not quite looks like we got oh okay yeah okay I think you know I just to clarify that yeah I'm kind with Aaron I mean yeah somebody wants to volunteer I'm not going to stand in the way but I mean I'm not enthusiastic yeah no no okay that's that's all right so but you wouldn't be opposed if somebody wanted to it looks like there's majority um of us anyway that are that are interested in having someone participate so the second question um and put your hands down unless you want to be selected as tribute does council have a member willing to serve

[66:01] as the city's representative should the city be granted membership so please raise your hand if you would be willing to serve in this role okay I see Mark you've got your hand up and um Tara you also have your hand up can I just say something Nicole yes because I have well I have Rocky Flats uh often on Mondays and Mark I know that you're often busy on Mondays so I would be willing to share be an alternate if Mark wants me to but I don't need to be Rachel you just put your hand up too um yep the other thing that mayor Brockett shared is that they are going to change the day that this meets but they don't know exactly when that will be yet so I don't know if I mention but somebody just said Monday and I don't think I'm gonna meet on Mondays okay wonderful thank you well so I think what I hear is that Mark is willing to serve in this role and Terry you're willing to be an alternate as needed

[67:00] does that sound okay did I specify that correctly Tara and Mark okay see you nodding and um does that is there anybody that um has an issue with that or objects to that all right silence so um I think then that that is your answer Natalie um so we'll have uh Mark as Welling if we are admitted and Tara will be an alternate as needed um and now open up for comments foreign yes Teresa um if this is I think that this would be an appointment um and so I would uh I would recommend that Council formally adopt this or ratify it at its next regular business meeting perfect thank you and is this anything that because we're saying it here um is that sufficient to get it on the next CAC on our agenda great yeah staff will note that thank

[68:02] you and matte I thought Mark was piping in there um and he even did it with Scout's Honor so I I really hold him to his word um uh well I mean uh the only thing I I just is there's um you know predominant departing traffic takes off on Runway 3-0 at Rocky Mountain and that takes them West right towards us so there's there there are a lot of limits with the FAA and the class B airspace overhead so I just want to go in it's important to go in knowing that there are a lot of guard rails already on what flight paths can and will be so just going in not thinking that we can pick and choose and paint on a map where where planes will go so just going in with those expectations I think is an important thing that there are a lot of very tight guard rails on where traffic can and can't go so just so to manage expectations on that I just want to just

[69:01] sort of point that out just um how that that Aerospace tends to operate um with the commercial traffic going overhead so just wanted to clarify that right thanks Matt and Mark uh yeah I I agree with the comments that Matt made I you know this is this is a um this group is going to have a fairly limited brief in terms of what they do and what they can do um it is not going to be a uh an organization that you know restructures airport operations uh it's to address noise and to the extent that we can find ways in which we can do that which don't run afoul of the FAA um you know we can do it but uh it's going to have a limited jurisdiction and as a community we need to to know that our membership in uh in this group is you know as Matt said it's going to have

[70:01] a lot of guardrails around it we'll do what we can do thank you Mark Tara yeah I only wanted to state that I I'm just looking to make things a little bit better and in every subject I think we can often make things a little bit better for the community members and that would be what I would be trying to do so but I agree with you uh Matt I know all right thank you um Natalie do you have what you need from us we do we'll take next steps and after the next council meeting to proceed all right thank you um and thank you for what must be one of the shortest study session items we've had so thanks thanks all right um we are running uh Terry your hand is up again is that an oh holding a new hand okay wonderful thank you um we're running a little bit ahead of time does anybody need a three minute stretch break

[71:00] I see some yeses so um let's maybe 7 10 and then we'll head into our Broadband discussion um so just take a really quick stretch break and I'll see you at 7 10. [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music]

[72:11] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

[73:33] foreign [Music]

[74:00] foreign foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] ten so we'll now move on to our community Broadband discussion thank you so much councilmember Spear and speaking of tributes we often turn to Chris messeck who is our resident historian for all things that happened certainly before I arrived and so we'll turn to Chris again to get us kicked off on the conversation because I believe Chris you're one of the last team members from those 2018 efforts it started so long ago so we'll kick it off to Chris but know that behind Chris our

[75:00] amazing team uh and I.T will be uh coming forward to also share all the great work that they've been doing Chris and thanks neria and uh yes I did have the pleasure of uh helping on our team uh last time we were uh intensively working on this so uh they asked that I kicked things off so I will do that very briefly um if uh Emily you could pull up the presentation for us um and as Nuria mentioned it's been a little while uh since we've been before Council I think the last time we were here was in 2019 um so I'm just gonna introduce our other team members and presenters and go over uh our agenda so if we go to the next slide uh first what we're gonna do is cover the Broadband ecosystem and really the fiber investment that has occurred in Boulder um and that's going to be presented by Tim Scott who is our Broadband project manager and uh we hired Tim back in I think it was 2018.

[76:00] um Tim's really an expert in broadband and in the Fiber space he was just concluding some work in Centennial we were lucky enough to snag him and he's been leading especially a lot of our backbone work and then second we're going to cover the approaches to community broadband and really the options that we've laid out for Council consideration and Mike Gian Santi our deputy director of innovation and technology is going to present this as well as the key decisions that are coming in the year ahead and our next steps Mike's really our key leader in this space in the department has been leading much of our Smart City work as well we're going to have Tim myself and as well as Mike and Jennifer Douglas who's our director uh and chief Innovation and Technology officer uh uh here as well and we're really teeing this conversation up today um for really an initial scoping conversation and really a framing conversation to make sure we're focusing on the right next steps as we dive back into this work and as Tim's going to

[77:01] cover there's a lot that's changed in the landscape since uh 2015 to 2018 when we were working on this and then some areas that haven't really changed but but some of the areas that have changed especially in Boulder is the private investment that our incumbent providers Comcast and Lumen or CenturyLink have made in upgrading their systems as well as um changes and kind of who the the service providers are nationally and the models that are successful so we're going to spend a fair amount of time on background and kind of context to bring everybody up to speed so with that I think we'll go to the next slide and uh we have three questions that we're going to pose for Council um we'll recap these again uh at the end uh so with that uh next slide and I'll turn it over to Tim thanks Chris uh good evening Council uh thanks for being here this evening I'm assuming everybody can hear me okay okay great um so yeah next slide please

[78:05] so yeah as Chris mentioned I'm just going to sort of talk about the a little bit of background and then bring everybody up to date with what's been going on with the current fiber backbone project in the city um which which actually started Construction in in 2020 so right around not long before covid rolled in but um started in 2020 and I'll give a little background and perspective to to that project and where it stands um so next slide please so um what are we trying to do and and really the the Cornerstone of the boulder project was to start with what we call a fiber backbone infrastructure and um I'll sort of outline why we started with the backbone itself um and then the longer term goal has always been to sort of understand how that fiber can then be backbone could be utilized to bring fiber to the premise

[79:00] so the goal to get fiber and and fiber I think now is become you know a common talking point amongst municipalities and Mayors um and is really seen as as the leading type of telecommunications infrastructure um and it's you know a piece of glass cable the it's an engine diameter and it's typically deployed underground and it's not a very gritzy technology so we don't talk about it very much but when you're driving around or along an interstate and you'll see the big coils of orange piping at the side of the road or in the last few years in Boulder when you've seen the orange and other colored conduits that we use on the big reels those conduits are going underground and and the city's fiber cable is being deployed within that two inch conduit so it's a pretty pretty slow pretty labor-intensive process obviously to get that infrastructure built but um you know as I mentioned you know widely widely regarded as as the new infrastructure of

[80:02] the 21st century and and really that's because it's got this ability to essentially offer unlimited data um so as we all know we we constantly consume more and more data and and fiber's really been the enabler to drive the capacity for us to consume multiple amounts of data whether that's at home on your computer whether that's through your mobile phone you know fiber has been pushed closer and closer to the to the user over the years and and is is essentially the the the the main reason we have both high-speed Wireless Solutions such as your your cell type services and you hear of things like 5G um these are all driven by fiber capacity even though the end connecting technology might be Wireless like Wi-Fi at home or your cellular service it's that pervasive growth of fiber and pushing fiber closer to the premise and closer to people um that's really enabled these uh

[81:01] different um this Immaculate sort of growth of fiber and and Broadband speeds that we've seen over the years so fiber is really considered the the Next Generation Um infrastructure for supporting um applications that demand High throughput um you know certainly at home we've seen how you know during covid when everybody was working at home and we had you know kids that needed video access as well that even our current uh infrastructure that we have today in the city of Boulder you know those that infrastructure was was was tested just like any other municipality across the country to support the ability for everybody to be home running videos and maybe kids running movies and stuff at the same time so if you just look at the right you'll see here how you know cable is the predominant infrastructure in most mid-sized cities and uh it has sort of served well over the last you know 20 years 30 years um and they continue to think of innovative ways to try to get more

[82:01] capacity out of that cable infrastructure but really you know fiber is considered the new infrastructure and the goal of of many municip municipalities has been how do they really you know figure out creative ways to bring fiber into their communities and again push that fiber as close to premises whether that's residential premises um or businesses um and and has this really unlimited capacity to offer gigabit type speeds that you've heard about from different gigabit communities and stuff like that so so really the the key infrastructure and uh the goal to to bring fiber um out to premises in in the city of Boulder so next slide please and and this this piece of it is is an interesting reflection and I think as Chris mentioned you know um a decade ago we wouldn't have seen this in in Colorado but but basically this is a snapshot of where you can get one

[83:00] gigabit Broadband Solutions sort of in the Front Range area and you can see that you know um there's a few sort of stars there that are that are clearly highlighted and and those are sort of neighboring communities that have brought gigabit Broadband Solutions um to their communities in some capacity maybe directly themselves or through creative Partnerships and you can see that within Boulder we have uh very limited number of units and availability for fiber-based one gigabit Broadband speeds within the city and I think you know one gigabit speeds is sort of considered the Benchmark today for any type of telecommunications infrastructure in a modern municipal polity so this slide is is interesting I think gives a good example of how other other neighboring municipalities have moved forward to to bring this type of capacity to the residents and businesses and each model is a little unique and each way they've done a little league but but certainly Colorado's been been

[84:01] at the Forefront of figuring out um different ways by which the you know the municipalities have been able to to deliver this next slide please and um you know this is an important piece and sort of hard to squeeze into to to our times tonight but um I think it's obviously important to take a little bit of time to talk about what we've actually been doing um on the what we call the Broadband or the fiber side within the city so in 2018 it was kind of kicked off the concept of creating this backbone fiber infrastructure um in 2019 we moved into sort of the design phase so how would it ultimately be designed and in early 2020 we got contracts done and started on the construction of that fiber backbone so today we've completed about 75 of that backbone so that's yellow infrastructure there is completed it's 100 underground it's all um being fine you know final sort of

[85:00] testing um and and what we call splicing which is how the cables are joined together and then you know it's important also to to point out that the backbone itself it doesn't just sit there in this architecture that you're looking at and not connect to anything we we have direct connections to over 120 traffic signals we have connections to some of the municipal buildings across the city we have connections to some Public Safety sites that were part of this design that sort of represents why it goes in the route that you see there so you know it was important that we spend a lot of time on that design and probably a good full year um and we've gone through the phases of connecting um those other what we kind of call Community Partners and City Sites uh to that infrastructure and and one piece I want to point out that I think is very important people often feel that we build this infrastructure and then you're not able to connect it to it in the future the whole purpose of building this infrastructure was to insert as

