January 19, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[4:16] [Music] foreign [Music] welcome to the January 19 2023 meeting

[5:04] of the Boulder City Council before we get started I'm going to turn to our resident dad joke maker thanks Aaron uh why didn't the Watermelons get married yeah the cantaloupe all right and on that note I will call us to order and ask to start with the roll callers my apologies sir I thought I had to announcement my apologies we'll start tonight with council member Benjamin present come here Brockett president councilmember Folkers thank you present

[6:01] friend I am president but virtual Joseph present spear president mayor Pro tem Walling present and happy to be here councilmember weiner present and Yates present mayor we have our quorum thanks so much so I'm going to get us started with a request to amend the agenda to make two changes one is to add item 1C which is a national day of racial healing declaration to be read by council member Benjamin and also to continue to the February 2nd 2022nd meeting item Alicia are we right and also to continue item 5B so continuation of the second reading in motion to amend ordinance 8556. so I moved second motion is second all in favor

[7:02] that's everybody the amend the agenda is amended so uh I have the great honor of kicking off this meeting with a Johnny Teeter and Matt Applebaum housing Legacy Day declaration Matt yes we're good okay that's loud um and this is a particular pleasure for me because uh Johnny and Matt are both friends of mine and I learned much of what it is to be a mayor from Matt's example he's been a mentor and a friend for a long time okay so Johnny Teeter and Matt Applebaum housing Legacy Day Matt Applebaum and Johnny Teeter have selflessly decided to donate a home to benefit affordable home ownership through the housing Legacy program their legacy will grow and endure through their contribution to affordable

[8:00] housing in Boulder the housing Legacy program facilitates the donation or bequest of homes by Boulder homeowners wishing to leave a legacy of affordable home ownership for future Generations both Matt and Johnny are long time advocates for affordable housing in Boulder and are excited to make a tangible contribution to Boulder's affordable housing efforts through this donation throughout their lives and through their civic activism they have demonstrated a commitment to continuing Boulder's values of diversity and equity Matt Applebaum served on city council for 18 years from 1987 to 1995 and from 2007 to 2017 including five years as mayor Matt was also a member of the city's affordable housing working group and Johnny Teeter has served as a member of various boards including the city's planning board the boulder urban renewal Authority and the library Commission Johnny and Matt's appreciation of their privilege to be able to purchase property in Boulder and build wealth combined with their desire to give those with lower incomes the same opportunity has led them to action

[9:01] Johnny Teeter and Matt Applebaum should be recognized and celebrated for their contribution to the community as well as their ongoing support and dedication to permanently affordable home ownership in Boulder so therefore we the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado declare January 19 2023 as Johnny Teeter and Matt Applebaum housing Legacy Day and urge all of our members of our community to recognize this special occasion it's nice to have you back on the diet cement maybe you'd like to say a few words yeah sure been a while well thanks very much although you should know that we kind of hope that this donation doesn't get triggered for a while we'd like to hang around Boulder for quite a few more years so we didn't really want or expect any sort of public recognition your great housing staff talked us into this and

[10:00] the reason it was simple they saw this as an opportunity to maybe encourage other people to do something similar and I'd like to take a minute and do a little encouraging because in many ways that's actually more important than what we as individuals have done if we can get others involved in this and so we consider ourselves incredibly lucky to be in a position where we can do this and it's something we never thought we would be able to do we both come from very modest backgrounds but Serendipity serendipitously I came to Boulder over 45 years ago back at a time when more or less normal people could actually get into the housing market that hasn't been true in quite a few years now and there's no signs that's going to change and that has worried us for many reasons Equity issues and you know we like a boulder that has a diverse population and a worry that that is Vanishing and

[11:02] will continue to vanish and and so you know we saw this as an opportunity to kind of repay the community for all the wonderful years we've had here and the quite unexpected increase in wealth that we accumulated just simply because we were lucky enough to get property here so many years ago and my main goal here is to encourage those of you who find yourself in similar positions to think about doing something similar it's not that hard no not everybody has a rental property they could donate not everybody has a house they can donate we get that but maybe you have some money that you could bequeath to the city when the the time comes in fact that's our backup we don't know if we'll still own a rental property when we expire but if that's the case then we will we're delighted to to contribute some money

[12:01] perhaps a small tiny percentage of of a sale price when when your house sells something like that as a historical note in ancient times I tried to get the city to enact a real estate transfer tax back when that was still legal and I wish we had done that and who knows how much money we would have accumulated but it's something you can do on your own and so that's really the message think about it think about repaying the community think about helping in even a little way making it possible for folks who like us you know came here all that time ago and we were able to get into the housing market help some folks who now can't do that help make Boulder a place where they they can also Thrive and and bring their diversity to the community we are delighted we're able to do this and uh if you have the ability to do it

[13:01] you'll be delighted too so thanks so much [Applause] okay running back into place here uh so now it is time for the international Holocaust Remembrance Day declaration to be read by council member weiner yes and if we can have a yeah Rabbi Mark come up to receive this please I believe he's in the room come on up right here so everybody could see how short I am compared to you International Holocaust Remembrance Day January 27 2023 the Holocaust was a state-sponsored

[14:02] systematic persecution and annihilation of European jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims six million Jews were murdered and by the way of that 6 million there were about 1.5 million children Roma people with disabilities impulse were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial ethnic or national reasons Millions more including queer people Jehovah's Witnesses Soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents also suffered Grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny International Holocaust Remembrance Day is held on January 27th of each year the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp it is a day for the world to pause and remember the millions of people who are

[15:01] murdered or whose lives were changed forever the city of Boulder joins with all those whose lives were affected by the Holocaust we remember their strength courage and bravery and will continually work to make sure their stories are remembered while this period of dark history is over anti-Semitism still plagues our society fueling the same hatred and violence that charged World War II as a city we condemn anti-Semitism hatred ambigatory and all its forms we pledge to call out this Prejudice in solidarity with our fellow Jewish community members such intolerance jeopardizes the well-being of us all we the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado declared January 27 2023 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day and I'm giving this to you Rabbi soloway would you like

[16:00] to say a few words thank you thank you city council thank you for inviting me here I just a very few quick remarks some of you know who know me I grew up in in London in the UK um and growing up in the Jewish community in London it was really in the shadow of European jury and I was very used to seeing images of swastikas on in Jewish cemeteries seeing Graves desecrated on a regular basis and when I moved to the states um more than 20 years ago at this point I felt very genuinely that the United States of America was about the safest place for Jewish people to live and practice their Judaism that's changed that's changed significantly in the last few years since the the shooting in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh the FBI reports so many more uh hate crimes

[17:03] targeting Jewish people of course along with all of the other victims of hate crimes and for the first time in many generations a lot of Jewish people in this community and Beyond are not feeling safe about the future for Jewish communities in in the United States and it's very scary our new reality is that we have armed security in all of our Jewish institutions on a regular basis it's just a necessity we know that a few years ago the FBI foiled a plot to to inflict damage and harm on on Jewish communities throughout Boulder County and it's it's real I just want to say that there's over 15 000 people who identify as Jewish in Boulder County and we try to be good citizens I myself became a U.S citizen in December of 2015 so I could vote in that election and I've tried in my way to be a

[18:01] responsible Community member involved in a lot of causes including on one of the NAACP committees and many Jewish people show up for causes that we all care about whether it's about climate change homelessness and all kinds of other ways in which we collectively want to be part of the solution to create a a culture of of love and tolerance and and mutual respect I was at the MLK event at the boulder Jewish Community Center on on Sunday and uh the whole notion the amazing keynote speaker about what what makes a Beloved Community a Beloved Community is one where we all feel safe where we all feel honored to to believe what we believe to practice what we practice and that we support each other and that we show up for our neighbors so I'm very grateful to the city council for this declaration it feels very relevant and real as as we

[19:02] just as we just heard along with the white supremacy the ugly face of white supremacy that threatens uh our identity in some ways there's a whole lot of Holocaust denial as some of you know there's a lot of attempts to underplay the historical truth of the Holocaust as a way to minimize it so that the hate can be perpetuated when we see white supremacies with torches saying Jews will not replace us it's very harrowing and it it re-triggers a lot of trauma for um for people of Jewish ancestry who had relatives who who perished in the in the Holocaust room second world so again thank you very much that was probably more than two minutes but I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity to be here and thanks for everything that you do city council and for everybody here this evening thanks yes it's for you yes

[20:01] and thank you so much for that Rabbi Solway and tear for reading the Declaration and I and I just wanted to just mention as well that you know I know our entire city council's my mic is on here um that that our entire city council supports these efforts to combat anti-Semitism and hate crimes you just mentioned that personally as a as the mayor in the representative council I've signed the Anti-Defamation League's mayor's compact against hate extremism and bigotry as well as the mayor's United against anti-Semitism on behalf of our Council I know you have your full support so thank you everyone okay um next we have the national day of racial healing declaration to be read by council member Benjamin the city of Boulder is committed to

[21:00] racial equity and acknowledges that we must all work earnestly to create courageous and supportive environments that address the trauma traumatic past promote healing of wounds created by racial ethnic and religious bias and build an equitable and just Society so that people can Thrive as city leaders it is our duty to provision and protect the opportunity to learn grow and thrive in nurturing environments to that that do not violate safety dignity and Humanity furthermore every person can exhibit an act of kindness or make a simple change within their self that can have a profound effect on an entire Society racism and race-based stress are unjust burdens that present physical and psychological barriers to the health and success of people of color racial healing is a vital and crucial commitment to the education social mental and overall well-being of all community members if we all dedicate ourselves to the principles of Truth racial healing relationship building solidarity and transformative action we

[22:02] can all bring about the necessary changes in thinking and behavior that will Propel our community and the nation forward as a unified Force where racial bias can be recognized and unlearned we the city of Council of the city of Boulder Colorado join the nation in declaring January 17 2023 as national day of racial healing and urge all citizens to promote truth racial healing and transform transformation in the ways that are best suited for them individually to work together to raise our Collective Consciousness around the need to reconcile the inequitable pain caused by historical and current systems of Oppression thank you thank you for that Matt all right our next item is a debrief on changes to the emergency alert system and should I turn to uh

[23:00] to Nuria thank you so much mayor and we're going to ask our uh fire chief Michael kazarasso to come up and we also have Mike chard our director of The Office of disaster management I brought a few people with me today so again for the record uh my Colorado fire chief um can you hear me okay through the mic okay we've got a brief presentation um and we're going to explain the emergency alert system in the context of the latest fire it's the sunitis fire even though the agenda says Sunshine it actually started as a house fire on in sunshine Canyon and then we immediately had to split it off because it became two incidents in one so that was that's the reason for the confusion um the purpose of our as they're hopefully bringing up the presentation there we go if we can go to the second slide there um we're going to go through I've asked Chief Brian Oliver and director Mike chard to go through first a timeline of the fire itself uh what happened when

[24:01] and then um and that'll be uh Chief Oliver and chief Oliver just so everyone understands he's a big part of my Wildfire response not just for the city but also county-wide it's members of his team or himself who are typically in charge of many of these fires including the encar fire so um in fact one of his members was on the Wildland fire on this fire too so he'll go through the time timeline and then right after him I'll ask director chard to come up talk about the alert and warning system how it uh how it's working today and then kind of where we're heading or at least where we're trying to head sooner rather than later in terms of the city's alert system and how that integrates with the county so I'm going to step aside and allow Chief Oliver to come on up here and talk about the timeline of the fire itself and that's the next slide if we can pull that up thanks Chief again for the record Brian Oliver Wildland division chief for

[25:01] Boulder fire rescue so just a quick rundown the the incident came in to dispatch about 141 in the afternoon as a structure fire but given the conditions of the day we were borderline red flag with 30 to 40 mile an hour winds out of the West it quickly escalated past that crossed over Sunshine Road Sunshine Canyon Drive and became a Wildland fire pushed by those winds so if you're looking at the slide there you can see the map of the polygons and the way the alerting wind is units from the field as soon as that became a Wildland fire realized that those conditions were fairly dire and wanted to get people out of the way as soon as possible so field request evacuation orders at 1405 So within that first 20 minutes of the incident they realized this was going to be bigger than just a simple house fire and was going to have a larger impact than that so units 43 KJ and M as you can see on the map are those pre-identified polygons so

[26:02] we have a county-wide system City and County of predetermined polygons for evacuation just to streamline that process and make things move a little faster the the polygons we use in the field are the same ones that dispatch has and they're tied to our everbridge our alert and warning system so as soon as we say these are the zones we want evacuated dispatch to make those alerts so you can see that we um 1405 field requested the evacuations 1412 those orders were put into everbridge which is our alert and warning system currently and then those polygons went out at 1544. we know we added to 43l that next one um to the South later on as the fire expanded within the city as you know this wasn't our fire this was not a city incident however we had units respond to it and of course Wildfire knows you know no jurisdictional boundaries and with those conditions we knew that was going to have an impact on the city we

[27:01] initially placed those two yellow polygons 9 17 and 25 on an advisory just to say there's an incident in our area you should be aware of it you know be be alert the conditions may change we ran a simple um fire behavior model and that model proved in those wins and those conditions that that fire could be on the city in no time flat so we upgraded those to uh evacuation warnings again same similar process we did 9 15 17 you know I don't want to go through the details there we turned them on in a system that we use now called Zone Haven and director Turtle speak to the differences in the two systems but that's our public-facing system that people can look at have a map to read and say here's our here's the zones that we're going to evacuate so we put those into Zone Haven again those same things are then we tell Dispatch they put it into our every

[28:01] bridge system because that's the still the system we use city and county and then we also did an all hazards alert for all the city employees so that everyone was aware of the incident and and the steps we were taking um again later that night for the city zones I can't speak to the county because those three zones that you see in red there on the on the map did remain in evacuation overnight but the zones in the city were given the all clear at about five o'clock that evening because the conditions had changed Nightfall the fire burned into some fuels it still had some shade and some snow and pretty much the forward progression of the fire was stopped a little bit after sunset you can go to the next slide and that really just Recaps you know what I've already said so 141 started as a structure fire uh a little bit earlier than three we realized that that was a Wildland fire but that was the time that was reported um and then at 314 we notified our regional Incident Management team as Chief calderazzo alluded to that's a lot of folks on my staff and regionally

[29:01] throughout the county all the fire districts and others joined up to basically take command of a complex incident because that's overwhelmed the local jurisdiction which for this fire is you know Boulder Mountain Sunshine fire and Boulder rural which are three smaller mostly Volunteer Fire districts so the incident management team stood up about quarter after three transfer command to that incident management team I believe occurred about 1700 hours or five o'clock and then by about one o'clock in the morning we had things pretty much in hand and released most resources and that's pretty much the summary of the fire and then the next day full of containment returned back to the local unit any questions thanks Chief Oliver Mike good evening Council for the record by chart director officers of disaster management the next slide we have for you talks about our current system and apologize for it being a little busy but

[30:01] there's a lot to our system in this slide encompasses those things I'll walk you through them uh if there is a need to alert the community this sort of Highlights Highlights the systems that we're going to use obviously the first thing in our everbridge system is the landline database and for those that still have a landline or a for a phone this system is updated uh quarterly and that database is going to create a warning or an alert that will come through on your landline the opt-in side of everbridge is for folks that go in you can do this on boulderom.com and also go into everbridge and create a profile that allows you to receive multiple alerts on different devices and through different means such as getting a phone call email text message uh these uh the system has been integrated also with what we call iPods and that stands for integrated public alert and warning system and this gives

[31:01] our 911 centers the ability to send alerts now also on wireless emergency alerts which are the handheld devices we all have also activate the emergency alert system which goes across our TV and radios and then NOAA Weather Radio can also be activated as a platform to alert the community the messages when they're sent out also now have a link that will send the recipient to our alert portal and you can see this on the boulder oem.com website and this is a portal that highlights all of the alerts that any 911 Center in our system would send out in this particular incident there was multiple alerting authorities at work so you had ours here with the city of Boulder 911 Center also the county United Sheriff 911 Center and even Longmont is tied into this portal all those alerts will be found in this in this site it shows a map it also gives

[32:00] the alerting message that went out with it and it's really great for a sort of a moment in time if you receive that alert but it doesn't give you the sort of composite like the Zone Haven map does showing all of the alerting statuses of all the zones that have been activated in the slide you saw previously we also now have common alerting terminology across all the alerting dispatch centers and our first response agencies and those are seen as advisories also as warnings orders and we will send those out the orders are going to be seen as an evacuation order or climb to Higher Ground or you'll see it as a shelter in place order we've recently also set up a county-wide polygon project that was completed in August those are alerting zones before the Marshall fire we had these completed west of 36 but that project now encompasses the entire County and those