[86:01] many what we call splice points or connectivity points as possible so that it's possible to expand from this backbone infrastructure in the future whether it's to additional communities sites whether it's for you know some extension the city wants to do I heard an interesting discussion previously about the airport there are lots of creative ways to connect to the infrastructure so what we build today isn't what you get it's really just the starting point to figure out how we expand from that in the future so as I mentioned the the red area is on schedule to be completed during 2023 um we call that phase five and phase six it's our Canyon and Table Mesa rings and we have started construction there there's a lot of rock as you might know on the west side of the city which makes things very slow um but I do believe we'll get that completed in 2023 and that whole sort of 65 miles of infrastructure that you're looking there looking at there should be completed and in service by by the end

[87:00] of 2023. uh next slide please um so I wanted to take a little bit of a step back and and use this concept of of a road Network as an analogy for fiber infrastructure and what we're doing in in the in this in the city the highway is the fiber backbone that I just talked about so the highway with the green tip there is what we've been building since 2020 and we'll finish in 2023. so that's that's 65 miles it's a pair of two-inch conduits that are under the underground and one of those conduits has our our fiber cable within it the next steps or the next phases of the project will will really involve how how does the how does the side streets of of this highway get built how do these fiber laterals get extended from this backbone infrastructure into neighborhoods and then once you're extended into the neighborhoods how

[88:00] ultimately do you build the driveway so how do you get fiber drops to the specific residential premise or the or the business premises that you may be attaching to so that's why there's a question mark there because the decision that was made back in 2018 was let's move forward and fund and build the highway first and we'll have specific connectivity points to building the highway but that'll be the starting point for how we answer the the process of building the the next phase of infrastructure and that's basically being the side streets and the driveways so once you construct those side streets and driveways you know the real question is okay well who drives the car and and you can see our little graphic there so the car is meant to represent so who's offering the internet service so if the city's building or or part of of a plan to build fiber further out and you're connecting fiber infrastructure to business premises or or and or residential premises ultimately you subscribe to some sort of Internet

[89:02] service and that is is represented here by the car so who would that be in this Future model for the city of Boulder um and and then just on the right you know we think we've addressed the the question of who builds the side streets and infrastructure um obviously it it is an infrastructure that needs to be maintained um fiber itself is a very low requirement of Maintenance typically the Fiber goes into that ground goes into those two inch conduits and you don't really touch it for 25 or 30 years unless it's accidentally dug up but you know the electronics that bring all the intelligence you know that does need maintained and that does need upgraded and there is you know software and stuff associated with that and then as I said the last point is you know who provides the internet service or Services you know is it one car one new car that's driving around the city or is it multiple cars in this example um so I hope that's a simple summary

[90:01] um of um of of the new approach and what still has to be uh done to build from the backbone infrastructure and if you could just move to the next slide um and then just to recap and this gets a little technical so we're going to try to keep it you know really high level the infrastructure that we're building today the fiber asset itself is is known as a is a 432 fiber strand cable the key takeaway here is what does that mean it just means it's a very high density cable these fiber strands are essentially the width of a hair so um there's 432 of those in a in an inch and a quarter diameter fiber cable and conceptually why you build it like that is that those those strands or those what we call buffer tubes within the cable um can be used you can allocate them and they can be used for specific purposes so obviously in in this city example

[91:02] would be that you would have a you know an allocation of the 432 that would be used for municipal government services you can have further allocations that could be used for Partnerships and then in the example on the right here you can see we we're hypothetically taking half of that 432 and saying that that could be used for Community Broadband you know fiber-based Solutions using half essentially of the backbone that the city is building around the city another key point is this is completely hypothetical at this stage these are just ways that we felt the asset could be best represented at this stage um we do have fiber in use today by Public Safety already um but you know during 2023 we'll get into that sort of specific splicing where the where the fibers for instance for transportation will be specifically spliced to bring fiber connectivity to the traffic signals

[92:00] um so this is just in a conceptual idea um but the key point being that the infrastructure that we're building today is um is a very high capacity and that infrastructure that we've built that we'll be finishing in 2023 can absolutely be the starting point that we can use um as as the enabler for the pathway towards Community Broadband um next slide slip please and I believe I pause here and hand it over to Mike yeah thanks Tim and and good evening Council again my name is Mike Jan Santi I'm the deputy director of innovation and Technology I'm going to take you through the broad approaches that we've outlined for the future State Community Broadband options but before I jumped there I do want to provide a bit more context to the Broadband ecosystem today as Chris mentioned off the top it's been about four years since this has been a topic of council and obviously a lot has changed in the last

[93:00] four years most notably I think it goes without saying that at the global level the pandemic has exposed a massive digital divide and a need for Reliable high-speed internet to facilitate many of our basic functions including medical services and education services and even some basic Communications in an attempt to address this nationally the bipartisan infrastructure deal has allocated 65 billion dollars to expand Broadband across the United States the majority of these funds however are designated for Rural and tribal land uses in in Colorado our portion of the bipartisan infrastructure deal will be allocated through the department of local Affairs and the state Broadband office and that is slated to start later this year at this time we don't believe the city of Boulder will qualify for any of those any of those funds again most of them are designated for Rural and tribal land uses that we just would not qualify for

[94:02] based on our geography um moreover at the state level Boulder is absolutely not alone in wanting to take action to ensure that we have the highest level and most affordable internet options out there several of our regional neighbors including Longmont as many are aware Centennial Fort Collins Loveland have all worked towards some model of community-sponsored broadband there are in fact 30 communities across the state today who have implemented Broadband Solutions at the municipal level in some form or another um here in Boulder since the city began construction of the fiber backbone many of our incumbent providers as Chris mentioned off the top mainly Comcast and CenturyLink have greatly improved their networks and have made substantial Investments uh in our community here I will note that while there has been significant Investments by mainly those

[95:00] two providers our competitive landscape largely remains unchanged and largely remains sort of a duopoly with those two providers being the the main providers for the city uh we can go to the next slide so as I mentioned the digital divide is is obviously a huge Global issue it's also very much a local issue um as as many of you know uh we designed the city's Backbone in 2017-2018 to deliberately run fiber near Boulder housing partner affordable housing sites and to make connecting to those facilities easier in the future in an attempt to close our accessibility gaps today we're really happy to report that since construction of the backbone began in 2018 BHP has done some really really impressive work improving access to Internet services through some of the private providers in town and at this point a hundred percent of BHP tenants

[96:00] have access to Services through a private provider in their unit and furthermore with the support of almost nine hundred thousand dollars of City provided arpa funding BHP is or will soon be providing free Wi-Fi for their tenants in in the majority of their facilities this is over and above access to wireless wired internet delivered into the units that is available at retail costs of the tenants I actually just received an update today that nearly half a dozen sites BHP sites are at or near completion um of the Wi-Fi capability which again will be provided free to tenants so because of these great improvements that BHP has made we partnered with them last summer to analyze the operational and capital cost to actually connect BHP to the city's backbone of which there were some funds set aside in this in this initial phase to connect those sites

[97:00] we found that the service quality would likely be improved somewhat because we'd be delivering Services via fiber versus the current cable however the capital cost to connect all BHP sites would have been around three and a half million dollars and we would have seen about an eight percent increase in service costs at least in the preliminary years after doing this analysis coupled with a lot of our outstanding questions around who would foot these bills we decided in in concert with BHP to put a pause on construction of those laterals from our city-owned backbone to those sites until um Council had an opportunity to weigh in on our more comprehensive Broadband strategy for the whole community and that we had Assurance from BHP that the new infrastructure that we built would actually be utilized and would be cost effective for both BHP and the City um so uh during all that we also worked

[98:00] with BHP to make sure that tenants do have information about public funds that are available largely federal funds through the fcc's connectivity program that program provides um up to 30 a month discount based on income requirements um for retail internet services that those residents can can use to purchase internet in the private Marketplace um so we can move on to the next slide and so I'm going to transition into talking about the options that we presented hopefully you had a chance to um view the memo that was submitted and the options that we uh highlighted there we're going to review those uh now we can go to the next slide before we get into those the the first step in thinking about what role the city plays in this market is really to make sure that we're aligned around a common intended outcome and one of the questions we had for council tonight was

[99:01] to really weigh in um on on what we've sort of proposed here in some of the the minor changes that we've made from what council and staff would agree to back in in 2017 2018 and and so based on those discussions from 2017 and 2018 and how we've seen the ecosystem evolve over the last few years we believe that having a shared goal to achieve affordable high-speed fiber-based broadband internet accesses is not only achievable but it's absolutely imperative for us to remain a community that's economically vital vital and and highly livable and and Equitable both today and and as we move in into the second half of the 21st Century um regardless of what approach we take and again I'll go through those three approaches here momentarily um but regardless of the approach that we take um to achieving this outcome we really need to make sure that we're rude and some

[100:01] core guiding principles or what we had called objectives back in 2018 and these guiding principles are to ensure city-wide access to Services make sure that's being done through a competitive Marketplace ensuring that we're Equitable and inclusive in how we're delivering internet services uh making sure that we're future oriented and making sure that we're keeping consumer privacy at the Forefront of all the work that we do um we have proposed we're moving two of the objectives or guiding principles here that were originally drafted in 2017 um net neutrality and Open Access um we we propose removing here not because they aren't still Central to us achieving this intended outcome but really um because we believe they're a bit duplicative in nature with with the objectives of competitive Marketplace and Equitable and inclusive and we also want to make sure we're being concise that our guiding principles are measurable and when we think about the Three core potential approaches and when

[101:00] we get into future stages many more variations on those approaches that were achieving these intended outcomes and we're evaluating those approaches against something that's that's quite objective we can go to the next slide so when we think about how we're going to get to that intended outcome there's there's obviously a broad spectrum of approaches the city could take um and we've charted some of those um here across that Spectrum on a spectrum of a risk and opportunity we've seen various approaches taken even here regionally along the Front Range we've seen vastly different approaches taken along the Spectrum by some of the communities around us to fulfill very similar desired outcome that we have and so um you know all of these are very plausible all of them work in different situations it really just uh rests on Council and the communities appetite for risk and cost and the amount of control

[102:01] that that we want to have as a municipality um for Simplicity of today's discussion um what we've do what we've done is we've simplified all of these options across the Spectrum into three core approaches what we've called options a b and c um and you can see all the way on sort of the left side of the chart here this is the lowest risk also the lowest opportunity this is an approach where the city is is simply advocating for changes to public policy it's an approach where we would have very little control if any um council did make a very deliberate decision four or five years ago to move the city to the right along this graph um where we sit today and that's indicated by that orange um that yellow or orange arrow there where we do actually own some core infrastructure and we do actually act as a service provider albeit into a very very small scope of Partners and and to

[103:00] a small scope uh publicly where we provide public Wi-Fi via our our infrastructure downtown um our 20 million dollar investment in the backbone has really propelled us forward here um and it really enables much greater capabilities for us to serve the community so it really it opens up sort of the right side of this graph if you will um and that really brings us to what we're calling approach a that's sort of the first option that we're proposing here um and this is to be a provider of Last Resort for residents and organizations who are not serviced by a private provider in such an approach we would develop criteria for prioritizing requests for service and for determining funding mechanism to actually serve these constituents um as we move to the right on this chart we come to option b which as we'll discuss here in a minute is the staff recommended approach which is to enter into a public-private partnership with a

[104:02] provider who is already very proficient in delivering internet services and servicing internet customers a public private partnership can take on a lot of different forms and if Council agrees with our recommendation to pursue this option we'll be doing a significant amount of research over the coming months and engagement with a lot of the private providers in this space to understand what our specific options are as a city and then lastly as we move to the right all the way on the top of this opportunity risk curve is option C which is a fully owned and operated service that would directly compete with private providers already in the city and and this option is by far the most Capital intensive and risk heavy this is the city actually going and funding and building all of the infrastructure on our own and it also means we're going in and operating all that infrastructure as well which means we likely need to build

[105:01] out a new operational Department to serve needs from marketing new Services all the way to servicing residential and business customers when when outages might occur um however option C is also the option where the city contains the uh retains the most control um and so it's extremely high opportunity ceiling um and and and much higher opportunity um to achieve those outcomes um than the other two options just because of the control Factor so we can go to the next slide so there's a lot here we've taken those three approaches again and within each approach um you know like I said there are a large number of variants tonight's discussion is really intended to focus on Broad approaches and and just get staff working in the right direction into one or or multiple of these of these approaches um again A B and C option A is lowest

[106:01] risk it's also the lowest cost but it's also the lowest control as you can see on the bottom of the chart where we've outlined the ability to achieve objectives it's also low to moderate um on on all of those on all of those objectives options B and C to the right here I do want to highlight both options B and option C could include option A and that's actually what we're recommending we're recommending option b which includes option A so we would do a public private partnership and we would also um try to retain the ability to go and serve residents and businesses that are unserved by private providers approach B introduces additional risk for the city as we'd actually be engaging with a private entity we'd be more involved in the internet Marketplace however it's it's likely that the cost of the city remain quite low in this mod in this option

[107:00] we do in this option substantially increase our ability to influence service levels and the affordability across the city approach C is again the city operated internet service provider um think about this the way we deliver water utility today think about this the way that Longmont if you're familiar with the Way Longmont provides internet services to their residents um the risk here is the highest of these options it's Again by far the highest cost option there was a 2018 estimate that was done for the city of Boulder it showed that the infrastructure cost would be over 100 million dollars and again that was in 2018 so we'd anticipate if we were to do additional research on this model that that number would be more than 100 million dollars and it would also require an operating Department of upwards of 40 head count or so according to that analysis in 2018 to execute this

[108:01] model again however the the the the the the the control the opportunity here is the highest we would control our own destiny right we decide where to build we decide uh when to build uh we decide what price to offer to retail customers and so this model has the highest scores across our ability to achieve the objectives at the bottom we can go to the next slide so just to wrap up here um we can move on to the next slide we've provided a sort of a high level notional timeline just so Council has an idea of where we hope to go over the next year or so if you do agree to pursue approach B over the course of the next six months we would be conducting some some pretty deep operation model analysis which would include looking at our funding approach looking at governance models we would also be

[109:01] engaging with providers in this space via a public procurement process more than likely and that's so that we can really understand what options are out there for the city what what are what's the appetite of providers to actually come and partner with the city and use some of the infrastructure that we've now built to help to help us meet some of these objectives um again if we go this way we intend on coming back to council for another study session to review what we we learn over the next six months likely in mid to late summer which would then set us up to drive towards decision and public hearing sometime in Q4 more than one and next slide so I won't go into excruciating detail here but I just want to make sure we come back to our next study session with the appropriate information to start driving us towards the final decision so I would ask that in addition to our

[110:00] three questions to council tonight that you you absolutely weigh in here if there are other pieces of information that would be important to know about this selected approach or approaches that we can collect before our next study session with you I do want to highlight that for our recommendation of approach a and b you would hopefully see us back here in late summer that's what we would plan on we would come back to you with a notional analysis of how we would allocate our backbone capacity that model that Tim showed with a little bit more rigor around it we would be showing an analysis of City cost we would also be applying the racial Equity instrument to ensure that we're honoring our guiding principle of Equitable and inclusive services and again we would take a considerable amount of time to engage with private providers to understand what options are available to the city in this partnership model um if Council does wish for staff to also explore uh approach c

[111:02] um we will for sure need more time we'd likely bring in a consultant to help support our re-analysis if you will of of both capital and operating costs and a timeline of such an Endeavor so we'd likely be back to council a bit later in 2023 if if that is the case and the last slide just next steps um over the next six months as Tim mentioned we'll be wrapping construction of the canyon and Table Mesa rings of the backbone we'll be conducting our backbone use strategy analysis this operating model analysis that I mentioned and we'll be doing engagement with private providers assuming uh model B is our approach B is a is an approach that is of interest to council and with that um I thank Council for for their time and uh open it up to any

[112:00] questions and we can probably take the slides down thanks so much Megan thank you um Tim for the presentation really appreciate that um I am going to kind of pop some questions into the chat but Mark does need to leave us very soon so Mark I'm going to give you the liberty of commenting and questioning all at once everybody else I'm going to ask that we follow the format in the chat which is do you have any questions on the presentation and then heading into the questions um posed in the memo do we have any questions on work completed to date um and then we'll get into some comments and questions thank you uh thanks I appreciate that Nicole and thank you for that presentation um I'm inclined to um go with the option b choice but I have to ask um how did Longmont do it and how did they afford it

[113:01] also I think you are the most familiar with this based on your time here in in the mid-2000s sure I'm happy to to jump in and as we were studying in the 2018 time frame the communities that have been successful in deploying uh Municipal Broadband or or essentially City run Internet uh Services um we started to see a very common pattern amongst those and it's communities that had their own electric utility because that electric utility had had likely invested in um fiber infrastructure uh in the community a long time ago and they were able to leverage that infrastructure uh to get started and that is a big part of how Longmont has been so successful is they were able to leverage their electric utility fiber expand on that and then build out into the neighborhoods at a cost-effective measure Fort Collins the exact same thing um doesn't mean you can't do it and we

[114:01] did that analysis but it's part of what also led us to making the decision of building the backbone is every community that was successful started with a backbone uh in place and that backbone was a bit of a no regrets decision it can be leveraged for so many things and as Mike referenced just even connecting our traffic signals to fiber sets us up for uh uh better timing in the future when cars start talking to the traffic signals they're going to be set up ready to go so we're positioned in a great place no matter what choice we go down next uh but that's that's how some of the communities uh that have done Municipal internet were so successful thank you Chris um because I look at a hundred million dollars and I say that that's not a number we can afford unless we want to utilize a a very large percentage of our remaining bonding capacity and I suspect we have other needs for that as well um

[115:01] essentially if we do a public-private partnership where we're setting up somebody as a monopoly provider for Boulder are we not that provider would still be in competition with the incumbent providers assuming those incumbent providers aren't the ones we're in partnership with but those providers would have the right to use the the uh the fiber Network or they would have to provide it as they provided today so Comcast and CenturyLink both have their own privately owned networks um in the city that they're providing Services over we would enter into a partnership either with them or with a another provider to leverage City infrastructure and to build out additional fiber infrastructure to premise just so I'm clear you know if it were Century Link Comcast could still provide um services to say to me but it wouldn't be through this network correct in that example yeah okay but so

[116:01] that would be at an a competitive disadvantage given the speeds of the fiber network is that also correct in this hypothetical I think it would encourage them to invest uh more in their own privately owned fiber Network yeah okay um how large if we decided to go for option C a larger Department would we have to stand up in order to operate this system do we have any sense of that the analysis from 2018 uh came up with about 42 head count um we would look at that again if if that was council's desire but that's the estimate right now as I as I have to leave I will I will simply give the following comment which is you know everybody would like to see a city-owned system given the expense given the risk given the obvious impact it's going to have on our financing capabilities going forward

[117:01] um if we can get a good product through option b um I think that makes the most sense for us uh today at the end of the day we'll still have a fiber Network system um and I think it would make uh I'd rather have someone to blame if there is a problem rather than impose that blame on on our city Department you know Comcast CenturyLink have a lot of people who can jump to any situation and correcting any deficiency we don't um and if you see what happens when we have obviously we won't have this problem with an underground system but you know you can see what happens when we have large snowfalls and power goes out and and the like larger providers can bring in people from elsewhere and repair something much faster than we

[118:00] would be able to do on our own so um I am a an option b Advocate and on that note I'm going to say good night and I apologize for having to leave early but um good night all thank you thanks so much for being here Mark thanks for all your comments um all right for everyone else I'm going to ask that we follow uh the structure first just asking clarifying questions so if you have clarifying questions on the presentation um now is the time to ask those and I see lots of hands so Bob go ahead yeah I do have a clarifying question on the presentation because I don't I think we started in the middle of the story um so I'd like to have Council have the benefit of the first three chapters of the story which um were skipped over I know that staff has some back pocket slides and I'd ask if staff could present those as well because we started

[119:00] the history of the universe at 2018 and and of course this history on broadband with the city started in 2015 and a lot of things happened in 2015 16 and 17 which I think could have an impact on his decision that Council makes now on option A B or C and so I think it would be of benefit to councils especially those who weren't here in 2015 and 16 and 17 to hear what did happen and how we did try an option b in 2000 16 and how that didn't go so well because it sounds the way it was presented tonight it sounded like oh let's just see if there's Partners out there and we've actually been down this path before so could I ask if staff could um go to the back pocket slides and actually present the 15 16 and 17 history before we start talking about what to do from an 18 base yeah and I was just asked staff if um it's possible to keep it to like no more

[120:00] than five minutes just um so we can try to stay on target tonight thank you thanks Nicole and and Chris I think you're probably most poised to talk through this given your history yep happy to and as as Bob referenced yeah there is uh more history here and it actually goes back even further that there's a state law that uh prohibits local municipalities from engaging in the Internet space and we had to exempt ourselves from that state law but really the uh the Intensive effort started in 2015 2016 with really exploring there was a community working group uh Bob you were uh significantly involved in that as a council member um and um we explored lots of different approaches um we had a consultant on board to really help us explore we did an RFP for um uh for partners we narrowed that to three did further analysis and then

[121:01] um had narrowed to one and um I think and Bob correct me if I've got my history wrong here I think it was the week of the council meeting um that provider uh came to us and said I think we're out um there's a change in our business model we're no longer going to be uh in this space and so that kind of pulled us to a bit of a full stop um to step back and re-look at what do we want to do here um there really weren't any other good partners that were that were out there at the time that could uh potentially meet all of the objectives we wanted to meet so that's when we um did further business analysis um looked at different options that's when we really dug into this approach of starting with a backbone and that was the decision of then to proceed with uh the city investment in the the construction of the backbone so um that's the quick overview and Bob all happy to look to you to see if there's any key aspects that I missed on that no

[122:02] no that was a good summary and I can certainly answer since I was pretty intimately involved in that time frame I can answer questions of my colleagues but I won't take over the presentation but I did want to ask a question which I think you know the answer to Kristen if you don't I'll answer my own question uh because Mark referred to Comcast and CenturyLink which are the principal incumbents right now that provide kind of the low speed fiber uh connect well non-fiber the low speed internet connections to most of the businesses and residents in town and I believe in uh to create me if I'm wrong Chris in 2016 when we did do an RFP and we were looking for partners I believe that both Comcast and CenturyLink either didn't bid or they provided non-compliant bids but any of that they were not among the three finalists that we were looking at 2017 isn't that correct that is correct and the the I think as we've referenced in the presentation then when the city began and made the decision to build the backbone both Comcast and CenturyLink proceeded to make pretty significant investments in their networks in the city they deployed essentially

[123:02] converting more of their copper cables to fiber cable so what they call fiber deep that essentially enables faster internet speeds so they've made a pretty significant investment as Tim talked about there's super interesting research happening actually here and in Boulder County cable labs to try and make faster internet speeds uh occur over cable um we were just learning today from Comcast actually that they they're they're testing 10 gigabit speeds over cable so there's um there's lots of interesting research happening there um but we still have essentially the same two incumbent providers right now in the community yes great thanks Chris that was my recollection as well so I do have a couple of looking forward questions um we talked a little bit about option b and option C and Mike I got your point about if if we if we were to pick option b right now um you guys could probably come back to us with some response after you've