[33:01] are the polygons that you also see in the zone Haven system on top of that we've also identified the evacuation routes for the entire County these are the primary routes that we have in every jurisdiction in unincorporated and Municipal areas the strategy working with First Response agencies around how do you know you alert people then you have to move people was to make sure that we keep the main arteries flowing so that the neighborhoods will keep funneling out and in that evacuation project we also identified traffic control Point areas what we're seeing with the use of a lot of these Learning Systems a lot of people are receiving alerts and we're seeing almost as many people trying to get into the areas that we're evacuating as people getting out you can see there's a problem with that is we also have law enforcement and fire agencies are also trying to gain access to get in to either go door to door or to actually go in and start to fight the fire Zone Haven is a project or the capability that was implemented this

[34:00] year for us here at the city but the county doesn't have it so what that means is we have two forward-facing maps such as when we had the cenitis fire one the county was using to reflect the activity that they were putting up related to alerting zones road closures shelters and then we also had ours in the city that was simultaneously showing status of zones road closures and shelters too that did create some confusion because people were then having to toggle between two different situational awareness maps to try to get their information throughout the incident we're hoping to address that issue on Monday by going to the boulder Regional Emergency Telephone Service authority and seek funding to be able to purchase Zone Haven for the entire County and all other municipalities therefore creating a common platform for situational awareness mapping and also as a site to put additional information postings for the community to digest and understand what's going on another Improvement or enhancement we've

[35:00] made this year was development of a comp plan our Communications plan that integrates Digital trunked radio systems with our standard VHF system and that has helped First Response agencies being able to coordinate their tactical activity on a communications platform when they respond to emergencies and that's currently where we are on the system so when we have um any sort of emergency or disaster the that will be the way that we'll be alerting the community obviously Sirens are another piece of that but those are activated on the request of the uh Incident Commander and for Wildfire just to refresh every one of the sirens that we have on the western flank of our city are equipped with a wildfire message so Crestview Columbine the New Britain nist and the Montessori School are the sirens that are able to be activated and used under a wildfire system those are outdoor warning system not designed for indoor warning of residents and that's currently where we are in our status of our current system

[36:00] future enhancements and uh these are going to be happening this year the first one we have is wireless emergency alerts gives us a new way to communicate with non-engage banking community members and we have translated our evacuation orders into Spanish and that will be completed by March of 2023 and we'll be able to simultaneously launch alerts in English and Spanish which we're not able to do prior to this action we've also have invested and recently purchased through brezza a app called reachwell that can translate it's a downloadable app that the community can access once it's implemented and it can translate up to 100 different languages and be able to help people receive alerts in the language of their choice we've also are looking or did purchase I'm sorry resident connect this is also another purchase that came through brezzo which adds phone number databases into our 911 system so there's three real databases

[37:02] used now through everbridge one would be the landline database one is the opt-in which is a voluntary and requires residents to take action on it and this one is just like the landline it's an open source data of numbers it's geotied to addresses and will increase our ability to reach residents when we're using the everbridge system obviously Zone Haven if it is purchased and we are able to implement will help sort of smooth out that uh that gap between the city having a certain capability in County not having that so we're looking forward to getting that resolved next week and moving forward on implementing that project and then also currently we have what's called pan Oak the camera project that helps evaluate and detect wildfires in the Front Range and that project has been deployed for about the last four months it's got another sort of beta test period until June it does work I get a lot of alerts

[38:00] on it and it does pick up any sort of smoke in the area and then sends notifications out to a fire management Personnel to be able to evaluate and then decide if response is needed and that's where we're looking just take the systems in 2023 and on that I have nothing else to present chief so thank you both for for sharing that info and now we'd like to just open up for any questions we tried to keep it as brief as possible um so we could save some time for questions make sure if you will uh in responding to these really life-threatening situations so thank everybody yeah I think Chief and everybody for the as a brief but very informative presentation but more importantly for your incredible work and keeping the city safe from this event and all the other events that have happened thank you over the years in the events to come any questions for anybody here we got Nicole Matt please

[39:01] yeah I just had a question uh and thank you first of all for the presentation and for all your work to keep us safe in emergencies um have we checked in with the folks at the center for people with disabilities or anybody there I'm just I'm curious about in the process of getting these alerts you know how can somebody sort of respond back that either you know can't drive doesn't drive has mobility issues what is the process for somebody to respond back to an alert in that case that's a great question I'm not aware I'll have to get back to you on that I'll check in with the team and see if we've either already got that I know it's been brought up I don't know if we've reached out and Incorporated that unless unless Mike you're aware we have you have okay see how we can better improve so so the office of disaster management has already done that wonderful thank you thanks Chief thanks for being here um hopefully this is a calm year for you

[40:00] and we won't see or hear much from you in 2023 that's a good great case scenario for this whole Community but we love actually seeing you as a great part of our staff my question has to do with with Zone Haven and I know that right like imminently you're going to have that conversation about funding could you let us know if you're successful in securing that or not because if not I I think I I would certainly be curious at finding maybe other creative ways to create that cohesive alert system at the county level if this funding approach doesn't work so if you could just let us know that'd be helpful so that we could help perhaps uh leverage our advocacy or other ways to make sure that that's done for our accounting and Community most certainly sure appreciate it thank you Rachel thanks for the presentation Chief and also for the great work during the fire again my question is um just around social media and how we push out this information to community members who might not be getting the alerts um for a variety of reasons I think during each of our recent fires I've had a lot of personal Outreach texts also on social

[41:02] media and recently from people who don't want to be on various types of social media like I don't want to go to Nextdoor or Twitter or whatever their social media of of kind of this day and of the day is because there's a lot to dislike in a lot of platforms um so just wondering how we are getting information out in a way that would uh make it so that somebody who doesn't want to um you know maybe watch for a certain reporter's tweets doesn't have to get on that social media platform that's a great question and and actually so if we use social media it's really as an extra tool we're really trying to direct people to the formal site so if it's not Boulder oem.com I mean that's going to be the primary way we're going to get information out to people so we're not intending the social media platforms to be the primary way where people get their information we're trying to direct them to the spot where they can get up to up-to-date information so so that I know that

[42:01] causes confusion for people but we're simply trying to use any and all social media tools as tools to direct them where they can get the real information um and appreciated um but I think much like with you know reverse landline calls this is a way that a lot of people are getting information whether um whether we we preferred or not I think that and especially for people again who aren't necessarily in the zone that would get the alert but they're wondering like you know is there like in my case it's my sister's house in the zone and and um you know I didn't get an alert and then I'm trying to figure out where to go for it so uh I think it is helpful to get it out get the information out to people who are watching alongside and I think social media is a pretty powerful way in this day and age there's a lot of different platforms kind of to attend to so just wondering if we have a plan for that sounds like maybe not so we don't want

[43:00] one I apologize and I know that our director of communications is in the room if I say something that is wrong or she wants to add to it but to the chief's point I think we have um a variety of platforms that we want to use we certainly want to send people to the main website but are leveraging those social media platforms that exist and frankly we're also evaluating new social media as that is coming forward because there are new uh technology ways but there are some that have come and gone super quickly and some that are not um as vetted and so the comms team I know is taking a look at the variety of of new social media opportunities that have cropped up perhaps as we have seen some of the demise or the lessening of Twitter as that moves forward but for now we're trying to use everything possible I'll also note that we have we also use Facebook as a tool and we do that in Spanish and in English so again we continue to try to Leverage as many social media Outlets that are there and

[44:01] continuing to review new ones as they crop up Sarah did I get all that right Rachel do you have anything else oh um I thought I was waiting at that Nuri asked someone else's question um yeah no just that you know I would hope that there is a way that the city can blast to 12 different social media sites with one click of whatever it is that they want to say and that we're looking at that and and I'm glad to hear that uh the city's looking at alternative social media outlets and and maybe getting the word out of of where we can find the city of Boulder on those Outlets would be helpful thanks so much right any other questions seeing none thanks again so much Jeep for everything all right so now it's time for open comment so I believe we have uh Brenda writtenour to give us our public participation guidelines good evening Mr Mayor I'm happy to be here helping host our virtual space for

[45:01] this hybrid meeting my name is Brenda rittenauer I am part of our communication and engagement department and Emily is going to bring up those slides for me thanks Emily there we go um so we always like to go over these we know some of you who are here for open comment tonight either in person or virtually may have seen these many times and we appreciate your patience while we go over them tonight for those who might be less familiar um the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive Civic conversations this Vision was designed to support the physical and emotional safety of community members staff and Council as well as supporting democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives for more information about how this Vision was created the vision itself the community

[46:00] engagement process please visit our website bouldercolorado.gov the easiest way is to just type productive atmospheres into the search box next slide please degrees and the following are some examples of rules of decorum that are found in the boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this vision and will be upheld during tonight's meeting all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they're commonly known by and individuals online must display their whole name before being allowed to speak currently only audio testimony is permitted online in-person participants are asked to

[47:00] refrain from expressing support or disagreement verbally traditionally support is shown silently through American Sign Language Applause or jazz hands feel free to practice your jazz hands now if you wish and with that I think we are ready to begin thanks so much Brenda all right so we're going to go through our 10 in-person speakers first followed by our 10 virtual uh persons I'll read uh three names at a time you each get two minutes to speak so we've got uh Anna Stott Tricia Holland and Evan ravitz come on down hello I'm Anna star is there this is my first time doing it so is there anything I should start with before I start uh your name which you've already done so go for it cool yeah my name is Anna Stott I use they or she pronouns and I live in South Boulder currently I came here today because I mainly just have two questions one being why is

[48:02] Boulder drug epidemic not prevalent on this meeting's agenda and two what is the city planning to do to Aid the people at Boulder who are struggling with drug addiction this is Boulder Colorado we're at the base of the Rockies the years 2023 I hope we would have a community understanding that our justice system has historically perpetuated and continues to perpetuate the oppression of people of color women low-income folks and many other minorities substance use affects everyone not just the people experiencing it I believe we are in a community or can build a community where we value the health and safety of everyone people need a safe place to do drugs rather than the Public Library bathroom or the bus station bathroom harm reduction is proven to work it's pretty easy to find these studies let me know if you want me to send you them if you need them and it's also not new harm reduction it's been around since the 1980s some since counselors have stated

[49:02] that folks are two times more likely to get addiction treatment if they have access to harm reduction centers they've been shown to these centers have been shown to reduce consumption reduce litter associated with consumption reductions in crime improvements in neighborhoods and most importantly reduce and deaths related to overdose I believe we should meet people where they're at harm reduction benefits both the individual and the community thanks Hannah I have Tricia Holland Evan ravitz and Christopher Allred hi everybody my name is Trisha Holland I am here to speak tonight to urge city council to approve the police oversight panel candidates recommended by the selection committee City council's request on December 15th

[50:01] for the selection panel to re-review candidates assure proper criteria were applied and provide written explanations was in conflict with the ordinance that states that selection panel deliberations should be confidential now due to this delay the police oversight panel is at risk of losing Quorum if the new panelists are not approved as a terms of several current members expire on February 8th the selection committee and police oversight panelists know best who should be on the panel based on their perspectives experiences and expertise city council should trust the selection committee's recommendations and approve the candidates put forth tonight thank you thank you Trisha I have Evan revitz Christopher Allred and Michelle Rodriguez I'm waiting for my uh presentation to go

[51:00] up Okay evan ravitz North Boulder NATO says Russia is using winter as weapon of war against Ukraine Boulder has Used winter as a weapon against the homeless for decades it works about 30 currently homeless die every year here at an average age of 50. 30 years younger than the Colorado average that's 900 years of life wiped out every year here much because people cannot prepare for winter when they're being evicted every three days Denver harm reduction Action Center Director Lisa Rayville told axios quote

[52:00] a lot of our folks use meth in the winter as a survival method so they can walk around all night and not freeze to death so the lack of campgrounds promotes meth use contributing to a quarter million in damage to the library and now the bus station Etc Aaron and Bob have sat there for seven years as they died over 200 people spending our Millions on this war as the problem continues to get worse only Nicole and Lauren refuse to vote for the latest multi-million dollar sweeps Denver has eight successful legal homeless camps and crime has gone down in those neighborhoods according to the Colorado Sun's review of the Denver Police Department data even as crime increased in Denver overall imagine the

[53:00] Golden Rule works when you treat people right they behave you better Sheriff Pelley and former police chief Greg Testa and the Denver law school six years ago told you repeatedly that criminalization doesn't work and since then you've wasted another five or ten million I think seven now we have uh Christopher Allred Michelle Rodriguez and Stephen parlato good evening Council Chris Allred commenting on behalf of Rocky Mountain peace and Justice Center tonight we're here to present a petition to the Boulder City Council to pass a proclamation supporting the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons there are 150 signatures on this petition and we we raised this with the council

[54:02] last year in 2022 and and it was brought up that there is a public engagement process with the council in order to comment on international issues so we gathered signatures in the community to show that there is interest in moving this forward and also in August of 2022 our neighbors in Longmont passed a proclamation supporting the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons so there is more solidarity growing throughout the nation and regionally for this treaty this Sunday January 22nd marks the second anniversary of the treaty's entry into Force and non-violent actions and protests are occurring around the country to commemorate this date and encourage support for a world without nuclear weapons

[55:00] over 75 state and local governments that also includes Denver city council who passed a proclamation back in March of 2021 are joining this movement so we hope Boulder will help lead the way by joining in solidarity and thank you very much for your time I'll pass around some copies of the Treaty of the petition for your reference thanks Chris if you could leave it over here at the desk we'll get it from there thanks we have Michelle Rodriguez Steven parlato and Daniel Berg Michelle Rodriguez not really sure what to say tonight but I'd like to start out with uh that I've been trying to contact you guys to be heard for the last like six months I'm also known as Michelle Rodriguez in the current federal civil lawsuit

[56:01] against officer Wayland Lola Tai the last couple times I tried calling speak I wasn't able to saw a clerk a former clerk read my um part of it and I requested that my remaining 40 seconds be held in silence and then they diverted it to our current City attorney now miss Tate who is a party to my case who took away that 40 seconds to be heard yes ma'am check it out it's on the docket Michelle Rodriguez versus Waylon Lola Tai um Waylon Lola Thai was able to quit with a hundred thousand dollar a year separation packet the week after I filed my civil lawsuit all of my because I've not I've been ignored and I have limitations with being heard and affording the right kind of legal things all of my stature limitations are gone well in Lola Tai left but our current attorney here he was able to

[57:01] get Justice for my friend Sammy Lawrence who was attacked a week after being seen at the courthouse representing me it's kind of ironic Tom Carr left shortly after they addressed my motion for summary judgment many of these officers sitting here are very familiar with me they all know me by first name basis I was tackled out front the muni building and on my 50th birthday of 2018 and chemically sedated at the suggestion of their former officer um Kevin marples who's also the city of Boulder's I.T representative Miss Tate you overstepped your boundaries when you silenced my silent moment and I felt so offended by it there are no racial Equity there's been no racial Equity Chief Harold Stephen parlato Daniel Berg and Jude landsman

[58:00] good evening uh higher and higher in the widening gyre the falcon can no longer hear the falconer these words from the William Butler Yates prophetic poem The Second Coming perfectly presage Our Moment In Time as pertains to the advances if one could use that term in the Technologies of mass destruction the Advent of SuperSonic delivery of missiles the Advent of Battlefield um nukes that can be shot from shoulder harnessed

[59:00] launchers both both indicate that we're at a point in which there is no real control once a conflict uses one of these weapons whether it be a hydrogen bomb that is that is supersonically delivered within seconds around the globe and and the retaliatory responses and the time necessary to respond or the advents that um hangs over our head uh quite clearly at the moment of using a battlefield uh nuclear weapon such has been threatened by Putin

[60:01] in this Russian Ukraine conflict that there would be a very difficult moment in trying to contain Stephen the conflict your time is up but thank you for your testimony and uh folks with the sign I really appreciate your passion on this issue if you could stand in such a way so that folks view is not obstructed uh while holding the sign maybe on the side we'd appreciate so everyone has an equal chance to participate in the meeting here tonight next we have Daniel Berg Jude landsman and Christian Kerr foreign good evening Daniel Berg 1805 33rd Street I'm a member of the Boulder Police Officers Association the bpoa represents the Swarm members of the

[61:00] Boulder Police Department our members are city employees whose actions may be reviewed by the police oversight panel I would like to recognize other members of the BPO who have come here tonight on our own time in support of our Collective position regarding the recent police oversight panel selection subcommittees blatant non-compliance with BRC 2116 the members of the bpoa have serious concerns about the subcommittee's lack of transparency and disregard for the provisions of brc2116 these concerns were memorialized in a letter sent to council yesterday but we believe it Bears repeating in this public session on December 15th of last year this Council took notice of the selection subcommittee's failure to comply with the requirements of 211-6 the council directed The subcommittee to review all candidates for the police oversight panel with the requirements of this ordinance in mind and to include written explanations of the steps taken in choosing new members before bringing any recommendations back

[62:01] to the council at that same council meeting the City attorney commented that in reading the subcommittee's criteria for selection she did not quote hear all the criteria reflected that are in the code and heard criteria reflected that are not in the code end quote to date the documentation provided by the selection subcommittee has provided no such explanation as to how their decision applies with the city ordinance and thus remains in violation of BRC 2116. the members of the Boulder Police Officers Association requests that Council remove item 3A from the consent agenda and insist and can insist that the selection subcommittee comply with your previous Direction given in the December 15th Council session to ensure full compliance with BRC 2116. thank you very much thank you Daniel now we have Jude landsman Christian Kerr and Darren O'Connor greetings city council my name is Jude