[124:00] talked to uh potential providers whether that's Comcast and CenturyLink core or the three or that we talked to back in 2016-17 or maybe some other people that are out there now but um but I think you also were helpful Mike and and point out that option but going down the path of exploring option b doesn't foreclose option C is that right that's right yeah we're really looking for a direction on where to spend our our time the next six months right and we think our time is best spent on on option b but it could be on option C as well and it doesn't preclude us from coming back to that um in six months from now if we run down this path again and find that the options to the city just aren't uh aren't attractive right no that's kind of what I assumed as well um and I know that if we were to pick option C right now you said you need a little bit more time which is understandable um if we did option if we ask you guys a bit on the path of option b tonight um presumably we get some free looks and some some good healthy information that would help us make a decision in the

[125:01] late summer about whether we wanted to go down the option the path of B and C is am I assuming correctly that that um responses from whoever you wish the RFP to would be helpful to inform a possible option C alternative would be decided to go down that path yeah I think that's fair to stay okay I I wanted to kind of understand a little bit better your description of of option C it was described alternatively as either high risk or very high risk um so I can see what you scared off Mark um but I want to understand why you think it's very high risk because I I see the Alternatives between B and C is largely financing Alternatives so I'm going to give you kind of a multiple choice answer here maybe it's it's neither one and you can give me a third choice is is option C that is the city building out the fiber Network and operating it is that cons do you considered a very high risk because it's a risk over the over estimating the cost to build that is we estimated at 100 million or 120 million it ends up being a lot more or is it or do you consider

[126:01] high risk because you're worried that our take you know you're familiar with the term take rate Mike right yep okay so take rates just how many subscribers you have and you have to make an assumption about how many subscribers will sign up to your service so you can kind of figure out whether you have enough Revenue to pay your your debt and your expenses so is is your your concern that it's very high risk that will make a bad assumption take rate will think it's going to be 50 of the community and only 30 subscribe or something like that which of those two causes this to be a very high risk the the cost to build estimate or the or or a misguess on the take rate so I'll start and I'll ask Tim to maybe add some of his thoughts just because he's seen this in other communities as well um I I would say it's it's Part B and then um part C which is one I'm going to Define for you Bob which is we're not in this business um the the city is not in this business today we don't have the expertise in houses so there's a there's a whole long list of really high risk um

[127:00] things that we have to do right around procuring staff to do this around just how we're going to do this as a city staff so I think it's probably more that c a little bit of B and certainly there's some uncertainty into the estimates of the capital cost right now just because we have to do more research that's what I think Tim I'd love your perspective on it yeah and then I would agree with most of that I certainly think the capital cost will be significantly higher than 100 million um you know we've learned a lot about you know the the last 60 miles of of getting fiber in the ground in the city and all the rock and obviously with a lot of you know issues around materials so it will be significantly higher than 100 million um take rates always a factor and you know the the two incumbents will will obviously want to to keep their market share um so so getting a take rate that works if your self financing is is always tough in a in a served City like Boulder

[128:02] but but I kind of look at the the third area for me that sort of Mike was alluding to I think is as as maybe the most relevant because you know it's that area where through the selection of a partner I think you're hoping to see some sort of innovation around what types of applications and services might be come to the network Beyond when we just think of internet today or even Triple Play so so really for me I like to think of it as a as a platform for Innovation and if we do this correctly and we look for you know a a P3 type partner that certainly understands the bread and butter of building a high capacity fiber Network and offering high-capacity internet services across the city to all-premise Connected premises like that's absolutely you know awesome and be a huge win but really then how does that new infrastructure get leveraged for the next 30 Years and and how does it you know dovetail into you know Smart City applications and

[129:01] services to um so I I think ideally that's kind of where we we want we want it to go um but obviously yeah the the first step is is building the infrastructure getting the take rate and and having an applicable Finance model that that isn't doesn't fall apart if you get 20 instead of 23 pay grade yeah that's helpful guys um is there is there a hybrid between B and C because I know you guys focused a lot in responding to my last question about the ability to actually operate um the internet service provider is there a is there a hybrid where between B and C where the city owns the infrastructure finances the build out but then brings in an operator not not to own the fiber not to finance it but actually operate the ISP so I know you you mentioned a concern about the you know Staffing up and the fact that we don't know how to run this and I guess Longmont and Fort Collins in Loveland have figured it out but maybe they're smarter than we are I don't know I don't

[130:01] know why we think we're down but um apparently we we're concerned about that is is it possible that we could bring somebody in maybe even one of those cities to operate the ISP for us I I can take a crack of that my um it I think that type of discussion can can absolutely come out of conversations we have around option b um you know I think there's lots of flavors of what that P3 partnership could look like the the the the issue and just adding to what Chris said about the long months because it's it's you know it's long month it's Loveland it's um Fort Collins right um yes they have the capacity because they have the electric utility but they also have a different model which is as predominantly aerial because they own the polls in Boulder we're 100 underground because we don't own the polls and we don't and even if we do down the road which I know has been an ongoing discussion you know we don't own them everywhere across the city so poll ownership is also a big issue

[131:00] um and in all those three cities they they own nipples right although we can do political agreements with Excel right I mean there's Federal requirements of a poll attachment so that's not a entirely a barrier right true it's not easy to do okay that's fine that sounds like it's more like a cost as opposed to know how I want to move on a little bit because um we um you guys talked about the risk whether it's a risk of badly estimating the risk of of estimating the take rate um wrong or a risk of just not knowing what we're doing um wouldn't a partner have some of those risks as well in other words if we're saying Jesus we wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole um because it's a lot of money and we don't know what the take rate's going to be isn't a partner going to have the same concern I mean didn't we have that same problem in 2017 when we couldn't find a partner yeah I mean they'll they'll be taking the in in in in the basic model of option b as I said there's there could be various flavors off it but in the

[132:01] basic model of option b the partner we we would be looking towards the partner to take the market risk of of the take rate um again I feel like since the conversations that Chris was alluding to in 2018 or 2017 when that original model didn't work it was very much built on internet take great only and I think now the Market's moving to a market where it's more than just about the Triple Play It's about the longer term as I said these you know how do they look to offer other applications and services that can be potentially new revenue streams for that partner that again may maybe a service for the city too or may not um but those those newer partners are looking at the best ways that they can Finance this type of infrastructure investment you've absolutely got infrastructure groups now that you know traditionally do tollways and and uh or real systems that are looking at you

[133:00] know the infrastructure investment for fiber and looking at that as a 30-year type fiber investment um but then often with that type of partner they are working with the more creative applications and services Partners so how does this new infrastructure be financed correctly be maintained correctly but offer new and existing applications and services over and above you know the basic stuff you expect to see on home internet for instance okay that's good Tim I'll pause there and turn into my colleagues um I'll probably come up with comments later thanks thanks Bob um all right so clarifying questions on the presentation or the work completed to date um or the current Broadband ecosystem met all right I think Rachel and Lauren are ahead of me on the screen so I just want to give a deference to them oh okay sorry not it's not showing up that way on my screen so no worries all right um thanks Matt so a couple

[134:01] questions first on the slide and in the presentation where it shows the backbone Loops I think I know the answer but just want to make sure you don't have to be inside the loops to to get quality service right there's a fair number of residences which are going to be outside those loops and I'm I'm assuming it just sort of you have to be close enough to the backbone to sort of have something go left or right north south east west from you don't have to be inside the loop is that accurate that's correct yes that's correct and obviously you're really built You're Building sub Loops from that backbone infrastructure so so that's the next piece of the infrastructure build is how do those sub Loops get you know funded and created is that the city doing it or through this partnership okay thanks um next question is on previous engagement this feels like a pretty big fork in the road and while this does not have like the big environmental impact I think that um the the muni issue had we did see that there's a a pretty large interest in

[135:01] community members for city-owned utilities generally speaking I'm just wondering what what the engagement has looked like what have we heard from the community on option A B and C if anything we have not done any formal Community engagement on these three options yet Rachel okay um I'll hold that for for uh comments then and then um I'm sorry this might be a little bit duplicative of some of what Bob was asking which was some of that was I think a little bit over my head on technical stuff but we we saw that slide with like the the backbone that was a highway and then um you had the side streets that were I don't know a different type of of fiber Outreach and then driveways which was like the equivalent of the internet coming right into your house um and so the the fiber laterals I think is what it was called um I'm I'm not this is not an area of expertise for me

[136:00] 5G but with new 5G technology um rolling out and whatever is going to come after that do we really need fiber to roll into everyone's home with these laterals or like is the 100 million dollars that was anticipated for getting fiber to reach every house still going to be needed in 20 50. is that is it is the analysis the same or have we maybe gotten different Technologies than when we started this process in 2015 and last looked at it closely in 2018. Tim do you want to take this one yeah um so so let me answer it specifically like on the 5G questions so so basically you know 5G as I think most because I've been answering that topic for three or four years you know it's been a really good kind of marketing Story by by all your all the wireless carriers um it is available in certain what we call NFL cities in certain places and stuff and I'm sure at some point it'll be available in certain areas in Boulder

[137:02] it kind of goes back to to the same issue of of the situation we're in where we have sort of two incumbents today and we don't really have any control or influence over where they build and what they offer in the in the wireless world with the cellular carriers it's the same thing like we we won't be able to tell them where to offer 5G or you know if they do it on Pearl Street only then what about everybody else in the city that you know can't get access to 5G so uh you know 5G is coming it's evolving and and it is a definitely a a faster you know play for for your cell phone but um you know I I it is not meant as a technology to replace home broadband that's for sure and really the purpose of this is how do we get fiber deeper in our community to businesses to premises and and actually the fiber that the city owns you know down the road if if the console ever wanted to support it your

[138:01] 5G Wireless Technologies are reliant on that fiber to transport traffic around the city and out of the city so ultimately the fiber asset itself you know could one day support further Wireless Technologies such as 5G if console ever decided that was a pathway that I wanted to go on so we don't see thanks for that we don't see something coming down the pike that will make it so that all you really need is a backbone and then you won't need fiber or some sort of brown bed and Broadband going into each house because that again lame but I have read that like we should be able to sort of blast off of something that's nearby us unfortunately unfortunately not there are a couple of cities that have done creative Wireless Solutions again not to every premise by any stretch of imagination but let's say they have a certain area of their city that they want to low income or something and they want to do some sort of high-speed Wireless and and they've had fiber assets to do that they've been able to put that together and make that work but

[139:01] again it wouldn't be a city-wide strategy and it wouldn't um you run into other issues such as you know we've talked about polls earlier as well you know Wireless is is requires high visibility you know so you again you're talking about then new towers to host host you know uh wireless equipment that has to be at certain Heights or on certain roofs and people don't want that so it's it gets messy um and and again it certainly wouldn't be a city-wide solution but in any means okay thanks okay all right thank you Rachel uh Lauren I think you're up next thanks Nicole um so when you were talking about goals you mentioned that it was important to have really clearly defined goals in my mind net neutrality is something that is

[140:00] clearly defined not just within the city but is this kind of an idea that is broadly accepted as clearly defined and so I'm wondering um what would be the harm of keeping that as a goal and why would we want to move away from that so the FCC a few years ago made a relay on net neutrality and and since then has has basically said state and local jurisdictions don't have any ability to influence the the definition of that or the acceptance of that um we obviously still believe very strongly that that's a very important piece to having a free and open internet for everybody what we've seen since that ruling from the SEC is is not um any sort of hiking of rates and in certain parts of the internet um and so it just it has become less of a issue just based on the

[141:02] um the experience that we've had since that FCC ruling in 2018 and we believe that it's very well captured under competitive market we believe it's very important it's critical but we believe it's captured under the competitive Marketplace objective that we have given that to be competitive and in today's market the provider likely will need to be not neutral thank you so just to continue clarifying that you didn't give me a reason that we shouldn't include it just that you feel like it's already included under the other items that's right okay okay thank you um in thank you in option A the city is serving

[142:00] residents or businesses that are unserved by private companies aren't they in that sense already going to be a PR a service provider at some level yeah and to some extent we're actually already operating in this model a little bit we have a couple agreements with partners of the city that are executing government services on behalf of the city that we're doing this for they're just in areas that run near our our backbone or other fiber uh infrastructure that we already have assets that we have and we're able to provide them service the same way we provide our our city facilities internet service so we're doing this in a very very small scope today um what we've proposed here as approach a um is we sh we need to more clearly Define how we would take folks into into that model how we would take residence and or organizations or businesses into that

[143:01] um and and what the funding model would look like for that and just how we would prioritize one over the other so it's sort of a small scale option A version of option C in some ways in a way yeah I think very small though just because of the fact that you could only really tactically do it from where the backbone is today because C still requires those sub Loops all those side streets that we talked about all those driveways whereas option A is just maybe a like we're doing a connection to build a rescue facility as an example which which you could serve easily with the dedicated fiber connection but not to like a community or a cul-de-sac of residence or something would be very different so that's a great transition into my next question which is sort of about the proportionality of costs so how like really ballpark what do we think the

[144:00] costs are of the backbone versus the laterals and drops versus um providing the internet service like as a proportion of the total cost is the backbone 10 and laterals are 80 and so you know like what what kind what does that look like I can start and Tim you can probably add a little bit more detail here uh the the backbone price uh we were budgeted for 20 million dollars um for that I believe we're going to come in a little under budget um or that's the forecast um right now maybe by a million or two um the estimates in 2018 were that the laterals and and drops to premise would be over a hundred million dollars so um a little bit more than 80 percent of that Tim I don't know if you have any additional detail yeah I mean I I think I think that's that's you know a fair summary obviously you know a portion of the the the

[145:02] driveways or or the drops are are based on take rate right so you don't build a hundred percent of those drops you build you know the 30 or 40 that say they're going to take the service and then you you incur the cost to do the drop to them once they say they're taking service um but I think at a high level that's good um you know obviously even during the backbone project we've seen a significant change in materials during the project as you know as we went through all these supply issues around the world so so that would be something would would need to also be cautious of um and then I think the other factor is is just that fiber construction or or infrastructure construction just for the next five to ten years you know especially in Colorado is is a very busy activity space and a lot of contractors are just booked they're just booked on

[146:00] other builds and other projects so it's uh it's a very competitive space and with all that Federal funding coming that's going to like for the next five to ten years foreign with those laterals and drops in option b who ultimately owns them and you know sort of what are if if we weren't happy with the provider that we initially start working at with what is our recourse How would we be able to go about potentially swapping or you know is that is that a possibility and what kinds of what would that entail yeah and I can start Mike I mean that's a great question and and really that sort of get the detail of what the potential partnership could look like um you know I feel that you know with any type with any type of partnership

[147:01] you would have certain expected service levels where you would want the opportunity to um look to regain regain that infrastructure um but but to answer your question I think the simplest way to think of who actually pays and owns the rest of the infrastructure so the the side streets and the driveways that we're talking about are the drops the the the simplest way to think about it would be that the partner that we would select would be making that capital investment to build that portion of the infrastructure and obviously that means they own that infrastructure but then the question would really become so in the in the details of the of the partnership you know what happens if they don't perform um do we have an option to buy it back you know do with an option to take ownership of it and and I we don't know at this stage but those are conversations that I've been involved with within other initiatives which have

[148:00] been similar to that um in some cases the the infrastructure will will remain there and they leave town and it's just a stranded asset that's underground but um but obviously yeah that would take some thought I think of the partnership stage thank you thanks Lauren um and I apologize Matt and Juni my panelists list seems to be a little bit wonky so I just want to check with you too I'm not sure which of you is supposed to be next doesn't matter to me go for it Jenny I'll I'll back clean up thank you Matt so I do have a question and I just want some clarity on my I just need to understand so it would cost a hundred million to operate option b is that correct option C um which is us doing it completely on our own uh the 2018

[149:01] estimate um was that it would be at least a 100 million dollars so we would have to um dust off that estimate for a more accurate uh one in twenty twenty three dollars but that's directionally right okay so yeah I'm sorry that's just for Capital expense excuse me okay yeah I saw that the estimate to be 138 million for option C and then I saw option b it just give more details as opposed to a number um but okay that's fine my question to you is will there be cost recuperation with the various partners because I was looking at the give me a second I'm looking at the uh memo and it talks about the different Partners right you talk there is the commute in the pie chart there's the community uh there is the purple which

[150:02] is uh CD services and then and the blue Shades there is rtdcu and then there is maybe BHP with affordable housing so I'm trying to understand will there be some cost recuperation as part of that process yeah that's a good question and I just want to be really really clear on on sort of our costs across the the two options B and C um C is the one that you noted Juni it's it's north of 100 million dollars is the 2018 estimate in option b our expectation is that the private partner would take on the bulk of the capital costs and so the city capital cost would be um closer to zero um on on that um scale so I just want to make sure that was that was really clear um it's your question on um how we would recoup costs certainly we don't have specific answers to how we would do that today but certainly that would be something we could explore the notional

[151:02] chart that you saw in the presentation that kind of outlines how we would use some of the the fiber backbone capacity for City Services and Partnerships and then Community Broadband those are completely notional um in nature and and not on anything that's been etched in stone but uh certainly if we were to enter are into some sort of agreement with RTD or CU or another organization that had use for our fiber we would certainly talk about with them how that funding model would look yeah and I think maybe my other question for you too is and you may not have the answer right now I'm looking at it and I'm thinking do we have a cd-wide problem when it comes to access to broadband I mean that is something again when we're thinking of equity that is very important when we're thinking of communities especially in the time of covid

[152:01] but I'm still wondering I can understand providing services to communities and businesses that doesn't have that access but I'm not sure if this is a city-wide issue I'm not sure I would characterize it accessibility as a city-wide issue there are certainly areas of the city that do not have access to even cable based internet fiber-based internet is not very accessible in the city of Boulder the private provider penetration of fiber infrastructure in the city is is quite limited yeah thank you so much I'll reserve my comments thank you Juni Matt you're up thanks Nicole um I see Lauren wants to use cert my cleanup status so that's all good um so um actually I'll switch my questions around because I want to sort of piggyback a little bit on what where the

[153:00] direction Judy was going you know my question was really going to be have we identified the need in the community um that that we really need to provide something that's missing and I hear that there are folks but but who are they how many I'm trying to one I I'd like to know are we talking about 800 people or 8 000 people that are missing connection because wanting to bridge that digital divide I know is a big focus in rural communities for obvious reasons but what is that digital divide here I just I'd love to know what that is um I don't know I see Lauren maybe saying that that was the question she was gonna ask so sweet we can stay clean up um so I just I think that's really critical for us to know so that depending on what option we choose we know what we're serving um but then also the Bob's original question to bring It full circle we also know what that sort of base of customer need is in order to sort of have a baseline of whether the numbers are going to work so I'd really like to know that need of of who's not being served um in that capacity um and and that going forward the other question I have

[154:01] um so it's a comment slash question but it's really just a follow-up that's a critical piece um the other one that I have is Bob was asking about sort of can we do option b and remain open to doing C well my question is what if we started at a does that become mutually exclusive of B or C down the road if we were to really sort of walk before but you know crawl before we run sort of speak can we do a and then eventually say oh you know what things are going well maybe let's do B and then maybe can we move sequentially or is there some linkage that that needs to sort of be different thanks Matt um I'll start with your first question on who's not being served so I don't have an exact number I know Chris if you have an exact number of households uh or not it's it's a very small number but I don't know if you have the exact number I don't have an exact number what I can share is when we were doing the the backbone work um we were able to to get access to

[155:03] CenturyLink and Comcast very detailed Network designs on that they shared with us and what it showed at that time is the areas in our community that literally had zero access to wired internet where our mobile home parks um some of those are due to a challenge of access because the the property owner wouldn't provide land access um I think some of those have changed some of those maybe haven't changed um but I think the other thing that we experienced through covid was um I think there were like 700 hot spots distributed in this community during covid which whether there is Internet available in front of that household and they did not um have access to it or whether there wasn't access to it um uh what we experienced is there is still a portion of our community that didn't have reliable internet when they drastically needed it I think if we were to uh if we're going to move forward that would be part of the community

[156:01] outreach we would want to do is to really understand where are the holes in our community who doesn't have access what are the drivers of that when we were doing the work before we we even did like a unscientific survey of the community of internet speeds just to see what people were getting versus what maybe the the package offers that you're buying um uh but that's some of what I think we would want to explore is um and to your point of of kind of maybe walking before we run that could be part of our partnership exploration as looking at is there a partner that just wants to fill gaps and holes in our community or to provide uh Services maybe they're even Creative Solutions as Tim described to mobile home parks maybe that's just one Avenue maybe another one is uh is looking at you know certain parts of the community or certain segments those are all sorts of arrays as Mike described of options within that

[157:00] approach B that could be explored thanks for that Chris um and sort of that second question with regards to if we did a can we also Reserve our right for B and then C later I mean can we move sequentially through that if we want in terms of researching these options Matt we we can do any and and all um and certainly the timing would would be dependent on on what we do when in terms of actually executing on them um I I would think that if we were to enter into a public private partnership agreement the private provider would want some language in there limiting the city or putting some parameters around what the city was going to be doing on its own again we don't have the details on that yet just given that we haven't engaged with the private providers yet sure but just as reversely we would put parameters on the contract to say you got to meet the needs and make sure accesses to everybody in the community so I mean it works both ways so I can't

[158:00] see us entering into a contract where we would need to then thus fill a gap that that provider that we've contracted would be providing so I I would feel confident on the on the two-way street there totally um I appreciate that the other question I have um is regarding some of these other communities I know that that their competitive Advantage is because they have they have their own electric utility and so they've leveraged that infrastructure but my question is how many of those communities are the cities actively still subsidizing the very service they're providing or do the numbers work for the city where they're either Revenue neutral or make just enough money to put away some for larger you know asset management or or upgrade so is there ongoing subsidies at in these communities in spite of them already having that that deep investment in their infrastructure Tim do you have any insight to this yeah and and Matt if it's okay I I won't maybe talk to any sort of specific name communities but but I would say in in

[159:00] general uh nationally um it's a very different landscape you know versus what it was 10 15 years ago where there was some issues of some of these early Municipal networks being successful um but today it's it's literally a little bit of the reverse you have some very large utilities on the on the Eastern Seaboard that have built um large fiber networks again with a similar you know the similar commonality of owning the polls owning the trucks and ladders and you know being able to deploy fiber just like they do electric lines um but they have you know gotten the take rates that they need to to to to do their funding and actually you know a couple of them years ago got got in trouble in the whole cross-subsidizing you know one utility to the other so I haven't heard that mention for for many many years and um you know the local models of Fort Collins and Loveland and um I'll forget the other one uh for Collins Loveland Centennial

[160:01] no that's not electric utility um thank you long one yeah those three have have been very successful um or at least what's released publicly those three have been successful in terms of you know they were going to spandex they were pretty close to spending acts and got the sort of the initial take rates and stuff that they want and have sustainable models um so I appreciate that um the last question I have before uh leaving it off to Lauren um is if if we chose to either to not pursue any further than the backbone or or stick with a limited version and largely it was going back to that pie chart of your 432 fiber it is this does the city have uh plans to monetize that extra capacity because we're not going to use it I would hate to see it Go unused and I'd love to know if we can monetize it or if we do do it in Broadband are we going to monetize any of that extra capacity in terms of