[63:01] landsman I'm a vice president of NAACP Boulder County and the organization's representative to the police oversight panelist selection committee Citizen Police oversight is as necessary in 2023 as it was when called for in 2019. Boulder seemingly did the right thing in 2019 however since that day the city has consistently subverted the process constraining oversight panelists minimizing the mission of police accountability providing an ordinance that conveniently lacked an appeals process providing legal advice from City attorneys pledged to defend the police Union and its officers appointing and lastly appointing a police monitor who never once met with City with Community groups in two years City staff and city council showed a contempt for Community input in decision making by questioning oversight panel

[64:01] selection members on their choice of panelists walking a thin ethical line with the city's own ordinance stating that the panel selection deliberations are confidential the packet produced to us of negative comments against a selected panelist revealed a naked bias against police oversight in general respect our input in the decision-making process let police oversight do the job of ensuring accountability of misconduct excessive force and by directing the monitor to investigate better methods for policing in our community asking for Community feedback is an empty gesture when that feedback is not incorporated into policy the panelist selection committee is a rare Community entity invested with the power to make decisions how sad and telling that city council saw a fit to question our competence and not their own thank you

[65:02] thank you Jude I have Christian Kerr and Darren O'Connor good evening Christian Kerr uh I'm here to talk about the police oversight panel um the real reason I'm here is because I care about this community I care about Law and Order I care about good government and I care about police accountability we have a good police force and we have an active and engaged citizenry both are required to promote positive outcomes for the most vulnerable Among Us now onto the selection committee the language of your ordinance is Crystal Clear under ordinance 8430 section one members of the police panel shall demonstrate an absence of any real or perceived biased Prejudice or conflict of interest there are at least two candidates for the pop who support abolishing and defunding the police and

[66:00] both candidates frequently use incendiary anti-police language on their social media accounts here's a quote from a great American poet Maya Angelou when someone shows you who they are believe them as you are also aware bvsd School Board vice president Lisa Moran Sweeney is currently suing Boulder's Chief of Police for enforcing our laws for doing her job no matter how many ways some of you try to parser lawyer this it is painfully obvious to the citizens whom you are here to represent that something is off perhaps you would explain to us that words do not in fact matter when it comes to a few highly political Personalities in town people are starting to pay attention and people are paying attention because they don't trust you anymore because some of you do things like install cronies with suspect Notions about abolishing or antagonizing the police will somehow create a better social justice

[67:01] environment while political activists absolutely absolutely do have a vital role in society and I have no ill will toward either of the proposed panelists as individuals an activism that is incendiary and antagonistic in a body that is created to provide oversight and accountability will yield acrimony and Discord please do not seat panelists who will effectively delegitimize this important body thank you for your testimony uh Darren O'Connor good evening Council Darren O'Connor I'm here to speak tonight on behalf of the NAACP regarding the selection of new police oversight panel members which was supposed to be done in December but your failure to vote on the candidates put forward tonight will likely halt the actions of the pup due to a lack of Quorum this cannot be Council requested information from the selection panel about their deliberations and sent numerous

[68:00] Communications from Community member members probably like Mr care including from people who are against even the existence of the police oversight panel you did so ostensibly to weed out bias but the very Communications shared were full of bias for the police the selection panel's deliberations are confidential and you violated BRC section 2-11-685 when you instructed the selection panel to provide you with explanations about their efforts in writing police oversight in Boulder came about when BBT BPD officers Smiley and roughly 10 other officers detained and threatened a black man in violation of bpd's policy and the constitutional right to be protected against free of unlawful seizures Council took the matter seriously then agreeing to implement Community oversight of the police a task force that wrote the ordinance was largely made up of community members

[69:00] and a police union representative and a BPD officer got to attend those deaths were made task force meetings but they did not get to vote the union should not get a say in this but now even our Deputy Chief and our chief of police are apparently attempting to interfere with the independence of the pop with Chief Harold recently quoted stating the panel's role is not to look at policing in a systemic way Chief Herald should also read the ordinance section 2-117e which is directly countered to her statement and tonight you should vote Yes and all the count all of the candidates recommended to you thank you thank you Darren all right we're going to go to our remote speakers now and I'll just note that there is one call in person that we've not been able to validate their name if you can dial Star 9 if you're a call in person to verify that you are actually registered and we'll get to you at the end of the list so our first three virtual panelists are our speakers are Hannah Lowe Emily Reynolds and Michael Parrish

[70:08] hello everyone my name is Hannah Lau I am a public health nurse I've been a nurse since 2015 and I've worked in a variety of settings including geriatric Primary Care Hospice and maternal and child home visitation also in school health so I come to this with the public health orientation and a harm reduction orientation and also I am just a huge proponent of libraries I actually come from two generations of librarians above me my great-grandfather and my grandmother were Librarians and I really truly believe that libraries are one of the greatest assets of organized modern society so I'm a huge fan of everything related to libraries um and as such I really believe that one

[71:01] of the core purposes of libraries is to provide a resource to all members of our community to our homeless neighbors to people from all generations children Elders disabled people and so I was very concerned to learn that the Boulder Public Library is has no publicly accessible bathrooms this is a huge disability rights issue because children Elders homeless people and disabled people with conditions such as GI problems or urinary frequency different types of issues need access to the bathrooms in order to be safe and be comfortable and have good quality of life and so I was quite shocked to learn that the Boulder Public Library spent 125 thousand dollars on remediation of the meth issue without actually providing access to the bathroom so I'm concerned that the Boulder Public Library is non-compliant with Americans

[72:02] with Disabilities Act law and I really don't want to be the kind of person that would threatened the Boulder Public Library with with an ADA lawsuit but time is up thank you thank you for your testimony Okay so next we have um Emily Reynolds Michael Parish and Patrick O'Rourke thank you Emily Reynolds good evening Council evidence of bias against law enforcement is everywhere with two candidates for the police oversight panel Lisa Sweeney Moran and samjang how could it possibly be the two candidates with obvious freely stated prejudices against law enforcement are being considered for this panel how about people with objectivity and common

[73:00] sense I thought the panel was supposed to be free of bias really why would you deliberately put cop haters on the oversight panel except for the obvious bias of the selection committee there is now just you to decide between appointing cop haters or appointing level-headed people without extreme activist agendas Sweeney Moran is going to stop suing the city as soon as you appoint her manipulation much laughable don't fall for another meaningless promise from another pretend Progressive if you prefer an ineffective police force and lawlessness vote the panel in if you prefer a more nuanced neutral approach start over and don't let the local NAACP and ACLU make the decision for you I'm not in favor of abolishing the police in Boulder lessening their funds or otherwise limiting their

[74:00] effectiveness I'm not in favor of appointing a board-hopping pretend Progressive to yet another board and position of influence within city government I am not in favor of the NAACP or the ACLU having having any direct input whatsoever on City business and appointments this Sweeney Moran seems to hate cops and twits frequently about bolish abolishing or countering their effectiveness on October 6th you heard public feedback about Public Safety Emily your time is up but thank you for your testimony very much now we have Michael Parish Patrick O'Rourke and Eric Budd hello my name is Michael Parrish I'm here to urge counselors to approve the police oversight panel subcommittee recommendations including a Full Slate including the two folks who have been kind of dragged through the dirt here

[75:01] um the selection committee the NAACP Armistead all of these groups that are supposed to make this selection have reaffirmed their choices they've reaffirmed them again at the requested Council and all of the requirements for the parents have found to be met um I would say that trying to find people without bias in any way in terms of policing you will find quite a few folks who are very pro-police in that regard and so the idea of finding folks without bias seems a bit silly to me um but I just also want to reiterate that the police oversight panel should be treated with the respect and that their decisions and selections are independent city council should move forward so that they don't lack a quorum and continue to do the good work that they were assigned to do and that's all I've got to say thank you very much thank you Michael hey Patrick O'Rourke Eric Budd and Doug Hamilton

[76:03] Patrick you should be able to unmute now dude I thought I already uh good evening I'm Patrick O'Rourke vice president and preservation chair for historic Boulder historic Boulder is celebrating our 50th anniversary of educating navigating and protecting folders built past since 1972 historic Boulder has been at the voice of advocacy for historic properties throughout our city imagine Boulder without the Pearl District or the Pearl Street Mall the Mapleton historic district the Boulderado hotel the Highland club or even the Boulder Theater these are just to name a few of the projects that we've been very active in so what I'm inviting all the city council members and members of our community to our event on February 10th and looking forward to seeing you there February 8th through the 10th Boulder is

[77:02] also hosting the Colorado preservation inks conference on saving places it's the first time in 25 years that Colorado preservation has selected Boulder to to hold these conferences and I'm hoping you might have a moment or two to visit us I wanted to take a minute to note a couple of our open projects that we have going on right now we're very active in the Boulder Theater facade and we've just been approved a grant I'm really looking forward to getting that project finished I'm hoping you're familiar with the nine mile markers over on 287 in Arapahoe a project was built there and it's in Jeopardy of getting um into Jeopardy and the last one and I'm out of time is the Tommy Jones stage called stop which is in Boulder County and that's a project that is um uh what we called demolishment by

[78:00] neglect anyhow thank you for your time and we're hoping to see you at our historic Boulder Kayla thank you thanks Patrick we have a question for you listen I apologize I think you may have just said it at the end Patrick um what is the event on the 10th can uh where uh from oh uh it's got the boulder Auto Hotel it's the 50th anniversary gala for historic Boulder thank you thank you great thank you clarifying that great now we have Eric Bud Doug Hamilton and Travis culley hello Council uh Eric Budd I live in Boulder thank you for allowing me to speak I am asking Council to approve the applicants to the police oversight panel tonight you've asked the selection committee to give you their recommendations and they did they reaffirmed those selections on two occasions now over the past month we've reached the point at which the council

[79:00] must vote the charter of the police oversight panel requires you to seat the pub tonight the charter requires the pop has a quorum and doing anything other than voting to approve the pop selection committee's selections and allowing the pop to move forward with its work is an abdication of your duties and a failure of council to perform its legal work private citizens and groups cannot stop the work of counsel this is your duty if you do not make these selections tonight this process could drag out for months or a year the council has the legal obligation from ordinance 8430 which reads a motion to approve the proposed candidates shall be placed on the council's consent agenda Council will approve or reject the appointments by majority vote the council needs to take a final action tonight and allow the important work of the police oversight panel to move forward thank you thank you Eric Doug Hamilton then Travis culley and then the next three names aren't present

[80:00] in the meeting William McGrew Jennifer Rhodes and Catherine houg but we do have one call in person so I'll turn to them after Travis so Doug hello my name is Doug Hamilton uh thank you Council for letting me speak first I read the reporting about the police oversight panel selection and it's important to me that the city council follows the guidance of the groups it's selected to appoint panelists for that panel they are both great candidates don't let yourselves be intimidated by a few people with extreme views and don't let and don't be intimidated to let the police hand pick their their oversight members let's not forget why this panel was formed it's a gift but the city can benefit from the guidance of members of the NAACP and Amistad groups who represent folks in our communities that you probably rarely hear from in emails and at this Podium please think carefully about who isn't represented here week in and week out it

[81:01] it's exactly why you appointed groups who represent folks most directly impacted to advise on who should be on this panel and the second issue I want to talk about is it's my understanding that there's a city Department tasked with cleaning up the garbage in public spaces with the garbage piling up at the Bandshell I have I have to ask where these workers are and why they plan uh what the plan is for addressing that space uh this can't this work can't be done by volunteer Aid organizations thank you very much thank you Doug now Travis Cully hi good evening Council Shalom malayham can you hear me yes um a nuclear weapons ban is warranted we have the very definition of a nuclear disaster sitting right in our backyard

[82:01] Rocky Flats sits on the boundary of Boulder and Jefferson counties so Chief Oliver and director chard this message is also for you if Boulder residents are allowed onto the rocky flats wildlife refuge who will prevent them from taking contaminant from contaminating their own homes as a result of their visit taking gravel or rocks off of the Wildlife Refuge site no one why no one because HB 1389 was blocked by the rocky thoughts Stewardship Council at the very Inception of that organization in the summer of 2006. this council is consistent only in putting our counties at risk it is possible I think probable that the Marshall fire was the result of the automatic combustion of recently Unearthed contaminants going sub-critical off-site in the Chinook

[83:00] wind these United into an inferno the previously contaminated soil and sediment around Marshall Lake and Marshall landfill which has been there for from decades past the EPA has acknowledged the existence of a hot spot at Marshall Lake and Marshall landfill at part pardon me this was a reportable condition until long after the fire I don't know why this was not accounted for in the learning analysis the county line is an object of administrative confusion this is why the empty seat at the director's table of the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council requires a nuanced and strategic approach thank you all thank you Travis now we're going to go to our call in person our person on the phone six on your phone to unmute yourself

[84:03] hello my name is William McGrew and I am speaking in favor of approving the uh selections uh for the police oversight panel and I don't have too much more to add some uh from what everyone else has said uh the uh panel has been affirmed it's been affirmed again and approving the the panel is simply the right thing to do and I uh trust and hope that city council will move forward and approve the panel so that they can get to the uh really crucial and important work of overseeing the police thank you very much thank you William and our last two speakers are Jennifer Rhodes and Catherine houg we are not seeing them online but do we have somebody in person okay very good glad to hear that my name is Jennifer Rhodes I'm part of a parent group advocating for safe zones around schools there are major safety

[85:01] concerns in the city of Boulder requiring good policing not less police presence assault theft vandalism meth and libraries and public bathrooms and a near-child death related to that child being given drugs on the street near her school there's a known relationship between addiction and violence violence will rise as the meth crisis continues parents feel that the city is not doing enough to protect our kids having a police oversight panel filled with police antagonists and abolitionists not only is in direct violation of your ordinance but will further provoke and agitate the parents of this community we are in favor of a thoughtful police reform and want an oversight panel but placing members on this panel who have strong negative bias towards the police and conflicts of interest will not be in the best interest of the panel's mission if you value the opinions of far-left activists over the opinion of an experienced chief of police you send a clear message that pacifying activists is more important than actually living up to the agreed membership standards of the panel if you insist on having Sweeney Moran and Zhang you should also

[86:02] include current and former police officers on the panel to provide a balanced View under the ordinance council is responsible for approving the panel is presented to You by The Selection committee if you abstain because you're friends with a candidate or you don't believe Council should be voting on this for Independence reasons you're failing us as an elected official and not adhering to the laws that govern the formation of this panel this is your job vote go on the record for having an opinion because you represent this city and we want to know where you stand our group filed a formal complaint today with the city in response to the violation of ordinance 8430 by the city so section 2116 of that law establishes mandatory minimum qualifications for panel membership the committee disregarded legal requirements and has violated its legal and ethical responsibilities to serve the public interest Foster Public trust protect the Integrity of the city government and conduct themselves with the highest ethical standards we've lost faith in your capacity to act reasonably please change our minds thank you Jennifer

[87:01] and understand Catherine how good is not present online if we can go to Catherine good evening can you hear me yes hello Council thank you for your work um I Echo what others are saying about the police oversight panel that there are at least two people on this panel um who absolutely have shown bias um they've proven their bias against the police they're very anti-police they don't they're not going to contribute in a meaningful neutral way to progress our city forward I'm worried about the state of our Police Department to begin with we've lost officers we're gaining so few in return um we have we have more cops doing overtime uh even mandatory over time just to cover their bases they deal with unsafe conditions every single day there are constant threatened they deal with

[88:02] so so much we have an excellent excellent Police Department we cannot lose more we need to support them and yes of course we need accountability when something goes awry absolutely we need that and and I don't know anyone who doesn't agree with that I'm one um my son is going to be at Boulder high school next year I talked to so many parents we want more patrol around the school it's absolutely ludicrous the kinds of interactions some of these kids are having with folks offering drugs trying to sell drugs to them outside the school this kinds of stuff that go on shouldn't the police department they're so stretched then they can't help us by patrolling more they're all over the place with so few of them we need if we're going to have oversight it needs to be neutral balanced um and you know and again I don't know anyone who doesn't want accountability but let's support our police department

[89:00] and recruit more talent to our Force thank you Catherine so that brings us to the end of our open comment speaker cell turned to staff to see if there are any responses Cindy a very passionate Community it I did want to clarify something there was a virtual caller who wondered if we had 88 access in the libraries and I just wanted to confirm that we have taken the reasonable steps we are providing ADA accommodations so that we can we can comply with the law but appreciate folks being thoughtful and concerned about it specifically access to bathrooms for folks yes who require them because of disability results yes mayor yeah thank you truce did you have anything uh Council I I wanted to update you on the Rodriguez litigation just very briefly to be clear I'm Council of record not a party to the action if I were a party to the action I could not

[90:01] represent the city um so I am Council of record um the status of the case is that the city uh and and all officers were dismissed from the case on summary judgment that happened quite some time ago there is ongoing conversation about between Mr Rodriguez this is all public record between Miss Rodriguez and the federal court about naming unknown paramedic defendants the court has granted leave for that to happen I believe the date for that to happen has come and gone but the city is no longer involved in this in this litigation any questions or comments from Council Tara uh in regards to the Community member who mentioned the Bandshell and do we have an update on that I'll say that just yesterday I met with the team who's working to put a plan together and as we talk about the bench

[91:00] I'll say there are other areas in the city that need attention so as we continue to do that work we will keep you updated okay tuning thank you I just have a either question for you mayor or for um or CD attorney my understanding is that we cannot sign on to any type of international issues such as the conversation about the treaties I know that I've received some of these emails as well so I just wanted some you to clarify or I think we have to follow a certain process and maybe Teresa you could clarify it's in our rules and procedures if we wanted to take something like that up uh yes mayor that's accurate I am I'm pulling it up now here in a second

[92:11] this is called putting you on the spot almost there yes mayor this is in the council procedure under section 15 declarations and resolution item F which provides that foreign policy and National policy questions um the council shall not act on a foreign policy or national policy issue on which no prior official City policy has been established by the council or the people and less efficient time and resources can be allocated to assure a full presentation of the issue it did come to my attention after the last time this issue was raised that Boulder some years ago did address

[93:00] nuclear threats and so it certainly I think would be possible for staff to do some some legislative history research and and revive some of that if that was the direction of council great well I don't think we can do that right after open comment but I'd be interested in hearing more about that yeah Nicole I just wanted to ask a follow-up on that point I think we're having a legislative policy discussion and I don't know if that is anything that could kind of come up in the context of that discussion um as it relates to federal policy just a thought of something that we may be able to think about then you might could get in touch with Carl Castillo our policy advisor happy to do that anything else right thanks everyone for coming and speaking to us tonight and so now Elisha can we move to our consent agenda please yes sir our consent agenda is item

[94:00] number three on for tonight it consists of items a through e very good um uh good evening Council if if I may um someone alluded to this but we did receive today uh a code of conduct complaint with his which is authorized under chapter 2 Dash 11 of the boulder Revised Code that complaint is by an individual not a group it is signed on behalf of an individual as would be required by the code um that that complaint meets the um meets the surface requirements for launching an official process and so I I introduced this information to you because it it Bears on consent

[95:01] consent agenda item 3A pertaining to the appointment of police oversight panel members specifically this code of conduct complaint alleges that the selection committee violated the code of conduct in its actions in reviewing candidates and and in putting forward a slate of candidates there is a formal process to move forward with that that process because this is a a complaint by a resident that process then would be for the city council to take the official action to refer that matter for investigation to the City attorney or to outside special counsel under a certain set of circumstances um that referral is not before you tonight however I would recommend that in the uh

[96:01] in the interest of expediency that Council consider turning the beginning of next week's study session into a special meeting so that council could take official action to designate that that appointment um and and direct direct the fact that the investigation is to occur I say all of that uh because certainly a pending complaint is something that you should know about and have in mind as you consider whether to move forward with the appointment of candidates this evening or whether you would prefer to wait um for a determination so this is very complicated thank you my question is you just mentioned the complaint and I and you mentioned well

[97:03] we can wait uh to go with this content agenda item so is our vote independent of this complaint or is it I just needed some clarity does that make sense meaning that can we vote and still have go through the process as you mentioned next week we could still have that turn that council meeting into this process discussion around this particular issue or do we have to wait so are these two things independent or not yeah thank you council member Joseph I I understand your question now uh so the code of conduct complaint is not no action on that is in any way dependent on whether this Council moves forward with this vote tonight moreover the council's role is is purely

[98:00] ministerial in the code of conduct complaint the council is under our code is not invited to weigh in rather they they shall direct the City attorney or special counsel to conduct an investigation that then has some specific parameters and requirements with respect to what is um what is produced as because of that investigation and that would all be public the the report coming out of that I've got a couple questions for you Teresa the first one said I don't think I've been through this process before at least not recently so could you give us a quick overview of the steps that would be involved in this investigation this complete and a rough time frame under which that would take place um absolutely I'm happy to do that mayor and members of council so I'm looking at um Title II chapter 7. and in particular I'm looking at

[99:01] section 10. which governs enforcement that tells us that complaints can be initiated and and here I'm I'm gonna um rather than going through some sort of the process that are not relevant I'm going to limit the discussion to what pertains to this particular complaint so they can be initiated by a resident um that is accomplished by filing a sworn statement with the city clerk setting forth the facts which if true would constitute a violation of a provision of the code of conduct chapter that complaint has been received there was a sworn statement next investigation um so in all cases except a complaint by a city employee the city council shall request a City

[100:01] attorney to conduct an investigation regarding a violation of this chapter it goes on to tell us that in certain circumstances the council the City attorney could request a special counsel appointment the um the complete the the investigation then uh is to be conducted there is not a procedure laid out in our code for that investigation and certainly you could understand that that's a fact by a case-by-case basis right um but so an investigation that that would shed light on whether the the facts asserted are true and if they are true does that constitute a violation of the code of conduct a resulting written finding of fact and conclusion of law is required and it's required that that be public upon its completion

[101:00] um as to timeline it's a little it's a little bit hard to say because each investigation is unique uh the first step would be for Council to take that formal action of uh of uh ordering that's not quite the right word but the the investigation um you know depending on how in-depth such an investigation is um it could be accomplished in a number of weeks in my opinion um based on a very cursory uh uh assessment of this um I would expect that this investigation could be concluded in a number of weeks if perhaps within a month so by number you need a handful like a small number it's not 27 but weeks to a month I I meant the number of weeks as the smaller of up to a month

[102:00] okay great yes so that that's helpful to understand a little bit more about how that would work and then so Teresa this is a this is last minute information for us a complicated situation hard to know how to proceed as as the City attorney what would be your recommendation with the facts in front of us tonight on a next step to take um certainly Council has a variety of options in front of it um council could proceed with the with a vote um knowing that the investigation may or may not reveal um information that that bears on this um you know it's it's important for us to know that this is all at this point all we've got is we've received a complaint we don't have there's absolutely uh no determination of um of what the results of that complaint or investigation might be um

[103:01] lawyers tend to advise caution and and hear the the cautious and conservative approach would be um to postpone questions uh got Nicole yeah I just had a question about next steps so um how if a violation is found to have Merit how does it impact what happens so let's say we vote tonight the panelists are appointed they start meeting and then a violation is found what happens yeah I certainly understand that the question council member Spear and um I believe that the answer depends a lot on what is found right what's but what specifically is found um and so it's it's very hard for me to speculate about the the wide breadth of possibilities that could be involved right from uh discovering a fact that has um has no

[104:01] direct impact well first of all to First discovering that indeed there's no violation at all whatsoever right if there's a violation it could be that it it doesn't have a particular impact on the recommendation or it could have a really significant impact on the recommendation and um and could go so far as to reveal evidence that the recommendations are somehow legally flawed at heart again hard to speculate at this point about without without we're simply too early in the process Rachel and then I've got Juni and then that thanks Teresa I just wanted to make sure I follow a couple of things here did you tell us what is the gist of the complaint are you allowed to say that yes absolutely the complaint is public um

[105:01] and I'm sorry if you'll give me just a moment here we go thanks for giving me that moment so I could pull it up in front of me so the complaint alleges that the selection panel failed to comply with the boulder Revised Code and the applicable ordinance is governed qualifications of panel members um by specifically disregarding the requirement that that the candidate not have any real or perceived bias Prejudice or conflict of interest and that uh also by not meeting the

[106:00] criteria that the candidate um has the ability to build working relationships and communicate effectively with diverse groups thank you that's helpful context and then you said that um the way we'll kick this off is we city council would need to order an investigation or that we could order an investigation are there other options what if we just don't don't order that uh can I just want to understand thanks sorry about that I didn't mean to interrupt you um the code requires that Council shell it's not discretionary okay thanks said it Rachel it's not my questions okay Junie then Matt all right thank you Matt did you have a question thanks Aaron um Teresa thank you for walking us through this um as it is delicate

[107:00] um to say the least um my question kind of maybe is a tangent or refinement from where maybe where Nicole was touching on a little bit so you know if we were to approve the candidates um do we risk the work of the oversight panel uh does that work is that work in Jeopardy if the investigation were to find that there was a violation in that period in which case it would sort of nullify or or undo the work of the oversight panel in that time frame and I'm just sort of I'm concerned I'm just worried about how does it slide us backwards or what does that do in that intervening time I understand your your question council member and I'd be happy to provide that legal advice I think that's a legal advice question sorry I didn't know it was a general no that's okay fair enough but any other questions

[108:01] Nicole all right if you have a question now oh sorry yeah and I think this is sort of a process and um who's available I believe we have a member of the selection committee here tonight and I am just wondering um if they're no they're not okay okay hi yeah I was just wondering if if there's a possibility of I should have let you finish your thought before no no sorry no I I see I see from your expression that no that that is um it would not be appropriate for this Council to ask questions that would go to the investigation of a selection Committee Member um if the council decides to deliberate on the appointment of nominees certainly the selection committee would would be important um and in those deliberations thank you is there anyone here such as Amy Kane who can respond to where what

[109:02] is going on with the panel right now are they meeting in my understanding from a few comments that were made earlier that the fact that this process has taken so long and that's taken away from their work because they're missing two members I I'm glad that you raised that and I do think that um Amy is probably available online but it does bring to mind something that came up in public comment that I wanted to address um under the code it is permissible for police oversight panel members whose term has expired to remain on the panel until their replacement is appointed that is at their discretion right then we don't force people to serve um but they could serve and so that's just information I wanted the council to have and we do have Amy present she's got her hand raised so Amy did you want to speak to this

[110:00] sure thank you um I'm home sick thank you Council for um having this conversation so um I won't be turning on my camera this evening but um if you can just introduce yourself please I'm so sorry my name is Amy Kane I'm the equity officer for the city of Boulder and I help um lead the work of the police oversight panel so if the group does not uh select the panelists that have been put forth before Council in this iteration we will um we will not be able to meet Quorum if the two current panelists who are going off the panel on February 8th um decide that they don't want to continue on then the work of the panel will be stifled yeah just follow any of the those panelists did decide to stay on would there be a quorum there would be a quorum yes I'm not again like Teresa said we can't guarantee that they would be willing to do that understood

[111:01] we do have a co-chair in the room present um Daniel Leonard if it's appropriate for him to also answer he might have a better perspective on the viewpoints of those two panel members I don't yeah I'm getting the shaken heads from and not because we don't appreciate in the room because we do there there he is yeah we appreciate the work very much but I do think that we should um the members directly as to what they would wish to do or not do I just I think we should honor their own individual wishes Fair thanks to Emmy and we do hope that you you improve very soon you feel better soon thank you I appreciate it thank you thanks mayor Brockett any other questions um yeah Nicole question so I just I have a process question um again and I'm not advocating for this and I'm wondering if it is possible to go candidate by candidate for the Slate um I am deeply concerned about halting

[112:00] the work I'm also concerned about some other stuff that I'll talk to later but I'm wondering if that's a possibility well I guess I might I might say from a process for a sec what I was going to say after questions are done you know is to say um so we're you know we're at the um on the consent agenda here actually uh do you mind if I just pause I just uh heard would this be appropriate I just heard that one of the potentially continuing members is present uh yes I just uh saw one of the members who would be coming off the panel and I just wanted to alert counsel that she is present in the room are we allowed to check in I well let's come I'm going to come back to that thank you for being present and letting us know about that but um I don't want to put people on the spot so what I'd suggest is you know we need to determine a path forward here for for 3A about the appointments for the police oversight panel and that that path forward could be um

[113:00] you know a discussion a vote um it could be a uh a motion to continue this until the um until the the complaint as a result and so I I guess I or or some third course that somebody could propose and so I guess it would be helpful to me to understand what the will of counsel is in terms of next steps about whether we are going to a vote or whether we want it someone might want to consider the postponement as as Teresa has uh potentially as recommended so I I that's what I would like to hear from Council about and maybe yeah go ahead Nicole um yeah to me that what we heard about the nature of the complainant seems to be focused around pretty much exactly the same decision that we're making tonight whether we believe there was bias in the process um or the place oversight panel uh did did what the ordinance States so I would prefer to move forward with the vote tonight because I don't really see much of a difference in the process either way

[114:00] thanks I thought I saw a hand over here Lauren if um the investigation into the code of conduct complaint did find an infraction of some kind would that likely overturn all of the appointments or do you see that as being likely to be restricted to just a couple or fewer council member it would very much depend on on the findings right if if the findings were the criteria wasn't applied with respect to a particular applicant and that would apply to that applicant if it were to find that the criteria was not applied to any applicant that would that would seem to impact the entire slate

[115:01] um including those who have not been recommended and if the and if it were to find that the criteria had been applied equally to all applicants then it would have no effect thank you other thoughts people are being shy mark I know we don't often want to be cautious in our proceedings but I think this might be an appropriate time to do it if we can establish a quorum so that the pop can continue operation during the pendency of the matter it's not that we're not going to get to it we are going to get to it it's just a question of when we get to it and it seems to me to be a little bit counterproductive to move forward and be at risk of having our decisions overturned as long with along with the

[116:03] actions of the selection committee but it doesn't mean that we're not going to have that vote on on the candidates proposed it's just that it seems to me to make a little more sense to attempt to keep a quorum in place and um and be a little more cautious fun so I want to build on Mark's good suggestion there and um since Theresa just recommended that we have we turned the study session next week into a special meeting and do as sounds like we're required to anyway and that is direct an investigation of the complaint um perhaps we could continue this matter for one week because we're going to have to have a special meeting on this anyway that'll give Amy or whoever is going to make the request an opportunity to sit down with those two um oversight panel members to see if they would be willing to continue their

[117:01] terms if they are then it would seem that we could have the investigation go forward and hopefully be wrapped up in the time frame that Teresa suggested if they're not then we can revisit this next week because we have to talk about this next week anyway suggestion on the table other thoughts I have a question I am more again this is very hard decision to make tonight but is there any history or precedence of someone sending a complaint and we halt Council decisions to go over process is this something that has happened before on maybe not on this exact issue but something similar or comparable I I unfortunately I'm afraid that this news was um as last

[118:01] minute for me as it is for you and so I have asked my office to conduct some research about history here um and and I don't I don't yet I don't yet I don't even know the history of that I don't know uh I the people that I consulted with who have been in my office a long time are not aware of a similar complaint against sort of a uh board commission task force other body you know comprised under the authority of counsel um so I I suspect this is unprecedented okay I've got Rachel's hand up um I'm just going to share some pros and cons that I see I think that a big con to not moving forward tonight is that you know this has already been such a a bad process um and the process was set up poorly

[119:02] which is why most of you and apparently some public speakers are aware that I am inclined to have stayed in line with what I I said in 2020 about this being so this process being so potentially Rife with politicization and that's exactly what we're seeing playing out so I'm I'm disinclined to to like stall this and delay it and put these um potential panelists and the current panel through through delays and more kind of drama around this uh on the other hand we have heard a lot from um a lot of community members that they are concerned about bias and I could see a potential um Pro here being that that someone um potentially I would hope neutral and objective can just weigh in and tell us this complaint says that there's evidence of bias I guess if I'm hearing a City attorney correctly and if that's not substantiated then it makes our our decision a lot cleaner and this um the seated oversight panel can can move

[120:02] forward without that that sort of um Cloud over their head so just sharing those thoughts thanks Rachel um I've not seen other any other hands so I'll call on myself actually I think my thought is similar to Rachel's on both the pros and the cons here I was ready to move forward and get this done tonight um but uh I appreciate uh Teresa's advice here um because I would hate to proceed and then and then have a cloud and then and then have things potentially go badly in the future and to Rachel's Point once we get a judgment on this I think we could proceed probably free and clear with these with these selections potentially so um I'm I'm reluctantly uh willing to postpone for now but with the intention of coming back soon and hearing from Theresa that the time frame for this is not a long time frame because I think we owe it to the

[121:02] community the the panel and everyone involved to get this done before too much longer but but I I would probably go with with postponing it for tonight to get this result Matt and then Nicole appreciate the thoughts for sure this is not easy um and thank you Teresa for walking us through this again um sort of in real time since this all sort of fell on our laps right before we ate dinner um you know I'm I think that there's appropriateness in heeding some of the caution from Teresa but having and but is but I think it's important to think about having that opportunity that there could still maintain a forum this work is really important to continue to do um and so I think for me if there's an opportunity to continue the work then I think we allow that opportunity to go to work and hopefully the the current folks would be willing to do that for a

[122:01] relatively finite and short period of time hopefully if it's somewhere close to Teresa's guesstimate I think that's a reasonable thing um and then we can address this sort of free and clear I think you know the mayor's assessment is is a is a poignant and thoughtful one so so I appreciate you bringing that up okay Nicole Tara oh Teresa let's do Teresa first Wheelman because it's my night to be the bearer of bad news over and over again um there is a question about this Quorum issue when I look at the code boards commissions task force other similarly situated bodies state in the code what constitutes a quorum the police oversight panel does not have such a provision in their ordinance typically under Robert's Rules a quorum would be half plus one