[161:01] so is that just part of is that part of our model Financial or just use of this infrastructure that we've provided is can we modify monetize it substantively is really my question and is there a plan to so maybe maybe I can start with that so I think that for me the simplest way if you're looking at that pie chart again very conceptual at this stage but the backbone infrastructure that sort of pre-allocated 50 of the backbone to the 216 strands and essentially that's what you would take to the to the table in conversation with your P3 partner is that we've already spent three plus years building this infrastructure we want this infrastructure to be utilized to offer um you know fiber to be built from it um and then you know go to premises you know residential and businesses the the question then becomes in in those partnership discussions is are you offering that as an asset to utilize because you want a gig service in the city at a price low

[162:03] price of X or you want 100 coverage to every single premise or you want sort of any of these gaps that we find or low income Solutions as part of the discussions or do you want to say we'll sell you 50 of the backbone and you can go build and do whatever you want like that's kind of the two extremes I think of the partnership model I appreciate that um that covers my questions and I'll Reserve comments for a little bit thank you appreciate it all right Lauren so I kind of wanted to give a little anecdote about use and need for this system because I you know we there is like the residential and what residences aren't served but just as an example you know even though my business is near downtown um our ability to work from home as a company is impacted and what kinds of

[163:00] work we can do by the rates and speeds that we get at our business location um and and the you know the costs of that so I think I think that as we think about wanting to reduce miles traveled and things like that that having this utility providing service ubiquity ubiquitously through the community will provide more than just internet at people's homes right it it provides more opportunity for how we work from home from what kinds of businesses can do what kinds of work here in our community and so I think yeah there's a lot there I also wanted to reference a conversation Bob and I were having Bob could you maybe talk a little bit about because I kind of hear this you know 100 million dollar number and people you know and a lot of concern about that level of expense but when you were

[164:02] looking at this before there was you know if the city owns the system we also um collect the fees for using the system right and so it's not just that we would spend 100 million dollars there'd be income related to that spend could you maybe like sort of frame where you got to in the conversation last time you had that and give a little summary I'm sure if your Council doesn't mind um yeah I I think you're absolutely right Lauren I I'm you know it's not just we spend 100 million dollars and hope for the best I mean um obviously before anyone invests 100 million whether it's us or a partner that we might be able to identify you'd want to do a little surveying of the community to find out you know what the take rate might be you're gonna get the number off a little bit you know you might as you might survey the community and and hear from 20 or 25 of them that they would subscribe to this faster service and actually get a 21 uh take rate or 28

[165:03] retriculate or some other number but you'd want to have a kind of an idea going into it I mean longmont's service for one gig is 70 a month which is almost a thousand dollars per year per customer right and so you know if we had um we have 46 000 premises that's residential premises in the city and then of course we probably have another five or ten thousand business premises uh Chris might know and so you know you start to get up into the to the revenue numbers of of millions and millions of dollars per year now you have to to pay those 40 some odd people to run the service you have to pay for the equipment there's a lot of expenses it's not just the 100 million dollar bill or whatever it's going to be but you calculate what The Debt Service is on 100 million dollars that's you know is probably five or eight million dollars a year depending on what our interest rate is plus the cost of operating the system and so um this is where the take rate number becomes really really critical because you can either be a very profitable business or it could be one that you

[166:01] have to subsidize to the tune of two or three million dollars a year it's not it's not a subsidy of 10 or 20 million dollars a year it's just not bad because you're only spending 100 million dollars on this thing so it's not like you can have zero customers because you wouldn't build it if you have zero customers and so you know if we ever get to an analysis of option C I'd want our team including with our partner team or our finance team to figure out what is that in a worst case situation high low high low medium um what's what's the subsidy is it one million a year or two million year five million a year I think that the earlier question was helpful about you know what is what is a costing Longmont and um and Fort Collins and Loveland and some of these other cities that are doing this what is it costing them they have some advantage in that they have you know an electric Network and they have a billing system and a probably a not a network Operation Center that they can they can double up on so they have some expenses that they some synergies that we probably we wouldn't have um but um I think it would be

[167:00] interesting analysis to say at various take rate assumptions 20 30 40 percent where where do we where do we lose money and how much where do we break even and where could we possibly make money because these cities are not dumb right they they have taken the Gamble and as far as we can tell it's paying off for them right they're not subsidizing to the tune of millions and millions and millions of dollars a year and so it's it's something that I think we would be foolish not to at least explore and evaluate um but I think you're asking exactly right questions Lauren is is not how much where are we going to get the 100 million um and how are we going to pay it back it's is what is it going to cost us on the annual basis net of the revenue uh it may cost us nothing it may cost us a little bit but we need to figure that out before we answer the B versus C question um uh it may be it may be smart for staff to do the RFP under option b and learn get some free information from potential providers although we could hear crickets too right because if we

[168:01] think this is dumb really smart people in the business world are going to think it's dumb too but if we hear crickets that's very instructive um and if we get some information we can use that to make a B versus a c decision later this summer so I think that's a great question Lauren and it's actually the right one to ask great thanks Lauren and Bob and um I think we're heading a little bit into comments this way so I think folks are getting done with answering questions and ready to move on but uh Rachel I see your hand out do you have another question maybe a colloquai I don't know if this is for Bob probably more for staff but um as I recall in the Excel settlement we specifically um negotiated to get permission to bury our fiber lines in with Excel when they were doing work um and I know we're looking at at um you know catching up on the stuff that wasn't done but I think also going forward anytime they're opening up to to Barry lines we're supposed to be able to go in there and do this so is that taken into account when we're saying 100 million because I would imagine when we

[169:00] looked at it the first time we had not you know gotten anywhere with this settlement and that seems like a big part of the cost Mike if you you want me to jump in here a little bit because part of what I want to caution on is we keep referencing this hundred million um that was a 2018 estimate um it's going to be drastically more than that if we were to look at that business analysis today um with the cost of infrastructure the cost of construction that's gone up um but I think it would be significantly north of 100 million dollars um that said yeah Rachel and and Tim maybe you can expand on this um as we've been doing the backbone construction obviously anytime there's a dig once opportunity where the streets open we that's a regular practice but maybe Tim if you can describe a little bit more of how we do that yeah it is a regular practice unfortunately the the reality is again unless it's new infrastructure it's

[170:00] really hard to coordinate and get decent synergies you know what sometimes happen is you know Excel has to put something in in one block and if that one block isn't you know on our backbone build and in a sort of time frame that's you know kind of applicable it's often really hard to to get that Synergy of co-building at the same time so um if you looked at if you fast forwarded to okay well you know what about all the other new infrastructure that has to be built now off the backbone I I don't know where you know where where that correlates with with Excel and if it does and in any way that would make a difference to the numbers um I would suspect it wouldn't um because I don't I don't know where you know you would you would be making the Assumption then that they're um they're putting in new infrastructure and it just happens to be along the streets that we're going to build on for for the neighborhoods when you say new infrastructure though does that include burying lines yeah

[171:01] that's what I mean the varying the lines I mean unless Chris I I don't know all the ins and outs of the Excel entitlement unless the the settle the agreement is that they have to go from all aerial infrastructure underground that maybe that is the agreement but I'm I'm not aware of that yeah there's some underground okay some undergrounding yeah all right well thank you everybody um that was really informative and Illuminating so thanks for all your questions um okay so we will now head into comments and discussion on the last two questions that staff had had for us so let's address the first one um of do council members agree with the proposed revisions to the outcome and objectives for the City's community Broadband initiatives and would that be helpful for anybody to see those again like just have that screen up or everybody remember them mostly all right um so I see a couple um and as

[172:01] you're you know giving your comments if you could please also give your answer so that we can provide some clarity for staff that would be helpful thank you uh Laura and Europe so I already alluded to this in my questions but I think net neutrality is a widely agreed upon term that's measurable and sets clear expectations and especially if we were to go with option b I think it sets a very clear expectation for what we um expect our partners to provide so I would like to see that um continue to be included in our goals great thanks Lauren I believe there was one other that was removed Open Access did you have any feelings about that okay great um Matt you are up next thanks Nicole um I mean again I kind of alluded to it with my question um I I we got to know the need um and so I really think it's critical that we study the spectrum of need in

[173:01] the community and that will inform us of are we are we going to be in the business of trying to provide to lift up people in need so that they have to bridge that digital divide are we going to be in that business or ask someone to be in that business or are we going to be in the business of all of the above do that and provide a cheaper alternative hopefully a cheaper alternative to everybody else and so so I think the identifying the spectrum of need and that's not just a low income like a business need to Lauren's in to Lauren's Point earlier I I think there's still a lot for us to know about what our community need is that will I think really help inform us of perhaps the right direction here um so so I think in terms of objectives I'd really love to get us moving on on identifying that and it sounds like to Chris's point that information might already exist with regards to you know maps from com from Xfinity or CenturyLink and so it seems like that information might be pretty close to our fingertips in terms of what already

[174:01] exists and then hearing from our community about what they really need I think that's going to be a critical part to help me identify uh where we go from here and with that Matt um so is there a proposed um outcome or objective that you are looking to add there well right of it's hard for me to evaluate any outcome until I have this information uh right so this is kind of the this is the horse and for the cart um yeah thanks all right Judy thank you I'll just give my feedback quickly thank you for the presentation the slides um I would say I agree with Matt I as I was reading the memo I I just couldn't pin down the need I see the pie chart but still that still a little bit not

[175:00] I suppose concrete enough and that in itself created its own problem so I think that we would need to figure that one out and also another thing I've been thinking I mean I've been on Council three years now and I'm option b regardless of when we find we um once you have the numbers I still feel option b maybe or best option because of execution because when I think of the city itself and even the some of the challenges that we face with Staffing over the last two years with kovid I I think option b makes sense I just option C seems to be more expensive and I did hear Bob's proposal of maybe somehow figure out figuring out the

[176:01] Staffing plan with option C but I still think option b is the best option again because I know as a community or as a city apparatus based on again being a council member I know the CDs strive to offer good customer service but sometimes we do fall short as well and and based on reading on the memo and also knowing what I know um Outsourcing part of this work to a third party seems to make sense to me thank you thanks Jenny I mean did you have any any comments on the the changes to the objectives like Lauren was talking about with the um net neutrality or anything like that uh no I'm not at this time no further comment thank you okay okay um so does anybody else have any comments about the um objectives and outcomes

[177:01] at the moment Lauren okay um so do people um so I mean I think I think we heard Lauren say that um she would like net neutrality to be to remain one of the doci here um do folks agree with that if you raise the hand if you agree all right that looks like looks like we got um a number of us uh that that would like to see net neutrality remain um as one of the objectives there um okay so last question I apologize we are going a little bit over our stated end time but we're still going to try to get out at a decent time so um folks you know if we could try to just keep keep

[178:00] your comments concise here um generally do we agree with staff's recommendation to further explore approach B provider of Last Resort and the public private partnership so as you're giving your comments please um also give a clear answer on where you stand on that even if it is a clear statement that you are not quite in in one bucket or the other uh Bob you're up thanks uh well first of all I'm I'm going to agree with with Lauren that we should explore option b but keep our option options open for option C um I want to play back uh I think um some of my early my colleagues earlier were answering the Wong question which is who doesn't have internet or or where's the digital divide the digital divide is moved from no internet versus to to um and and yes internet to low speed internet versus high-speed internet uh Fort Collins is offering 10 gigabit you can all do a speed test right now my guess is you're gonna get 50 or 100

[179:01] megabits and that's a fraction of that and so the question is not does everybody have internet the question is does everyone have fast internet and you may say well I don't care I'm I'm happy with slow internet and that's perfectly fine if that's what you're happy with but that's not the world and I want to play back with some of the things I wrote them down but but I thought some of the wisdom that that Mike and contemporated US Tim said the goal is to bring fiber to the premises in Boulder so we're going to Big fiber to the premises the question is not are we going to do that and do we need to do that the question is is who's going to pay for this is a financing question Tim said one gigabit is considered the Benchmark for internet capacity these days that's the Benchmark and and and uh Fort Collins is well beyond one gigabit there are 10 to 10 gigabits Mike said affordable high-speed fiber-based internet access is essential is absolutely essential and I think that's absolutely right and I think that that Lawrence said that as well I think that this bag's a really deep philosophical question what is what is the role of government right we've made some