[123:00] what I have not had time to look into and do not know tonight is when there are vacant or unfilled seats does that impact what constitutes a quorum and so I I want you to have that information as you're thinking about um whether a quorum is present or not I think it's an unanswered question as of tonight so learn more about that but would it not be the case that if it did impact it would lower the number of people required for a quorum yes sir that's exactly right and so that is my concern is that we we may be stating that there wouldn't be a quorum without knowing whether that is factually accurate so in fact we might have a quorum even if people didn't continue but we'll learn more soon we may or may not I am over here frantically researching everything that you are saying all right well we'll probably want a full deliberation on that right investigation on it before making sure about that yes Nicole

[124:02] I think your Microsoft it is related to that question um when we've mentioned the current members staying on I have seen the current member who was here shaking her head vigorously now so I I really you know I I would really like us to just make a decision tonight um it would be wonderful if if we absolutely cannot find another way can we at least move forward on some of the others so just kind of like to put that out there as another all right thanks and yeah respect to the member President we and I just I don't want to put anybody on the spot and force you to make a decision in front of the public like right now but duly noted Tara well I was one of the people that wanted to push back the date in December to now because I did not we we found that out what was that two days before and I really take this panel seriously and I care a lot about it and there was no way

[125:01] in two days that I was going to be able to study watch all the interviews learn everything about the ordinance there was no way so I studied up watched every interview watched every alternate interview watched the people that didn't and now to have this information and have to make an immediate decision for me when this is so important is not what I would want to do I feel like we have to put a lot of time into this these are people's lives we're talking about and so I would like not to as far as uh what Nicole says um set about going forward I just I don't think that that's a good idea to do I I don't want to start picking and choosing because my problem with the uh with the with the uh was more with the process and the structure than it was with the individual people and what does bias mean and all those other things I think those are super important before we make these important decisions so that's why I say that we should wait very good uh Rachel just wanted to share out to Bob's

[126:02] suggestion um one of the panelists who is um coming off the panel did text and said that they will not be staying on uh so that we would just have to vote again next week if if her or if they're uh presence was required for for a quorum so I just wanted to share that out and also to um remind that we expanded this panel because they are are so overloaded with cases so even if they technically have a quorum they're still going to be overloaded if we delay this did check that out while we're balancing too Lauren yeah I think I feel like we've already in some ways expressed a lack of faith in the oversight committee and they've been put through more rigmarole in this last

[127:00] round of delay than I intended and I think then they signed up for um the investigation will go forward either way but I'm very hesitant to put the police oversight panel in a position where there they may or may not lack have a quorum and especially given the volume of work and the importance to their Community to the community um well did you have you know are we voting yeah I think I think no I think I would welcome a motion at this point like about maybe a way forward but that we can vote on but one more comment yeah so our attorney mentioned that this is unprecedented what what we're about to do and so what I am curious about is how does this affect us moving forward so in the future if we're about to make a decision and we get a complaint

[128:02] we don't know whether that complaint is going to be found to be valid or not will we hold up all of our future decisions in the same way if a Community member puts in a complaint as maybe I'll just call on myself as a colloquy I this is this is so last minute I would in no way be attempting to create a precedent um this is a unique situation in my opinion and would not in so let's throw that out there yeah it seems like I don't know it seems like some of the goal posts kind of keep moving around a little bit um because it seemed like we were focused on well hey we have running up against this Quorum issue and we need to we need to get that done and now we're hearing there might not be a quorum issue and so we we have some Grace that we didn't have before and so I'm I'm just kind of wondering like we're we're sort of throttling around a little bit and um

[129:02] and I guess if that's not what we're running up against perhaps like is it worth knowing that we are or are not running up against that Quorum issue for the function we were so because at least it seemed like a lot of the urgency was trying to maintain function of this group and if it can function even if it's on a little bit limited for a short period of time before we clear all this up that's a worthwhile thing to consider I just worry that if there's a quorum it's a worthwhile thing to know I didn't even recognize that that wasn't even an issue until just now so I think it's just we're learning stuff right now on the fly so it's a feel weird making a decision as the Dynamics and the info and the variables are changing as we're thinking about it yeah and Juni but then Bob's computer this so here I hear my thing I hear um or City attorney and we hire her to give us good advice and she's given us great advice and

[130:01] for the most part I do defer to her her expertise but my issue is if we were I in My Views I would prefer that we move forward and vote because again there is no prior precedence and I'm worried that people can just think oh yeah let me complain and I'll just halt the work of the council but not only that if we were to postpone this vote and let's say we were to find some type of a violation what is it that we intend to do with the members of this panel does that mean all of them are gone I don't know what would they have to resign or they fired what would be what would be the consequence of it because if it's just retraining then if or it's part of a greater conversation if that's what the only thing that will happen I just don't know what is the hold up tonight thank you anyway Bob do you want to yeah I'd like

[131:01] to make a motion I know that other people want to jump in here and you can comment on my motion after I make it how's that sound um so I'm hearing some of my colleagues wanting to vote tonight I'm hearing some of my colleagues wanting to wait until the investigation is completed um it sounds like we don't know um definitively whether the two oversight panel members whose term otherwise would expire in about three weeks are willing to serve for a little while longer we don't know the Quorum there's a lot of things we don't know tonight because it's just kind of hit us so my motion is that we continue item 3A for one week to one week to from today to January 26th which is before the end of the term of um our colleagues on the oversight panel that will give Theresa a week to make it a determination with respect to a quorum it will give um Amy perhaps some time to visit with the oversight panel members whose term to end if if Teresa thinks that that's necessary um this hit us all just within the last

[132:01] hour or two and I I feel the pain of my colleagues that this is a bit rushed but I also appreciate the um the view of my colleagues that this has gone on for a long time in a in an under delay is probably unfair to a lot of people so I move that we continue item 3A for exactly one week we need to have a special meeting a week from now as I understand it from Theresa anyway to direct the investigation so we could take that special meeting and perhaps that night vote so that's my motion second okay um any additional comments before we vote on the motion in front of us Rachel I'm not going to support the motion just because I'm aware that one one current panel members not willing to stay on um so I don't think we'll be anywhere different in a week and it'll be the same question so I would um frankly rather we just decide today if you know

[133:00] if we want to wait till the end of the investigation then that's what we should do if we don't then we should vote today can I call a queen with you on that Rachel I I think one of the reasons for the delay is a week from now we may find we have a quorum despite the resignation of two people and then we can make whatever decision we think best and if they don't have a quorum then obviously we can move forward to take a vote because it will be necessary to do so I appreciate that we'll just tack on to that I think with or without a form I guess without they're not doing anything with they're still so um short on on members and they'll be down more members that it will it's we're asking a lot of these panel members that I don't think is is fair that's why we expanded the the panel either way I'm against the motion but appreciate the creativity Bob

[134:02] great and Lauren and I'll call on myself I'm going to agree with Rachel postponing is the decision and it either sets a precedent for allowing an uninvested gated complaint to dictate our procedure or it exposes this action as a farce great so um I'll just say that um you know I'll disagree a little bit with Rachel here that I'll support it because of the very short time frames involved so get take a week find out whether we have a quorum if uh if we do have a quorum I think there would only end up being one to two to maybe three weeks in which it would be a smaller number of people involved so I feel like that's a short enough time frame that it's worth seeing if we can figure out what's going on here in the meantime I'll any uh I can I'll go ahead and call for a vote on the motion unless anybody

[135:01] needs to say more Elise should this be a show of hands for them excuse me sir for the motion to continue 3A correct yes you can do a show of hands on that motion okay motion second all in favor raise your hand that would be five votes in favor so that does that does pass um this is being very difficult last minute information um and I just want to appreciate everybody involved for all of the hard work they're putting into this and we will get there and we will get there soon yes yeah sure I just have a point that I would really appreciate folks thinking about particularly as we're coming out of celebrating Martin Luther King Jr day I think it's really important as we are thinking about what we're going to do next week that we keep in mind how easy

[136:00] it is to confuse criticism and disagreement with bias as much as we wish otherwise the systems of policing and criminal justice along with every other system in our society are and always have been biased against black and brown people queer interns people disabled people and those living in poverty that is a fact criticizing a bias system is not biased disagreeing with the outcome or approach of a bias system is not bias naming the racism embedded in all of our governmental systems including in our policing and criminal justice system is not biased even a cursory look at our City's history will show you it is progress I'm very disappointed with our decision tonight I'm glad it's just a week that we are waiting but I really hope we can think about what bias is as it relates to a majority white body making a decision about overturning a panel that is one of our most diverse panels in the city thank you

[137:04] [Music] all right well well moving on from that we have the rest of our consent agenda items B through e sure I um move on the consent agenda items 3B through 3E inclusive second any questions or comments on the motion seeing none let's have a roll call here yes sir thank you we'll stop this roll call tonight with councilmember Weiner yes yes Benjamin yes mayor Brockton yes councilmember Falcons yes friend yes Joseph here yes spear yes and wallet yes

[138:02] the consent agenda items B through e exclusively are hereby approved thank you Alicia let's move to our call-up check-in please thanks sir tonight's College check-in is item four on the agenda 4A is the call of consideration of a concept plan review and comment for a Redevelopment proposal of 2747 Glenwood Court The Proposal includes demolition of the existing apartment complex and Redevelopment of the site with attached multi-family and townhouse dwelling units constructed atop a new underground vehicle parking structure the new development is proposed to include a multi-family building compromised of 102 efficiency living units those are referenced as elus 15 two bedroom units and six three bedroom units two separate townhouse buildings containing seven

[139:00] units each and a leasing building this is reviewed under case number lur 2022-00037 thanks see Lucia any um interest in calling this up or questions or comments I got Mark and then Bob uh I would have interest in calling this up as is typical for a project of this magnitude one always wants to take a look uh that's our job so yes I would be interested in blowing it up Bob I'm going to take a contrary view on this one you write mark on a large project we often do call it up I want to just make two observations one I I thought the planning board did a very very good job on this one I thought there was very thorough commentary offered to the applicant um and a lot of good information I don't know if the applicants here tonight and it has a view one way or the other the applicant wants it to be called up obviously I would defer to that if the applicant is content with the planning boards um feedback I would be inclined not called up particularly in light of the

[140:01] fact that we are very very quickly slipping into the second year of our two-year work plan and we have not made a whole lot of progress and I'm not sure we could give up the time if if avoidable some uh Nuria or or somebody from the plane Department could we maybe ask the applicant or the applicant's representative if they have a preference home or the other would that be proper we're here um Danica Paul with Trestle strategy group representing the applicant and the development team we did feel that we got a really great review with planning board and um I feel like we're ready to move forward so we weren't looking for a call up tonight appreciate the the thought but this is a great project and we look forward to kind of moving forward with it so thank you for asking thanks Danica yeah I was just going to ask for a call up as well I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about this one see I'll I'll call on myself if you're

[141:01] not seeing any other hands raised and I'll just say I think the the development is on a good enough track that I don't feel the need to call it up I I thought it looked uh really fantastic playing board had some some good minor feedback and I would just the one thing that I would Echo was I was looking at the southwest corner of the site where the townhouses meet the the bike path and just wanted to make sure that there was enough of a setback from the bike path so it didn't feel too kind of crowded or closed in other than that I thought it was going in a great Direction so I don't feel the need to call it up anybody else so certainly somebody could make a motion to call it up if you if you'd like I would like to make a motion to call it up second that motion and can I speak to my motion for just a minute one of the things that I'm really interested in hearing a little bit more about with this project is um the idea of having a fence that is kind of access controlled um over by the park by Elmer's two mile

[142:01] park that's right there and to me that I think this this was something that I believe John garcelle brought up in planning board this idea of do we want to be a gated community do we want to have gated communities within our community and I I in my mind that is something that councils should think about a little bit and discuss thanks we have in Motion in second I believe this would be a show of hands okay all in favor of the motion please raise your hands and we got three all posed we got six oh so that's unsuccessful vote of three to six and Nicole I would just encourage you to make a comment right now if you want to expound on that a little bit because you can get it on the record and and it can be listened to as part as it goes forward or yeah thank you um and yeah I'm just I'm interested into some of the design that's there right now because it seems like what it's going to do is to prevent people from sort of having a

[143:01] more open access to Elmer's to Mel Park and being able to kind of go go through there and typically we've had open access to the park and I think the place where it was coming in was maybe by where an employee was going to be and just just thinking about how can we have access to that Park still and allow for people who are trying to get to the park to not have to go around or in a different way and especially if there are access points that people within this development have to the park that the rest to the public does not have that doesn't feel very good so I would just just really like some thinking about that and for for our staff as well one of the other concerns that I have is that there are about 42 units here right now I believe and I know that because it's an older development it's not that things are affordable but for Boulder it's relatively affordable and I'm concerned

[144:00] about the folks who are currently living there and I know that or at least I believe that our wait lists are kind of long for affordable housing right now so what I'm wondering is if we can start reaching out to folks that are there as soon as possible just to get them on wait list if they do qualify for affordable housing because I would really hate to lose some of those folks in our community thank you great thanks Bob did you have a comment on this no but I do have a process question for Teresa before we move on to item five whenever we're ready well if uh no one has any additional comments in this item I think we can move on to item five but if you want to start us off with something how about item four and a half Teresa do you need us to make a motion to conduct a special meeting convert the study session into a special media I see you not in your head so I'm just going to make the motion is that okay yes thank you I move that we convert um the special this could be the study session scheduled for January 26 2023 from a

[145:00] study session to a special meeting to be held virtually that all that cacp requested to maintain all of the study session items on that agenda if they can but that we could also take up the two special meeting items that we talked about tonight that is the continuation of 3A and the request from Teresa that we direct an investigation that's my motion can I just ask procedurally we've often added a special meeting and kept a steady session rather than converted the whole thing but is there does it need to be done one way or the other I Look to our city clerk that is at the discretion of counsel okay I'm fine you have a reference here um maybe a special meeting at the beginning and that's fine I'll modify my motion to say to hold a special meeting at the beginning of the evening on the

[146:00] 26th of January and then after that meeting is adjourned to roll into our study session thanks June I second that motion can I add anything to your emotion or do you want to speak please do I hope that CAC will ensure as we're attacking on more that they keep that you know within the time frame of probably 10 o'clock that would be really helpful time management thank you can we get nine seconds on there or eight seconds on the End by ten okay we got a motion and a second show of hands all in favor get a that's a unanimous vote all right thanks for getting that taken care of silly Alicia if we can go to our public hearing please all right sir thank you public hearings are item number five on tonight's agenda 5A is the consideration of the following tax related ordinances there are three number one is the second reading and consideration of emotion to adopt ordinance 8548 that's related to

[147:02] the electronic smoking device and tobacco retailers parts of our BRC item number two is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8562 that is amending the sections of the BRC noted to exempt essential hygiene products from the city's sales tax and the last item item number three is the second reading and consideration of a motion to pass ordinance 8563 amending title III and that is to um provide greater consistency and Tax Administration within the code I just want to thank Finance for making that super long to give them enough time to get up here and just get ready so with that I pass it on to our CFO Cara Skinner thank you Nur yeah good evening mayor and Council Carson our Chief Financial Officer um we'll display

[148:02] no it's not this was working before there we go okay so tonight we have for your consideration three uh ordinances related to the tax code and uh Regulatory and some licensing requirements here we go we're getting it going um so the three ordinances the first one is related to electronic smoking devices and it amends both the tax code and some Regulatory and Licensing code provisions the second ordinance really affects your ways council's guidance last fall to

[149:00] exempt essential hygiene products from the city's tax code from the sales tax and the third really is Administrative changes to title III this is to add greater Clarity and to reduce administrative burden both for staff and for our taxpayers and tonight I'm pleased to introduce James McDonald who is our tax manager and he will be walking through these ordinances with you um we also have Kristen changaris our regulatory licensing manager here to answer questions as well as Laurel Witt senior City attorney so with that I will hand it over to James McDonald good evening Council James matano tax manager it's a pleasure to be speaking with you guys tonight on these three important ordinances you might need to leave so what we'd like to do is just walk through some high points for each of the ordinances

[150:00] right up in there James right up in there I feel like I'm singing to the band there with the band all right is that better okay so ordinance 8548 regarding electronic smoking devices we're going to refer to those as esds throughout the presentation what this will do is amend titles three four and six of the BRC really to provide clarification regarding taxation licensing and privileged acts and the modification comes primarily around the idea of those esds that contain nicotine much of this was driven by council's feedback to staff over the last several months quick background this is a timeline that just kind of shows some of the the opportunities staff has had to speak with Council and get some direction after certain ordinances ordinances have passed uh regarding Taxation and licensure Etc um

[151:01] so specifically changes to title III this is the tax code this is where we're clarifying that the 40 special sales tax applies to these ESD products that contain nicotine um additionally we wanted to ensure that the 40 special tax is in addition to the 3.86 standard sales tax there's no change there that 3.86 has always been uh in play for these products changes to title IV um clarifying licensing requirements again it's revolving around the esds that are going to be containing nicotine so there was a renaming of the license to tobacco and electronic smoking device for those retailers and again clarifying that it's pertaining specifically to retailers that are selling esds that contain nicotine we provide a quick example here that retailers selling LSD is that esds that

[152:01] do not contain nicotine such as a cannabis retailer or paraphernalia only shop would not be required to hold the license I think that was something that was needed to have some additional clarification around and also there's going to be a change to create some consistency around the renewal fees for these licenses just to be harmonious with other regulatory licenses for late fees uh that changes to title six uh would be to clarify prohibitions uh in 6-4.5-2 which applies again to esds containing nicotine so you can see that theme we're adding definitions of nicotine ESD retailer and flavor DSD and also we're seeking to reconcile inconsistencies between uh chapters 6-4 and 6-4.5 uh the next ordinance uh speaks to the

[153:00] essential hygiene products again this was based upon feedback from uh Council last fall so what this will do is amends the the tax code in title III uh where we're adding two additional definitions of menstruation products and incontinence products and diapers and then we are seeking to incorporate exemptions specific to those terms as defined a little bit of background on this um Denver and Aurora had previously had exemptions pertaining to uh some or all of these types of products dating back to 2019 when Denver established its first exemption related to menstrual products in 2022 Aurora kind of followed suit with menstrual products and diapers as well the state enacted exemption from the state sales tax for these products and in October of last year Council

[154:01] provided staff with a notify to move forward with developing this ordinance we did do some Outreach and there was a community focus group was held we had seven Community groups participate in providing staff with feedback there was unanimous support for the exemption across a number of reasons why some of those being to eliminate some cost burden for individuals and families there was an impact against a broad community population so the benefit hits a large population for Boulder as well as an increased sense of dignity and Mobility around removing those impacts from tax on these products one thing of note was uh from the community groups there seemed to be a sense to ensure that to urge Council not to decrease non-profit funding because certainly there's going to be a revenue impact to the city of Boulder

[155:00] when we create these types of exemptions the estimated year one reduction is 200 about 236 thousand dollars and that estimate is based upon kind of following the state fiscal note and just adapting that for demographics specific to Boulder the last ordinance is Administrative amendments to title III again that's the tax title um General overview of changes those bulleted lists uh there and we're going to go down each of those in the next few slides um a little bit of background staff seeks to be adaptive to input from the business community and folks that are seeking to provide voluntary compliance around how the ordinance impacts their operations and when there seems to be uncertainty or confusion within the way the code is the language exists within the code we try to identify

[156:00] opportunities to modernize the code or adapt the language to ensure the original intent is making its way through to folks that are subservient to that code so wanted to offer Council a little bit of feedback that as you may know that these types of amendments are not uncommon um 2018 we adopted standard definitions and there was some additional administrative changes that took place at that time Marketplace facilitator language was adopted in 2020 and then economic Nexus in 2021 and again that's an adaptation from the Wayfair case that was a national case so again just trying to reiterate that we're trying to stay current with with our code and as a kind of a final note change is recommended in the Ordinance do not alter the treatment of any transaction as taxable or not taxable we're not modifying the code in such a manner as to uh subject something to tax that historically was not subjected to the tax

[157:00] uh the climate tax again starting with our summary of changes uh this is going to incorporate uh the changes necessary from the passing of ballot issue 2A in November and what that specifically will do is eliminate the climate action plan tax in chapter 312 and then revise chapter 313 which was the utility occupation tax which reflects the approved climate tax from that November election and we've we've elected to include uh the climate tax as a portion of these other title III changes just as a matter of efficiency some of the things that you'll see throughout the changes that are being proposed I tried to identify some of the places where there may be a lot of striking just to provide a little bit of context as to why one of those examples was a modification to the use of retailer or vendor what we're seeking to do is establish a consistent use of just one single term

[158:01] as opposed to the use of retailer or vendor interchangeably throughout the code with the the term vendor being contained within the definition of retailer it seemed like we could provide consistency by just using the word retailer throughout so again just an administrative change so that there's hopefully no confusion that vendor and retailer are somehow different by the users of the ordinance accommodations and short-term rentals um again utilizing a single word of retailer what we wanted to do here retailer incorporates Marketplace facilitator within its definition and it became again in modernization and keeping with industry practice that there are platform users out there um where that would fall under the marketplace facilitator concept and so this was a way to ensure that we're moving Marketplace facilitation into those accommodations chapters

[159:00] um and I think it's of note that currently we have some of the large these large platform or Marketplace facilitators in the accommodation space are already collecting our tax pursuant to voluntary collection agreements so this would eliminate the need for a VCA um also we're again just some cleanup stuff where we're trying to strike unnecessary language if we say enumerate uh any number of types of facilities that would be subject to an accommodation uh tax uh when the consideration is exchanged we have definitions that already provide those same delineation of or enumeration of facility types so just a way to try to reduce some unnecessary language one specific change under marijuana excise tax the legislative intent language that was adopted indicates that the excise was imposed upon the first

[160:02] transfer from a cultivation facility somehow in the imposition language the phrase or term any as opposed to First was incorporated so we wanted to harmonize uh this is something that comes up from our business Community with regularity because they read the legislative intent language that says first and then they read the imposition language that says any and they're not sure if that means there's multiple impositions through the stream of Commerce so we wanted to clarify that to ensure that the legislative intent was being honored um limitations is related to our statute of limitations currently the code triggers a three-year look back based upon the due date of a return as opposed to the actual filing of that return our understanding is that the code intends to provide the city and or and or a taxpayer three years from a trigger date

[161:04] for their ability to seek refund or for the city to make assessment so what this does is it moves the start date to three years from the moment a return is actually filed so that we actually would have three years from the date we're given notice of the the activity to determine its accuracy for reporting also we're adding some language uh around the idea of that when a notice of audit is issued to a taxpayer that it does not require a signed agreement between the city and the taxpayer to set the statute of limitations this is kind of an administrative easing whereby if we run up against a expiring statute agreement we have to then reach back out to the the party being audited have them re-sign an agreement to extend the statute again this can be cumbersome for both the taxpayers and for us

[162:06] uh some general information there's a lot of stricken definitions and a lot of relocation of sections again the definitions that were stricken were determined to be duplicative where they exist in different areas of the boulder Revised Code but still apply to title III so the title III definitions would be stricken and preserving the title one definitions that say the same thing additionally we identified sections that just felt like they were in the wrong place or they existed in essentially the same language in multiple places within title III so we determined um and we're proposing that these particular sections get moved to what we believe is the most appropriate place for the user examples would be in our definitions

[163:00] section we actually have or a definitions chapter we actually have sections pertaining to certain administrative processes such as inner city claims for Recovery we don't believe that would qualify necessarily as definitions so those are just being moved into a more administrative chapter which is chapter 17 for General Provisions so again we're just we're not changing things we're just moving them uh also uh it was it was identified that there were a couple of uh necessary changes from first reading to this reading so we wanted to set those off um maybe the best way to say that is these three changes essentially become non-changes and uh final thing on this would just be there was a recommendation for third reading giving the change between first and second reading so we thought if there was any questions around

[164:01] why I need to go to third reading for adoption we just wanted to make sure that was made clear that was a lot that was probably fast open to questions I thought it was a perfect speed thank you for that that's very clear questions for Steph Nicole yeah I just had a quick question thank you so much for the presentation um my question was uh one of the commenters about um the uh eliminating the sales tax on menstrual products and things like that they asked if we could make sure that those any loss in revenue is not affecting nonprofits and I was just wondering if we have a way that we can actually track that um so it kind of just all washes out in the budget that that would be something that is we consider the 2020 for Budget we would

[165:01] just be clear about what what our non-profit funding levels and how do they compare to the 2023 levels and we can make it clear at that point in time if I can just call Glenn that's a great question as I understand it the amount that the funding would go down is much much smaller than the increase in our funding over what we had anticipated for the year is that correct that's my expectation at this point in time it right and so far or anyway related to what we've seen so far in recent months so that there would not be a need to cut any programs on the trend that we're on right now in order to to fund this reduction in Revenue that would be correct and I also just would clarify and this was in the memo that that 236 000 is across all of our sales tax funds and some of those sales tax dollars are dedicated for other purposes already other questions um seeing none then we can go to our public hearing

[166:01] we have one person signed up virtually which is Lynn Siegel Lynn I think you're familiar with our code conduct rules and so you have three minutes to speak as far as hygiene products I would normally be supporting an exemption however your wealth inequity that you're doing through your policy of planning board and planning and development and papillos and everything that you're doing to support the wealth any inequity in Boulder just creates more people that can't afford these hygiene products so I don't support it exclusively because of that because you're do you're spinning your wheels you're making things more and more unaffordable and then you're you're asking for tax

[167:01] exemptions for certain groups and those groups are increased in in number by your policy and you know I for 30 years I've been following this and fighting it and nothing happens it gets worse and worse as you see from my letter today that I sent from just reading an article from seven years ago we were in the same trajectory um let's see that was oh as far as taxing um vaping um I don't think you should good texting things that shouldn't be legitimate in the first place so I'm opposed to that but for the wrong reasons I'm opposed to that because we never should have allowed vaping at all or nicotine at all because they're too destructive to the

[168:00] health of the community so I think you need to think about what you're really doing in this community in a much larger way than just the kind of tax fixes that you can do and especially with regards to the library the library should not have been given up for two million dollars of benefit because we don't own the library anymore and so I just don't I think you're completely Hippocratic hypocritic in just about every policy you do that that means something deeply in this community like the biggest things like Jared was talking about affordable housing you're just making it worse and worse and worse and you're dreaming and knocking down the Glenwood site those are affordable

[169:01] they're not going to be affordable afterwards with 100 some units you're making things more unaffordable in this community and then you're asking for tax breaks that's counterintuitive done thanks Lynn Bob if there's no discussion I was going to offer a motion go ahead and put one on the table and we have discussion after that Teresa can I move all four ordinances when three ordinances do I need to do them separately they're exactly as they appeared in the materials as published so you could move them together okay ordinance number 854 54 and 8563 do you have a second certainly I think I saw Nicole first there sure a second

[170:00] question a second do you want to speak to motion well I don't thank you very much to both of you for being here and thank you for making it very clear in the motion and your presentation and um thanks for cleaning things up up for us a little bit Yeah Nicole okay second I don't have any other comments just um thank you for getting all this done so quickly and bringing it back to us great I'll just um call on myself and just say how appreciative I am of all the work that you've done here the the smoking and vaping stuff we've been working on it for a long time right so it's good to finally get this done it's been years in in the making great to finally get it done really appreciate the uh tax break we're giving people on hygiene essential hygiene projects products and then that was a lot of detailed work on the taxation language and wanted to really appreciate the um the diagram the comments you gave us so that I was able to then follow exactly the reasons for all that that was really helpful for for me to do my duty in reviewing the

[171:01] ordinance I got Rachel and then Matt no no just Rachel then thanks I just wanted to thank staff for 85.62 essential hygiene products um I have not worked on anything that was done more efficiently and with less drama during my years on Council so great job and maybe in advance to my colleague if the vote is also drama free this is I think just a a good for the community and we'll help some people out and I'm glad that we were able to do this quickly even though it wasn't quite on our work plan so thanks to everyone absolutely all right so let's go to a vote then we have a we have a roll call here in the show yes sir we will start the roll call with council member Yates yes Benjamin yes

[172:00] mayor Brockett yes councilmember Falcon yes friend yep Joseph yes spear yes Wallach I am weiner yes ordinances 85 48 and 8562 are hereby adopted in 8563 is passed as amended and held over for third reading all right well thanks so much again right so I want to do a time check we've got one item left on the agenda which is the engagement recommendations that would take us it's right now 8 48 in which estimated 60 minutes and then I think Nicole wanted to speak some after that but are we good for continuing right I'm seeing nodding heads okay so let's do it all right sir our item number eight on tonight's agenda Matters from the mayor and members of council 8A is the recommendations from the Council

[173:01] subcommittee on engagement and a welcoming Council environment thank you so much I know that uh staff is coming down I believe we are going to be starting with Ryan Hansen and Sarah Huntley and uh Taylor Ryman is going to also be supporting the work so give us a quick minute as we get ourselves accommodated great and I'll just know you know where uh okay well just that all of council's already familiar with the recommendations and it's kind of an internal matter so I'd encourage a Brisk presentation great and I hear that perhaps we're starting with Sarah is mic on yep okay great thank you everybody good evening Council um I'm Sarah Huntley I'm the director of communication and engagement and we're here tonight to tee up a sort of hodgepodge of items coming to you from your Council engagement subcommittee that some of which require some just

[174:01] sort of General guidance a couple of which would require direction to draft rule changes so we're going to go through them as quickly as we can this evening I think the memo spelled them out pretty clearly so hopefully we can get through it um can we pull up the presentation please oh my run and and Sarah just before you get going and ask a process thing generally we always wait until the end to have questions and comments but should we tackle them one at a time actually we debated that and while we will remind you of the questions for each one at the end of the section I think it would be faster if we go through the discussion at the end very good thanks please sorry it's been a while since I presented up here I didn't realize we'd come back to the slides here but Taylor's gonna help me okay so while she's pulling up those slides um I will just run through quickly the hodgepodge of items that we're going to talk about tonight

[175:01] um one of them is a quick update and some iterative improvements that we are proposing and the committee is supporting related to council correspondence we're also going to chat a little bit about expectations for hybrid Council attendance that is one of the ones that would require a rule clarification or change improvements related to chats and walks with Council which is an ongoing Council program some improvements related to open comment and Republic hearings which would also require a rule change in the future as I understand it take some questions and do some quick counsel discussion on the recommendations that are coming to you from your very own subcommittee members so we'll start right in with the updates and improvements related to council correspondence as this Council knows at the beginning of last year right around this time we initiated a change in how communication would occur between constituents and council members and we went from a sort of Outlook completely completely

[176:01] outlook-based email system to a form system where constituents could fill out a form that was readily available in English and Spanish on the website they were asked to tick a number of boxes to help us direct those forms to the right people so the topic and things like that and it allows us to track better and respond more to quickly and untimely way to constituents it also allowed directors and subject matter experts to see the forms that were related to them but not the whole universe which often made it difficult to slice and dice what needed to be responded to so we did we have a Year's worth of data now and it was interesting to see that when we looked at where the direct two numbers were showing up a whole bunch more than well not quite more than half but quite a few were going to council only which is fine particularly if somebody is just simply stating their perspective on a political issue it's probably appropriate for them to talk to their elected official but

[177:02] one of the things that a couple council members have noted those who receive this is that sometimes there are emails in there that could very easily be answered by staff that they're really somebody asking for more information or some navigation support and the way our current system is Staff doesn't even see them we don't even know they exist so one of the conversations that we have had is the engagement subcommittee and the staff has come around to supporting is to take away the um option for people to direct it to a particular population so all of council would see everything that came in and the staff members who were assigned to the topic so they'd still be topic specific would see them as well this would allow staff to um more expeditiously respond I do want to be clear that there are standards for staff directors are not just waiting for emails to pop in and are not available to necessarily reply immediately so our current standards are three business days for things that have a specific

[178:01] question or could benefit from a referral to some factual information on our website staff will never respond to something that is essentially a position somebody is asking Council to take we don't feel that's our role or our place but there are a high number of emails that come in that are seeking more information so that's one of the recommendations and one of the reasons for it next slide please um thought might be interesting to just quickly look and I know it's hard to see on the slide deck um on the screen wide range of topics and the topics have been really helpful for us to have people self-select because in the past sometimes um people would write about six or seven topics and figuring out which staff member needed to read that was challenging but now that people are selecting topics it's helpful the one topic however that has proved to be a little bit challenging is we had a topic that is feedback to pending city council item or action and from week to week that changes what that topic is right it

[179:01] depends on what's coming up on your agendas and unless we had every staff member seeing everything that came under that topic it's incredibly challenging to make sure the right people are seeing the questions and can answer them so one of the other proposals and this was a staff generated proposal is that we eliminate that field so certainly for example tonight's topic if somebody wanted to put their perspective in on the police oversight panel discussion they could choose police or there is also an oversight topic they don't have to choose pending council elections so we're also recommending and both those are administrative backend changes but because you are end users of the system we wanted to just run it by the full Council let you know that we intend to do that unless you have an objection to it next slide please also this has raised questions about the constituent relationship management project when we implemented this new system you might recall last year we also told you that we had an ongoing

[180:00] project to make the system even better than what we have made the changes to be because we are in in the process of updating our Inquirer Boulder ticketing system and we also saw it as an opportunity to streamline both Council email and now Council hotline that process got a little bit delayed by other City priorities that came up last year but I'm pleased to say that our Innovation and Technology colleagues have this on their work plan for 2023 and so there is a phase process that's going to go through and you'll notice that the items that I think you all are probably the most interested in are in phase one so we're asking for a little bit more patience in Phase zero as we rescope the project do some Discovery and procure a vendor to help us with this but then the constituent ticket which actually I think is really more like like constituent Communications because inquire Boulder is the only formal ticketing system and email and hotline will be things we'll be tackling for system improvements um in the second