[180:01] decisions this the city long before any of us got on console made some decisions about what services the city was going to provide and which ones we were not um and different cities make different decisions for so for example we've decided to provide water service some cities don't some cities do we've decided recently not to provide Electric Services some cities do some cities don't we don't provide trash service we let a private entity do that but on the other hand we run most of the parking garage and some cities those are run by private businesses so there's no right or wrong answer to this and the question I think we have to ask ourselves is is high-speed internet an essential um element of daily life both for residents and businesses if the answer is no the answer is no it's not essential and we're going to let the market decide whether or not to provide that that's fine that's there's nothing wrong with that answer I would point out however that we have two incumbents who have been in business in this town for many many decades who have chosen for their

[181:01] own business reasons not to provide high-speed internet not to provide high-speed internet this community that could have last year the year before year before they've chosen not to it's not in their financial interest to do so we can wait maybe in 10 years or 20 years they'll do that but so far they haven't and so we have to ask ourselves do we want to nudge that along do we want to ensure that people in our town just like people in Longmont in Fort Collins and Loveland enjoy very high-speed internet for their businesses and for the residents do we want to insure that is that the responsibility of our government or do we want to leave it to the market as we have for the last several decades um and if we're all happy with what we have right now and have our fingers crossed for a better day that's fine that's not proactive that's reactive and passive and as you saw in that map that the staff provided we're falling farther and farther and farther behind our Front Range peers if

[182:01] we're okay with that if we don't want Boulder to be number one we're number 10 or number 20 we're happy to be at the bottom of the list then we should um we should just stick with option A we can test option b I suspect and I might be wrong we'll find out in a few months that the answer to option b the RFP that we're about to issue is going to be the same as it was in 2017. the the the dynamic has not changed significantly now if people line up outside our door to provide that service and they're willing to invest 100 million dollars or so to to build that out and take the risk that's great that's really really fantastic um if however we get crickets I think we're going to have to take a giant step back this summer or whenever we reconvene on this topic and ask ourselves is this an essential service of government yes or no if it is then we need to make the investment just as we made the investment in our water utility and all the other services we provide if the answer is no we're going to leave our residents and our businesses to the

[183:00] market and let the market decide whether or not they have high-speed internet that's fine too that's there's nothing wrong with that answer it's just we just have to answer to our constituents when they want to know where's my Broadband where's the Broadband I asked for in 2014 when I voted in favor of this so that's that's our responsibility that's why they pay us the big bucks to make those hard decisions I am in favor of going down the path of option b if for no other reason to learn how much will it cost to build this out we say it's 100 million plus we don't know but you know what the people we're going to respond to RFP are going to know because they're not going to respond to the RFP unless they figure it out I think it's going to take a little longer than staff predicts but they're going to come back and they're going to calculate for for us how much is going to cost to build they're going to calculate for us what the take rate is they're going to calculate for us what speeds they can provide at what prices and then we're going to take that information and then we're going to decide do we want to let them do it that is them Finance it or are we going to do it ourselves and so let's go down the path of option b but keep our option C open thanks

[184:01] thanks so much Bob um Matt you are up next well that's hard to follow up um um you laid that out pretty well um I share a lot of those concerns myself um and so uh one rehash I think you said it well Bob um I I am okay with option b um for the for the reasons Bob stated and I share that same skepticism I'm not sure that four plus years is going to drastically change plus everything's more expensive now um and so I I I'm not sure we're gonna I don't I'm skeptical I'm also you know think it's important to recognize even though option C comes with the big price tag so does option b it's just we're not paying for it in terms of The Upfront but we're gonna pay for it in the rate they got to make up for that 100 plus million of infrastructure they're spending so so I

[185:02] we're still gonna pay for it I mean uh we're paying for all the infrastructure Excel invests even though we don't own our utility we pay for it in the rate base so you know just how many people can we amortize that cost over to make it work and that's that that's the numbers that's the math that has to make sense so um I I'm okay with b i i but I would really be curious about a fallback of option A but modified in a sense only and I say that because of there's there are definitely groups as Chris pointed out that are getting no service and and and you're right there it's mostly a low speed precisely but there are some that have nothing and I think at the very minimum we do have the role to make sure everybody is connected and I think if we understand what our default is of at the very minimum we're going to use this to just make sure everybody's connected and then we'll move on from there I I would love us to think about what that a modified is to

[186:01] get some sort of wireless tower at these near these mobile home communities where it's a concentrated number of people with no content connectivity I would just love to know that we can go that Baseline and then we can tackle these Hardware challenges uh overall um because they need to be connected um to our society so that that's my thoughts I'm good with B but I'd love to know what that sort of option a modified is um has a fallback for bridging that divide um because it does exist in our community so thank you okay Jeanette um Rachel I mostly agree with Bob and Matt um I guess I I a little bit feel like we're not quite fully baked um to make a decision tonight um like I'm not ready to commit to B I'd really like to know more about C before we go down uh you know 100 million plus dollar uh decision um I mean I like city-owned infrastructure a lot of the times you know I think that in the same

[187:02] um vein as we had a lot of complaints about Excel we get a lot of complaints about um internet providers Broadband providers so I I really would like to know what the community wants and I don't feel like we have that so that's a big piece for me of why it's not fully baked like if we ask the community prior to pandemic what do you know what do they think they need in their house for internet we I think people have uh probably moved on that point um and also to Bob's Point yeah I I don't feel like the need is at all vague we know that other cities have much stronger Broadband than we do um and given that we're a tech City at least to some degree I don't doubt that every residence in business should have improved access um and you know like with Lauren's example in my household we um sometimes are on both sides or either side of a virtual medical visit and if you're trying to to provide a service or like we are in this council meeting together somebody usually glitches at some point um in these meetings like we're at a time in in the world where we

[188:00] need really high quality um home internet and business and business out of homes service um so I I would like to get some more Community engagement but I I would not like to stall or delay this it's it's been we've all been sort of waiting and waiting and waiting for the city to get this rolled out to everyone so I would like us to move quickly towards the world class service that we're hoping to provide for Boulder and I would also like to know more about C and what the community wants that's what I got thanks thanks Rachel Lauren thanks yeah I I agree with a lot of what's been said already um the internet is a utility kind of like phone or electricity where because of you know the wires it takes to run it really isn't set up to create a competitive Marketplace very well right like the kind of line you run really dictates the speed of the service

[189:01] you can have so right now we have Comcast and CenturyLink and Comcast being on cable can provide faster service in a lot of areas of the city than CenturyLink can not but and so as the city has its fiber Network that's going to provide a different level of a different kind of service than those other providers and if we have a contract with one service provider and we have problems you know if if they own the last mile of connection we're really stuck with them as a service provider even if they're not providing the kind of service we want to see that we'll have a very hard time in my opinion potentially renegotiating contracts down the road I just see a number of issues with b and what it locks the city into the same way we have

[190:00] issues with Excel already I don't think that we want to put ourselves in that kind of position again and we have a great opportunity here to set up ourselves up for long-term success that doesn't mean we can't look at options you know I'm okay with us looking at them and especially in comparison to option C and what that would cost the city but I think we absolutely need to be looking at um option C A number of communities around us have done it to great success um I I would like to think that our staff and our city organization is at least as good as those organizations around us and we can do this at least as well as they can no I understand that there are different communities create different challenges but I believe that we can overcome some of those through technology or other means um and then you know I also just wanted to

[191:01] touch on risk so the building industry has a lot of risk in it when you push your risk off onto someone else onto a different entity they charge you for that they charge you to assume that risk and so that risk doesn't go away someone is assuming risk so in option b it's this other party and they are going to make us pay for that risk probably in perpetuity you know as long as they hold a contract they are going to continue to make money um off of that initial risk which as we've sort of discussed I don't think is actually that great I mean again a lot of communities are doing this um it is a difficult numbers game but I think that that is something that we can overcome yeah so I'm I'm a big supporter of option C um but open to looking at option b so thank you

[192:02] thanks Lauren and Rachel another comment I I can't remember if I shared that Aaron said he was in support of Staff wreck recommendation now I have thank you thanks thanks for putting that out there and um just a reminder since it's been a little over an hour uh Mark was as well um in support of option b um nobody has any other comments um I will go ahead with uh mine yes oh Tara go ahead seems to me that staff wants option b I don't want to I'm gonna I'm gonna just go with option b I am very excited about Lauren's speech it got me very excited I just don't know if we can do it I don't want to do something we can't say something we're going to do something we can't do let me come back and we say no we can't and then we spend all this money so that's my old comment really

[193:02] um I would think that Tim and Chris have their reasons for going with option b and not C so that's why I'm gonna go with option b foreign thanks Tara um and I kind of find myself agreeing with a lot of what other folks have said so I won't sort of repeat everything um generally just as where I come from um I don't really like having essential services in the hands of for-profit Corporations um to me as as Bob shared internet does seem like a basic human right that we all kind of mean to exist in our society right now and as with most things faster is better in this case you are better off if you have faster access so I am open to exploring um option b in line with staff's recommendation and what's going to be critical for me in thinking about how we move forward as we explore

[194:01] that option is how can we protect residents and businesses and especially those that are already vulnerable to um increased uh costs at others expenses or at others benefits how do we um how do we how do we have some guard rails in there how do we have protection so that this basic thing that everybody and every business in our community needs access to is is accessible to everybody that we do not end up in a place in 20 or 30 years where folks just simply cannot afford the prices anymore while the corporations are making massive profits so so that that's that's kind of where where I'm coming from and you know Bob after listening to you I was like you should come to the next DSA meeting and join us there um but just just really thinking about it I am open to be um and I I really do find myself thinking about how do we how do we

[195:02] protect people um from some of the things that can happen when we put basic um basic needs and rights in the hands of for-profit Corporations um Tara looks like you got another comment yeah I'm gonna change my mind too much pressure so I'm gonna go with B but maybe C how's that everybody because I want to be Forward Thinking and not negative so right I need to change my vote okay thanks Tara okay so um let me just try to sum this up um for staff so it sounds like we are somewhere between B and C um as a group at least the majority of us somewhere between BNC um we I think raised a lot of concern and some some points that we would like to have more information on when this comes back to us but it sounds to me like we have a path forward that explores being while holding C open as an option um yes so so I think when we come back what

[196:02] I'm sensing from from this discussion is that it we would like to have a bit of a comparison of BNC with some of the points that folks raised a little bit in terms of the the need in the community um and who the people are who are most in need as well as what the sort of long-term costs and how that that may all balance out anybody want to add anything critical that I missed you have to limit it to one sentence yes neria yeah and not and I will try to limit it to one sentence but mostly it's a question that's why you haven't spoken yet so you're good yes uh I appreciate that I think we're hearing it loud and clear as you summarized it I want to just ask uh if that impacts the timetable that you have presented in terms of coming back to council for that

[197:01] study session I don't know the answer that question so I just want to make sure that we're upfront about expectations I guess I just want to clarify with with Nicole your summary um I sort of heard him mix there from Council as well right we absolutely want to explore option b um I Heard um some say let's hold option C which we absolutely can do I heard others say hey we want to actually compare B and C with more detail on both of them the next time I come back so if it is that latter one um we we definitely will need some more time to investigate c as well in in parallel with B if it if it's not that if it's let's go investigate B first and get some information from that and we'll learn some more as Bob highlighter we'll definitely learn more about what that means for us doing it on our own then we could probably stick with a similar timeline to what we proposed late summer okay thank you Mike so let me just pose that question