[181:00] half of this year so one of the system improvements in particular is you have asked repeatedly for some way to see if staff or any of you individually have replied to somebody not necessarily see your responses because that would be hard to become a one of those cyclical serial meetings but to know so you know that a constituent has had some kind of kind with the city so that's a high priority yes one of the things you've asked us to do in the next iteration of improvements is have a way to see on the back end if anybody has replied to somebody who's written in from staff or even if a fellow council member has replied you don't necessarily need to see or could should see the content but you would say oh good Bob's reply oh good terrorist reply I don't necessarily need to okay next slide please all right so just as a quick reminder the two changes we're recommending at

[182:02] this point is that we ensure that full visibility of all the submissions to council and staff so that we can improve our timeliness of responding next slide please and the second one is um to eliminate the topic of uh choice of feedback on pending Council action the subcommittee also asked me to ensure that I have a regular review process with the IT team on what hot topics are emerging so that we can make sure that they get added to the list because those sometimes come up unexpectedly okay with that we're going to go to the next topic and my colleague Ryan Hansen is going to present the subcommittee's recommendations on this one thank you Sarah and we can move to the next slide my name is Ryan Hansen he him I serve with people of Boulder as Community engagement manager and I'll keep this one short and sweet we Dove really quickly into a hybrid Council environment and subcommittee wants to make sure that we take a step back and are intentional about setting some expectations for Council participation

[183:02] from from Zoom remotely and what that looks like wanting to make sure we maintain a meaningful Community engagement experience for community members right who may be here right that they're not facing maybe one council member on the diocese and everyone else participating remotely and so the subcommittee has put forward a recommendation for a starting point of that discussion considering no more than two council members May participate remotely in a given regular meeting and that no no council member May participate remotely in more than three meetings per year um we'll note that study sessions already councils decided to be a hundred percent uh virtual uh moving forward so I will we'll leave that there and we'll move to to the next item thank you

[184:02] sure yes sir this is another comment or question um and Rachel can jump in here too um I want to make a clarification on this proposal that it is not intended to necessarily limit people who have illnesses or taking care of a family member who is ill and so while illness could certainly be a reason why someone decides to participate virtually and that's great and I think that's what Rachel's doing tonight um it's not intended to limit people if they have let's say a long ongoing illness or they're a caregiver from from exceeding the the three times per year rule that's just my perspective and the clarification that I'm sorry that we didn't make in giving this to staff Rachel do you want to weigh in on that I think that's right um I am home sick tonight and uh well I'm not definitely ill I think I'm probably contagious so I don't know that we want to discourage people from

[185:00] staying home when they might get other people sick so yeah that that's makes sense to me that that the four time or three-time rule that we're proposing would not include illnesses is that the question great thank you and then over to Taylor for our next piece good evening Council uh Taylor Ryman assistant to the city council so I'm going to go over quickly improvements related to chats and walks with you guys um as many of you know this program's been around since 2019 it was born out of a desire to have more informal two-way dialogue with constituents um maybe you're surprised but um being up here and talking to you at the as you said at the diocese is not very comfortable and conversational of course and so we wanted to create non-agenda driven sort of easy participation low barrier ways for us to

[186:02] engage with even more parts of the community than we normally hear from because a lot of people that come to council often do so regularly and so we know there's voices out there we're not hearing from and how can we meet them where they are so next slide um I won't go over what's on the slide but there's some highlights there how many we did this year how many folks we per uh engaged with one of the things I do want to highlight is partner organizations what does it mean to be a partner organization when we engage in specific Community groups we often partner with an organization who knows these communities they know how to reach them they know what to look out for they know what they care about so they often help us build cultural competency and connections so that we can make more welcoming environments as we do this engagement so throughout our partnership we've actually or throughout the program development sorry this year we developed a partnership toolkit which outlines the expectations for both parties what the

[187:01] City offers when we are partnering with them on these events the city can do things like support with translation and interpretation designing materials to advertise even do printing but often we rely on our partner organizations for advertisement because of course if we advertise these sorts of opportunities through City channels we'll get all sorts of different people but if we're trying to engage with a specific Community we really rely on our partners advertisement of those opportunities so that we can be capturing those those voices next slide so oh next slide this is old presentation before I get into Council supported engagement I kind of want to describe what we mean by that um in general there are a lot of ways that staff supports Council as they engage with the community some of this is done with the city like when you attend City sponsored events or um meetings but some of this is also

[188:00] done on your own like your own constituent relationships and attending events outside of the city organization even in cases where council is more self-guided it's not uncommon for staff to provide talking points draft a substitute email response or even have a staff presence when needed there are several ways that staff can offer this support for Council engagement and in doing so we balance Our obligation to be nonpartisan with the need to share the information we have with a wide audience we appreciate your support for this program as well as your suggestions for host sites and different focuses and other iterations to these opportunities your memo includes a more detailed Matrix of the difference between these three more formalized staff supported Council engagement opportunities that being chats and walks ad hoc chats and office hours and the Matrix is the Matrix is intended to provide clear expectations about what staff support looks like as well as the Equitable utilization of your staff support so with that sort of framing I'll get into

[189:01] it real quick here chats and walks are our most our most robust option involves more planning and partnership work as I mentioned previously and in addition to that in addition to the running suggestions we have here on the slide which I've just sort of been capturing as as you guys recommend them we will also be collecting more of your suggestions through a feedback survey the second one here ad hog chats it's based on our experience that we had this year and we recognize the need to be able to add chats when they're needed this is very similar to a regular chat just with a slightly different focus a lighter lift and a tighter turnaround having this option allows us to create a consistent annual schedule of chats and walks while also retaining the ability to be flexible and respond to emerging engagement needs we hope to support broader utilization of this opportunity by asking three council members to initiate this kind of event lastly office hours these are more just direct constituent conversations

[190:01] typically initiated by community members this has minimal staff support in the way of scheduling and space needs I mentioned the feedback survey we'll be doing and some of the other things that we're working on as we look into 2023 are how to bolster the attraction Factor like you know when we're at events how do we have games and giveaways to bring more people in and then also collecting better feedback but still without creating a barrier to participation so your two questions here is to for 2023 should we organize six chats and walks and these are some considerations for that decision um in order to do about six chats and walks we'd need each council member to commit to one to two chat and walk per year these things are normally about two hours and they're held all over the city at different days and locations and with different partners next slide and then that additional the ad hoc chat

[191:00] that we described um consider adding two of those options and again at least three council members to initiate with just a few weeks time for planning all right I'll hand it back off to Sarah yes okay so the next topic we're going to discuss is a topic that would require a rule change next slide please so um as countless Council knows from time to time we have community members who wish to make presentations as part of their open comment or public testimony these presentations have been of concern to our city attorney's office for some time and they've talked to Council on more than one occasion about the challenges because um it is because of First Amendment rights and the concern that staff members reviewing these presentations in advance put us in a situation where we might be making content-based decisions about whether to allow a presentation or

[192:01] not allow a presentation so every time a Community member presentation is submitted to the clerk's office and projected to you all we're all looking at it at the same time for the first time nobody's reviewing them in advance um that poses some potential risk in terms of content and concerns about um obscenities and other things that would be disruptive to a meeting that we don't have a chance to get in front of so there's been a legal concern around these presentations for some time more recently there have been concerns expressed about the equity issues around these presentations some community members have access to software and capacity and know how to create visually compelling engaging presentations others do not um so the recommendation staff is making and the subcommittee supports is that the easiest way to

[193:00] um eliminate concerns about inconsistent application of standards and First Amendment rights is to simply not allow these presentations anymore now that does not mean that somebody couldn't submit slides to you or photographs to you through the council form system for example it is very easy to do an attachment to that system but what's being proposed is that the slides that are shown in this Chambers and shown on Zoom they are not currently broadcasts over Channel 8 but that they not be allowed um moving forward again that would require rule change I anticipate that there are some folks in the community who would like to speak to you about that who might have strong feelings about that and my understanding is that they would have an opportunity to do so when that formal rule change comes forward so what we will be looking for this evening is whether Council supports asking the city attorney's office to incorporate that into our existing rules for it to come

[194:00] forward to for another vote the next consideration has to do with signs in Chambers some of which we witnessed here this evening the specific issue has to do with people using these front rows and the chairs in the front rows and putting signs on the chairs even after they've talked about the topic for which they're here to testify staff is recommending that sometimes because we sometimes have full Chambers we take a position that seats are for people and that if signs are left there and we need seats for people it is appropriate for staff to remove the signs and put them off to the side now there are already some Provisions regarding signage and Chambers and as a good example that the mayor raised tonight is asking people to please move so that they're not blocking the views this would be an additional provision which says sister for people you cannot leave your signs in the seats I just have to say that sounds like a

[195:00] good ballot measure suits are for people so that's right no one up you what if it's a campaign sign that says seats are for people up against the seat for an update to the rules but we just wanted to explain the thinking behind it next slide please okay so was that fast enough we got through him pretty fast um are there any clarifying questions before we pull up the list of recommended changes and to get your feedback on so here's one where I might suggest that we take each one one by one questions and comments so we're focused to do that if we could pull up the next slide there we can do after each bold it will stop okay so for counter correspondence the two recommendations that are being asked were asking you for feedback on are to eliminate the option for constituents to choose who to direct their submission to in order to ensure

[196:00] the staff is seeing all of the relevant emails to respond to and the next one has to do with the topic of eliminating feedback on pending Council action as a topic would you like to give so what yeah so what I'd propose is that we take these one by one and I'm going to start by just saying you know just nod your head not by chunks of time correct okay just nod your head if you like it and raise your hand if you want to have a question or a comment about it and if we get all knotting heads we'll just move on to the next one if we have questions or comments we'll we'll dig into it so the first one is ensureful visibility of all council contact submission Council by staff are people comfortable with this uh mostly bugatt Mark get a hand I um and Genie I don't have a problem with visibility there's nobody left to hear me online there may be I don't have a problem with the visibility of council contacts but um would this be the one where we would no

[197:00] longer have people write to us directly I I think that's an important thing if somebody wants to contact Bob or Nicole they should be no so that's still so the intention for this form is that people our preference as staff is that people use the form because it allows us to track it and make sure we're being responsive but there's nothing currently in our system that precludes any constituent from emailing individual council members and nothing about this change would that it's just that if they use the form system it's it would also go to staff and I want to make my contentment clear to the eight people who are still watching us on Channel 8. Judy thank you I need some clarity and I have to tell you I'll reserve my comment so for this visibility part does it mean

[198:02] that let's say someone wants to email me Juni Joseph right and they want to reach out to me about a concern that they have you also get to see that email no so if somebody this form replaces the catch-all email of council bouldercolorado.gov that's the only thing it's designed to do that's what you have to have a year ago that happened a year ago people you will notice that we've had about 2 800 people use the form in this last year I venture to Guess that you have received more than 2800 emails those are not the only way people are communicating with you and there's nothing that stops people from communicating to your email directly and staff does not see that unless you forward it to us and ask us to do something with it so it wouldn't change that and so just to clarify what it would change is that the emails that are sent through the form would always go to all of council

[199:01] and Olive staff if they're sent through the form that would be the change yeah certain step I have one more question which actually will be part of my comments um have you done any type of assessment to know whether this form somehow people get faster responses or even the percentage of responses from counsel when it comes to getting resolution of their issues so we do have more analytics than we have had in past systems but part of the challenge that we continue to have in this iteration that we try want to address in the next phase of improvement is determining if consistently there's a way to track the responsiveness so our practice currently is that a staff member responds to somebody who comes through the system they're also supposed to let Council know that they are responding but that is

[200:00] inconsistently applied to be honest with you and what we're trying to do is have an automated system that allows us to see that we're not at that point yet because our software doesn't allow us to do that but that is the goal of the next step thank you sir are you okay with this then thank you okay great so we got a thumbs up for this one does Tara have her hand up Fireside Chats oh I wonder if we're going to have an opportunity to say a few things that aren't I can't see so sorry I'm squinting um if we're going to have an opportunity to mention some things that weren't discussed or is this not the time or place for that for instance reply to all the never-ending battle with reply to all or just reply some of the annoying things about the current form how's that you might do this one-on-one so I would be happy to take your feedback and talk to it to see

[201:01] if there's things we can do to address those again these are administrative changes we could make at the back end so if there's improvements we've had some feedback along the way that we've already been able to act upon if there's improvements of that nature please let me know Tara and I love to talk to you I got a couple too so I'll be in touch okay send them my way all right so the next one is eliminating that choice in the selection of topics of eliminate the option of feedback on pending Council action and ensure that Council parties as they come up are listed under hot topics are we okay with this we have some nodding heads or okay yeah excellent okay well that's that next is I just want to say I never knew what that meant feedback on pending Council action when I saw it on the subject line and now it will never happen again life has just changed okay so next up is the hybrid Council participation recommendations

[202:00] yep all right I I saw Genie first and then okay Mark first then maybe Matt and Jenny I got a thought well first I first I'm very appreciative of the exception being made for um additional absences for medical purposes some of you may know that that's something I may require going forward I I'm very grateful for that however there's also an element here to which I'm wondering if we are addressing a problem that doesn't exist I I mean I I've been to a few of these meetings um we don't see a lot of empty seats we don't see people by and large um coming in virtually if they don't have good and sufficient reason they're out of town they're not feeling well and I'm just wondering if if we're setting a rule that's necessary I think people on this Council make a good faith effort to attend our

[203:02] meetings they're not you know they're not phoning it in from you know the bar at St Julian's um and and I I I just you know although we may in the future no no no it's not happening um no bars so I'm I'm I'm I'm just you know thinking that that this is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and I I don't know that we we need to do that just my two cents Genie amen thank you so much it it sounds like we're doing both comments on this one as well and and I can say um I agree with Mark because as I was thinking this through it's so actually I understand the medical exemptions that's great points as a member of council I've been here for three years I've attended conferences

[204:00] if you'd go to one conference right it's just a week you might miss one council meeting if you get sick you might want to go virtual and I've attended actually virtual meetings because I was out of town as opposed to not showing up at all right and then let's say something else happened in your life I just think this idea of three I just don't know how did you come up to three it's just a bit arbitrary and again I it it's burdensome as well to us um us council members and we strive to be here and I can tell you there is nothing more stressful than community members letting us know that hey Junior I didn't see you or we expected you at this council meeting what's going on so I don't know if really having this these sets of rules is really what's gonna say Hey you have to be here I just think we live in a community where people care deeply and they do Express themselves

[205:00] quite often to us I get a lot of emails from community members and these emails are quite more impactful I would say than this rule we're trying to put together right now thank you uh Matt Rachel and I'll call myself and then Nicole and then Lauren um yeah well I think there's the why the one piece in here that I'm a little curious about is just the no more than two council members May participate in a meeting remotely um I mean I think of a pandemic we're still in and you know you take take three of us down and then it's first come first serve when we're all stricken with the same thing and it who didn't have to take their kids in the morning to school and the other person gets first dibs so I think that one is is maybe not in in the best Spirit of the situation that we currently find ourselves um in May in the future I I you know with regards to three three folks or three meetings we're elected to have to look our constituents in our eyes and so I think it's a way in which we hold ourselves accountable and hold the and

[206:00] the community holds us accountable we it's so far removed from that person to person to have to see that emotion we don't even see the people that that are remotely in here but when we get to look at the emotion and visceral nature in which people are giving their testimony that's impactful and that's meaningful and so I think it's important for us to have some level of accountability from which we say yep we're going to make sure we're here the sickness exemption is spot on I think that's a great thing to have and if you can't make that and you have unlimited absences and we can do that too so I think there's an opportunity there for us to really be accountable to the community in person which I think is what we were elected to do it's only what 20 20 Thursdays a year and we already went full virtual for study sessions so I I I think if we go too far we may have swung the pendulum to be a a sort of non-functioning body in terms of our interactions with each other if we're not seeing each other all that often yeah Rachel and

[207:00] I'm waiting to come back here Rachel myself Nicole Lauren I'll be pretty quick um I do think that the feedback we got when we came back from Community was it's great to have you back and and we didn't feel like you were listening when you were virtual um some people said that you know we don't many of us don't answer emails or return phone calls and the only way that they know that we're listening is when we're present with them and you know funny that I'm the one saying it tonight because I'm I'm not there so um but but that is what we're hearing and so I think that's when when Bob and egg came up and the committee with uh just something for us to to use as an opening discussion um point was you know three Felts you know less than a quarter of the meetings absent so we you know we during my tenure already went from some I think a bit over 50 with all the extra meetings um before I got on Council that were you know you had to be there Tuesday nights to just