[198:00] um to council so um who so so we just heard two clear choices right um we're either doing a comparison of BNC that's going to take a little bit longer or we are um ex going forward with the timeline exploring me recognizing that does not cut off the option for C so I think the question is when we come back to this do we need to have that comparison in place or is it enough to evaluate the and then move on to see if we decide that b cannot meet the concerns that we have so I will ask the first question um who is in favor of um having staff stick to the timeline that's here now in doing this exploration of B with the understanding that we can come back to asking for information about C after that initial exploration of B has been done can I just I'm sorry I apologize before that before you answer that I'm hearing

[199:00] from staff that exploring option C at the same time may add some Consulting dollars and so if that's the case I want us to be really clear about it so team this is the moment as people are considering both and and I I think that both Aaron and Mark would would vote in this first Camp so I'll raise my hand on behalf of Aaron for that foreign but I think um okay does anybody have a question yes sure everybody's really clear on what it is we're doing yes I just was not clear always seeing because I do ultimately support staff's proposal of option b so are we saying that it is option b that we're going forward with so I think I think we're not um I think we're not totally in a place where where we are answering that

[200:00] question um because what I heard from a lot of people is that we are looking there there is a flexibility in wanting to look at B and then potentially also hold open C so I think the question is do we need analysis of both B and C before we move forward with that or is it enough to look at B see where we're at and then um look at C if we need to at that point that's that I'm in favor of what you just said yes okay that that's the one that we're voting on now does anybody else have a question about that or a better way to State it open to that too it's kind of like serial versus parallel right you want to do parallel analysis exactly yeah I got me all excited about C and now you're saying you want to go back to B I'm no no we're not saying that at all yeah no it's not it's just the order that we're doing things in so I think what what we're seeing is that we are comfortable moving forward with staff's recommendation to fully and deeply

[201:01] explore B to come back to us in July because we're recognizing that that work of exploring B will also give us some of the information maybe not all but some of the information towards C we also laid out a lot of our concerns I think with being here that I expect staff and you can correct me if I'm wrong but I expect that you will be taking our concerns and incorporating that into your exploration of b as well so um whoever is comfortable with moving forward would be on as staff proposed on the timeline with our additional information sorry Lauren I saw your finger go up did you have something to add yeah I just wanted to kind of clear so would C be going on concurrently in the background during this or is that something we're going to decide on later no okay it would not because so but I think some of the some of the things that apply to C also apply to B right so some of that work will just

[202:02] naturally be happening as we're exploring B um I think it's just and then we'll vote on the future in the future if we want to still explore C well I think about getting all the information on me and maybe you know nobody steps up that they want to do it or you know we find out there's not as much Community need or something like that then then I think we would likely be making a decision to go in a different direction at that point so I think it's do we want to take extra time and ask staff to take extra time to explore both the and C to help us reach a decision or can we move forward with B now um on this timeline that has us coming back in July and then decide in July do we want to is be good are all our concerns met or do we need to think about C okay Matt and Rachel both of your hands are up which makes me think you may have some comments

[203:00] yes I did and then this all got this yeah yeah um in the uh what's this is really just a simple question we're gonna stick with the staff staff recommendation of the plan and the timing that's really the question and if it's the answer is yes great um we've learned that uh by doing so does not preclude us pursuing C and we can talk about and address C at a later date um and that that's that's really what the question is um so I support that um with my hand up on behalf of Mark my only clarify piece um in there was um in sort of that summary there was a lot of hey I agree with my colleagues I agree with my colleagues with a lot of those linkages and so I just want to really call out because it will probably take resources and so I want to be really explicit here which is are we going to take time to learn what the community need is here because that's going to require probably

[204:01] slowing down a little bit and so I just want to be really clear unless that was already baked into the plan which I didn't quite see that in the memo but what is the need from a business a residential who does or doesn't have service that information for me is critical from which to evaluate B and or C so I just want to be really clear if that is something my colleagues support then I want to know from staff is that can be embedded in the timeline or will that X extend because that needs to be some front end work before the other stuff goes on so I just wanted to get real big Clarity on that so that there's not an assumption it happens and then six months later we go where's the where's the survey from the community and it evaporated and that that's actually what my hand is up to if I can calculate on that it just that the summary indicated that there was support for looking at need and I don't know that I heard that from five people so I wanted to see a straw poll maybe because I don't I don't think uh Mark or um Aaron would have weighed in on that

[205:00] and I don't know that there were five of us here tonight who had questioned about the the need for this Broadband which I think was decided by a previous Council that we're doing this and the need is here and so um I wanted to get clarity on that too right thank you thanks for clarifying that Rachel um so we can have we can take um Junior Bob do you have uh comments on Rachel's comment yeah sure I do and I think I've heard earlier staff and I think Bob mentioned that in sorry Bob if you were not the person who mentioned we probably won't need know the need until implementation or after because people can say yes I would be interested in this and do they have to actually participate in this program right so ultimately we won't know the need 100 but of course I think as we were reading as I was reading the memo that's the question I had I was wondering what is the need that we are trying to provide a

[206:00] solution for But ultimately I understand that yeah we we will do the community outreach but coming to a concrete saying that okay this is how many people we will serve that might be more fluid than we expect actually thank you thanks Jenny Bob yeah I think Jenny and Rachel right first of all I'm not sure what what the definition of need is is it needed one gig is it neither 10 gig I mean like where are we going to cut that off um but I don't think we have to do all a study all we have to do is look right up the road at Longmont in Loveland in Fort Collins they have take rates of 50 60 70 percent their demographics are not much different than ours okay and so I I think it would be it'd be interesting we could pick a threshold and say what's the need of a hundred megabits what's it needed a gig what's either 10 gigs but you know what Junior's right I mean we're not going to know the take rate until we get to the take rate and so we

[207:00] we just look at our peer cities and see they're having fabulous take rates with very similar demographics um and the need is there because people have have an appetite for this at the price points that they're they're offering that so I don't think we need to spend a whole lot of time or money evaluating what the need is I'm not sure even how to define the need let's just go with what we're seeing in other places that's that's the nice thing about not being a leader about being a follower which which in this case we are is we can see what the leaders have done and what their experiences have been so let's just build on their experiences let's let's do the RFP let's see how many people respond and and then let's take a giant step back and decide what we want to be when we grow up all right thanks Bob okay and thank you Rachel for clarifying that um just that question so we can do crystal clear for stuff so um who is in favor of kind of exploring the need a little in a way that would take longer than what staff has already proposed is that anything that folks are going to need to make a decision um and Matt if there's more to that point that you would like to State

[208:01] please do I mean I'm just that qualifier I'm not sure I don't know if it will take more time that's that's the question so I kick it to staff I don't know if it will add more time I'm just wondering if we're going to gather that information um believes there's some mobile home communities that don't have any how do we know that do we know that for sure are there others like I mean this is just the Baseline stuff I'm trying to know if that's embedded in what we're doing great if it's not I'd like to know that that's all so I I don't know if it's going to take more time you know we've planned some Community engagement activities um that speak to that point um I don't know if a strong staying firm on July is is realistic if we expand those engagement activities uh significantly um but maybe we take an extra month or two um at most to make sure we collect all that relevant information if that's so desired all right so let me let me then ask that question um who feels that it would be good to

[209:00] have some expanded engagement opportunities foreign yes but I don't know that they have to happen to slow it down like I would like them to be part of the process but I don't know that it has to happen before B like Community engagement's not going to help us figure out what people are gonna you know whether they want to bid on the process okay so it seems like we are looking for a little bit more information but not um not to a point where we would be slowing down this process is what I'm seeing from just the majority it seemed like we had a few people who were interested in potentially a little bit more does that provide you Clarity staff I feel like we uh we went around a little bit there I think we landed on the staff recommendation um and and we'll just make sure that we're embedding some uh we'll talk through

[210:00] some additional engagement opportunities great thank you um okay so back to this point is everybody comfortable with moving forward with b um with the idea that that does not exclude C or let me say who is comfortable with moving forward with that approach all right we know that Bob and Aaron did too so I think that is everybody okay we got there thank you everyone did not have her hand up oh I'm sorry I'm sorry okay Lauren um you would prefer to have just to be clear both B and C evaluations at the same time yeah because if we're not doing them concurrently the pricing and things that we're not we're getting from them are not going to be the you know we're not looking at them at the same point in time the information is not necessarily directly comparable Nicole would you mind if I ask Lauren a question on that yes

[211:00] Lauren would you be okay I I I sure you're concerned I think you're you're right to raise it um would you be okay if if staff is part of the RFP also asked the responders to provide us their estimate of the cost of build cost of operations what assumptions are making on take rate what um a rate they would charge a different Gig throughputs if we got that information which I think they're going to do anyway the only question is do they share it or not but if we force them to share it would that help you and your analysis or our analysis of C yeah I mean I would like that better I think that in some ways that's a staff question right like does that get us closer to being able to make uh um a guess at what it would take for the city to do option C M response to that now sorry

[212:02] I I think it excludes in in Tim and Chris I'd welcome your thoughts on this as well but I think that it excludes the sort of operational analysis that it would take in the whole operational side of this it certainly would speak to the capital side um and what it would take to build it but there would still be a missing piece there to actually I think make a if you were looking to actually make a decision between B and C um it could be separate questions though too right because we could be we could look at them separately whether or not we want to build out the infrastructure ourselves and whether or not we want to operate it ourselves they're not necessarily intertwined it's fair all right Rachel I want to clarify and push us past 9 30 that I am where Lauren is that the question was am I comfortable moving forward with B I mean yes I'm not uncomfortable with this Council having done that we didn't have the votes to go BNC concurrently so I'm comfortable but my preference would have been BNC

[213:00] look forward to hearing back what the B result is all right um staff that I think you have everything that you need in order to move forward I think so and I appreciate it I appreciate the fact that what we're gonna get I think does move us forward on future conversations and so we know that we will take what we what we learn um and then we will come back when we come back in the summer um and have a more robust conversation great thank you um and thank you everybody for all of your questions and points and things raised tonight which hopefully will help staff as they're doing this exploration um does anybody have any other comments or things to close on I just want to say no Nicole I thought you did a great job tonight thank you I apologize for taking us 45 minutes late but it was awesome this is 90 minutes so

[214:01] um great no other comments or anything thank you oh wait I had one quick one which was just right when I got on Council there was a discussion about broadband and me and Bob volunteered to be um part of a team that would have discussions about this with staff and I personally would still like to volunteer to be part of that team so if as we move forward with this I think if it makes sense I would be happy to do that as would I um I looked to Teresa for it because if this is a formal subcommittee and those meetings need to be noticed so that's a very different conversation to be had versus some of the staff meetings that were that we're having but whether that has to be a topic of today's conversation or whether that's a future

[215:00] convo um I leave it but anytime we have two or more council members um that constitutes a need for a different kind of notification which which I think would sorry just jumping right in um which which I think we should also uh think through the implications about sort of whether or not council members can and should be involved in a procurement process which is not a public which is which is a closed process until it's awarded and so there's some complicated things to Think Through um so so we'll we'll think through those and get back to you I appreciate that Teresa and was not necessarily inviting that um for our procurement processes I think that's a very uh that's a very different conversation all right so what I'm hearing there um is that we'll get a little bit more information back about that and we can schedule some time if we need a little bit of time and a future meeting to discuss

[216:01] all right uh well with no other items unless there are other comments going once going twice okay just a big thanks to Tim and uh Mike there from Hank for hanging in with us so thank you guys thank you yeah and thank you especially um with a handful of us that are fairly new to all of this just really appreciate all the history and context and from Council Members as well as staff so thank you all right then um with no other items on tonight's agenda I will close this meeting at 9 32 pm have a good night everyone and thank you good night [Music]