[208:01] um business meetings so got rid of half of them in real life and and then building in four absences and then after that you know it's not like you're gonna get kicked off Council you just will have to miss meetings and not be able to go virtual if there's not sickness so I think it it's um it seems fair to me especially because we do have staff to go to most um most things that require an in-person authentic interaction and so um you know I don't I don't think that we should have lesser expectations for ourselves than we do for our community and our staff and if community members are making the effort to get down there most of the time I think we should be there thanks thanks Rachel so I'll call on myself and what I wonder here is is if we could express an intention to to be in person for the business meetings without being prescriptive about it so like because I don't really fully get the the two limit of two per I mean as a facilitator it's

[209:02] definitely harder the more people are virtual but I don't know you know if three people are sick well you know three people should should be virtual um but then and then so instead of saying you know at a maximum of three if we could have language something to the effect of uh there's an expectation that we should strive to be in person for every business meeting where possible however it's understood that because of sickness or travel or life circumstances that's not always possible so it is permissible to be you know per yeah or other right then it's permissible to to be virtual as as required or something like that so that's the kind of approach I'd rather see us take to this to still have an expectation but not have it be fixed or a certain number uh Nicole and then Lauren thank you um yeah and I I agree with you Aaron and Mark as well I appreciate your comments and I think you know the thing that I would just add to it um is that I don't really like this feeling

[210:00] of us deciding who has a quote-unquote reasonable excuse for being sick or being out or whatever it is we're adults as Mark was pointing out we've shown up right um to to the greatest extent possible and most of us are here all the time um I think one of the things that that we kind of risk doing if we set and place these really prescriptive requirements is it makes us seem kind of inaccessible a little overly controlling I think the hybrid environment really allows for a different group of people to even consider running for Council you know to know that hey I'm a single mom and most days I've got child care but there there may be a few times a year where my child care is sick or if my kid is sick or something like that right so it just it feels like it's making us more accessible to just recognize that we are we're adults and we're going to try to be here and I think Aaron you know you're right that is we just say we are going to strive to be in person to the

[211:01] greatest extent possible and I think it comes back to just how we communicate with each other as well but if you know we feel like it's a problem for someone then we should probably just have an adult conversation with them and and um you know discuss that I think you know I I do hear these points about the community Sometimes some members of the community really wanting to see us in person um and what I would say to that is that ultimately our accountabilities at The Ballot Box and if we're not showing up for meetings and that's annoying the community um I think there's going to be accountability there that we won't Escape so I'm not too concerned about just leaving it to us to make those decisions about our own lives what yeah I agree I think that um you know we've had flexibility since we've come back in person and I haven't once experienced feeling like someone who was not here in

[212:01] person should have been here like I it's just not something that I have seen anyone on this council do and it seems like again if it becomes a problem we could have a conversation we could Institute a rule at that point we can address these issues as they come up I mean we could Institute a rule about how many minutes you can spend outside of Chambers during a council meeting but yet we should not I just I don't think like Nicole said we are adults and we should make these decisions that's coming next a kitchen roll some people are spend way too much I'm just saying I'm just saying You Know Who You Are um this is great feedback um the reason why this even came forward is well we had a long list of things to work on anyway and so working working with staff originally on the on the engagement Committee just so we put a

[213:01] marker out there just say Hey listen you know is is it we actually started working on this before we had much experience because remember we went back to in person in September and it occurred to us like you know later in the year we never actually had an a lot of discussion like we're having tonight about is are there should there be rules are there rules what happens if everybody in the community shows up and a lot of us are on the screen or hold on for eight of us and Aaron this is the only person here so that obviously hasn't been a problem uh and that's great and so I think Mark you raised a good point which is we may not have a problem here I like Aaron's approach which is just Express Our intention um I agree with Matt and and Rachel I think we do I think we're always better when we're in person both with each other and with the community so I think but I think people have been great about this I like Aaron's approach of more of an expression of intention rather than prescriptive numbers obviously if it becomes a problem we can Circle back on this again and there is going to be a kitchen rule coming down the road though so in the next packet from the engagement can you

[214:01] expect that but I'm I'm fine with Aaron's suggestion it's a good middle ground and and I think people have been pretty good about this um uh in the for four months we've been back yes [Laughter] say they don't like watching us I'm just throwing that out there yeah so what do you think should do okay we're kidding I spend some time so you can wrap up here but thanks for that Bob did you have an additional comment Mark um just two I I also agree that your proposed language is very useful and and is a good way forward and I agree with with really both Juni and Nicole that ultimately our attendance here is going to be judged by the community and the electorate and if they don't like our attendance patterns um we'll see that in the next election and to my knowledge we've never had more than one person at a time virtual um since we've come back maybe two once it

[215:01] just hasn't been an issue and and I think we're all making diligent efforts to be here and it you know if that changes and there's a swath of empty seats it will address it okay thank you I think the feedback is clear staff doesn't have a strong feeling about this but I think the interest was just raising it as a conversation Point since this we're in a new world so thank you for some clear feedback thanks for that the next topic is chats and walks with Council so the first item is is Council comfortable with staff moving forward with organizing six chats and walks that have the fullest level of staff and partner support with an expectation that you're each committing to one or two of those a year I think just clarify that there'd be on average we should each do one or two but as long as most of us are doing one or two or maybe three we're probably we allow up to three people to attend a chat from Council they are publicly noticed so if you do the math there and there's six of them not you know it is an app that's an average right given that do we have nodding heads for this

[216:01] one yeah Nottingham okay great so we will proceed with that please watch for the questionnaire that Taylor will be sending out because if there's particular segments of the community that you'd like us really to be trying to reach out to you it would be helpful to have that feedback for me so we can support you the second issue has to do with these two ad hoc chats and they're really more designed as Taylor explained for some emerging topic that's coming up that a large group of people might want to talk to council about and we are proposing adding staff capacity to be able to support up to two of those a year we are asking three council members ask sort of chat individually because you can't all chat together but bring it forward as a proposal so that we know that there's a significant interest on at least a good portion of counsel is current Council comfortable with that approach clarify this would be ad hocs it'd be like tailor-made yes sir it would be uh you've probably heard that before so

[217:01] um uh nodding our heads we like this one yep okay okay terrific thank you the next one um is the open comment and public hearing section so the first one has to do with the Community member slideshows during open comment and public hearing okay Nottingham sir got a comment um have we ever had to pull a slideshow in the middle of its presentation for reasons of obscenity or or some other cause I could say that in my 15 years here with the city I don't recall us ever pulling a presentation in the middle whether we could have or should have is an entirely different issue but we have not and in that event I'm kind of concerned that we're again addressing a non-existent problem and some of those slide presentations putting aside the equity issue for the moment some of those slide presentations can be quite helpful and substantive and

[218:03] when you're only giving people two minutes to talk to us you know the their two minutes is magnified if they have a slide presentation so I'm I'm just wondering if again we're we're addressing a problem that that doesn't quite exist um okay oh my goodness Boulder City Council I am sorry I this is so this part of the conversation is very uncomfortable I think it's coming from a place of wanting to do the right thing but going at it in the wrong way because I just don't understand how is it Equitable to take away people's opportunity to express themselves

[219:00] because we know they use those slide as a way to communicate with us and to communicate and engage with us constructively so people come here right they put on these presentations we watch them and they feel heard so I just don't understand how taking that part of their presentation away somehow make it Equitable and I that was very very I was disappointed I can say just your word Nicole at this part of the presentation because I just don't think it's fair um and what would be the purpose really because I don't believe that's an equity concern to take that aspect um of communicating and engaging with us away from these community members thank you you had a kind of a question there but it sounds like that have us not do this is that do I understand that correctly that is yes and also a comment of about the

[220:01] presentation I just yeah I I'm just not sure what we are trying to again to go back to Mark's point I appreciate the work of the engagement committee and they brought this forward because of the work that they've been doing but ultimately I think as we're considering bringing things before Council we have to really think about them and what is truly an equity issue or an equity concern thank you Aaron is a member of the committee and sure Rachel Judy Aaron um and just so that the the criticism is lobbed at me and Bob maybe over staff um I will say that for my part the equity considerations are that a lot of people and especially people who are an expert at speaking to council and and you know haven't watched a lot of meetings or or been to a lot of meetings or maybe don't have easy access to um computers or programs that would allow you to put together a slide deck they can't do those those presentations

[221:00] so it's making it easier for for sort of anyone who might be speaking to speak and also that we have seen some um side Decks that have included images of vulnerable community members without their permission um and and that felt pretty inequitable to me that that they don't have a choice to be um shown in in council chambers and so one way to to make sure that we're not um putting people sort of In Harm's Way by other people showing decks in our um in in our council chambers is to to just um have a Level Playing Field of no one having access to those presentations tearing myself I appreciate those uh comments Rachel I was going to sort of go down that path and we've had some presentations where we have individuals um uh making personal attacks of another individual and using their slides to

[222:01] communicate that rather than words and I think that accentuation of personal attacks is something we even say we don't want to have happen I think also we've had also a few images go up of uh what look to be interactions around schools where there might have been children I think in some of those pictures and so then you have an issue of displaying images of children in the public public domain so I think there are just some issues to wrap up here and so unless we're vetting this stuff for what is proper content use until we get to that place I think we have to sort of rain it back a little bit because some of those things are concerns in terms of just you know Safety and Security and for individuals that shouldn't be subject to that can I ask a question colloquy um would you be comfortable if all slides were required to be non-pictorial in other words slides of information charts graphs that sort of thing does that make it any better for you I mean I think sir yes I

[223:02] mean I would turn to our legal to see if there's a difference there but certainly the issue of personal attacks showing pictures of people that aren't want warranted I think isn't addressed that I don't know if it addresses all the issues but but I think that's a good start so I appreciate that recommendation that's a nice nice one Mark sure uh I didn't think thank you I the reason why I don't want slides is because I remember specifically that there was a slide when they said I don't like these two council members and then they wrote their names on there and I was offended by that so we you we have to each one say to ourselves do we mind if our name is the next one that's up there is it gonna is it gonna be hurtful do we care um and I think that's something to really think about um if it's not like it's the Oscars and we have a few seconds where we can like get rid of it if somebody puts some sort of a curse word about us or anybody on there either so it's a different world so I'm going to

[224:00] say that since we don't have any control and we start I'm going to say that I don't think it's a good idea let's call calling myself here Teresa thank you for pointing that out yes I'd just like to remind the council that the council can place reasonable time place and manner restrictions on First Amendment rights this is a traditional public forum so there are broad rights here um so when when thinking when thinking about limiting um speech which slides our speech uh you really want to be thinking about issues of disruption to the meeting access reasons to put restrictions not just that we don't like the speech contained therein and it's going to go next not at all that not at all because we don't like the speech contained therein so I uh thanks for that Teresa so I I would not move forward with this one just I people have been done this for

[225:01] many years it's important to some folks I just wouldn't remove the capability we're sometimes accused of limiting public involvement in public comment and and this would invite some of those accusations I wouldn't in my opinions I would not move forward with this yep Bob Lauren yeah I'll um I'm going to agree with Rachel that I think this is a good good thing and I'll give you five reasons some of which have been said before number one equity and preparation some people know how to make slides and some people don't I don't know how to make slides um I would have to pay somebody to make slides literally and that's not right that people have some people have that capacity and some people don't number two um to Mark's point about Jesus nice to follow along they can still send us the size that time they can send the slides to our computers and we can follow along click Along on our computer so that's not being withheld from them uh third to the Teresa's point we can't be regulating content so I think it's either all slides or no slides I don't think we can say yeah slides as long as I don't have pictures or slides as long as I don't mention members I think I think we either say all slides or no slides because we don't want it to put

[226:00] ourselves a situation where somebody's deciding what content is good and when content's not bad good as far as the impact it is distracted I find it distracting I've had community members say hey I'm going to come and speak to council members should I have a slides and I always say no I'm going to look to I'm going to look at you I want to listen to you if you have slides that oftentimes the slides have nothing to do with what they're saying and I tell people I I just find them distracting I find them confusing I find them not helpful plus we've all seen the fumble Bumble fumble slide where's the slide poor Emily's over here trying to find the slide did you send them to me well I don't know next slide next slide I want more time it's just so annoying and not productive and not helpful and I I find the rudeness to staff in and of itself a reason to have these things so I absolutely would like to get rid of slides if someone wants to email them to us that's fine you guys can click click away as they're talking if you want I got Lauren Rachel and and uh Genie again and I looked and Lauren but I know Lauren and then Nicole but I'd look to

[227:01] maybe do a straw poll here pretty quick I'd rather than talk about it for another 20 minutes but you haven't had your turn yet so please go Lauren um I think you know anything that you can say out loud you can also say through email so any of the arguments that we're making about people can always email us images is also true of anything that they can tell to say to us verbally and so to me that doesn't it is not the same thing to receive something in email versus to have someone um stand at the diocese to sort of deliver their presentation I also think that you know in terms of equity people have different skill sets people have you know not everyone can speak quickly not everyone can you know has The Bravery to say all the things they want to say but maybe they will put together the images that say what they want to say for them I just don't think

[228:01] that it makes sense for us to limit those kinds of speeches in that way I had Rachel up next and then Nicole that's right no uh Rachel Rachel next Rachel where'd you go you said you were wanting to get just a straw poll so I I think that my points were made pretty well by by about then Nicole and then she quick point I'm kind of neutral in this and and what I would say is that if we move forward with allowing slides to continue um if folks do put up a picture or something like that as somebody whose picture has been put up while somebody was complaining to me um I I would just say you know that that's fine if they want to do that that is okay what I would appreciate though is a word of support from you know my colleagues of just hey you know we noticed that probably didn't feel really good you know we noticed so so I would appreciate that I think that's that's a fine way to go about it but I think that's the way we can still you know

[229:01] allow people to do and say what they want to do and also acknowledge that some things are kind of uncomfortable Fair thank you Bob I love you but I love you too what I can again I understand your perspective on Equity but you can how do I put it it's almost saying let's take away your car because there are people without cars right who can't afford cars right so we can't necessarily look at it that way and it's exactly what Lauren said that we all have different skills and you know if you can't make slide I'm so sorry but for those who would like to participate in that meaningful manner we should allow it and maybe part of the conversation should be rather what are the rules around using slides maybe we can find ways to perfect that rule as opposed to say no slides because

[230:00] your next you know your neighbor can't use they don't know how to use slides right or maybe we can help them figure it out and also um yeah I understand the comments about using people and I remember I saw that slide as well when I remember that Community member had or on house community in that slide it did made me feel bad and I'm not sure how we can remedy that because there are rules about using your face in public people can take your pictures in public without your permission that's just how it works that's just the law they can't actually take your picture okay um also yeah and and as far I I did see that name as well I remember when that came up as well that was another thing that made me feel a certain kind of way that wow this is this feeling negative because that's my fellow council member and if that happened to me I would feel bad so I I think maybe part of it again is eventually having a conversation about rules what type of things can you

[231:02] display as opposed to not displaying anything at all thank you right so how about we move to a straw poll wait Rachel's got our hand up again I just want to get a little it's either either we have slides and people can bring what they want including you know pictures of of um community members in in various states of this robe if they want and and we won't have seen them in advance we can't see them in advance we know we're not going to ask staff to do that so it's all or nothing is that accurate Theresa so there's a somewhat recent U.S Supreme Court case called Reed that goes to content neutral regulations of signs in particular I would say slides are pretty close to signs uh and they their regulation does have to be content neutral so to answer your

[232:00] question very directly Rachel that's right to put rules regulates the content that is displayed and and forgive me it perhaps it should have occurred to me earlier with the sort of images versus text um you know that maybe is a closer question but um but if we were to start promulgating rules about what kind of content is appropriate and what kind is not that would be uh very problematic under the First Amendment thank you so much for that so just to clarify that's that's largely why the subcommittee made the recommendation that we did we didn't didn't want to get into regulating content and and can't and so thought it was probably fairest to the community um and and people who who we can't apologize to because they're not sitting next to us they're like that must have felt bad like they're not there they might not even know that happen and it's really crummy that it's happening okay thanks point taken so let's let's do a straw poll here on if you can raise your hand if you support the recommendation

[233:00] to eliminate Community member slideshows during open comment raise your hand if you support that got one two three four not quite not quite not quite so very close but not quite support for that so looks like we'll allow those to continue thank you thanks for the discussion um is the rules of decorum um related to signs and Chambers the slam dunk are we okay with this one yep Rachel you're right okay okay so just to wrap up what I understand we heard tonight is there some direction for one rule change which will go to the city attorney's office for drafting which has to do with signs and Chambers the rest of the rule changes were not supported by the majority of counsel um the rest of the rule changes meaning the one other rule change there was this um slideshow would have been a real change and the hybrid Council attendance would have been a rule okay but we actually there was support for language

[234:01] on hybrid Council attendance but just differently language is it rule prescriptive language I didn't necessarily take that as something we would put into the codify in a rule so I'll speak to it because I was the one who offered a bit of an alternative that seemed to generally have support I was I was thinking about still having language to this but it without it being prescriptive so it would say that we would strive I offered language moving and go back to the tape it was not perfect but right but have that language still be in there but to express the intention um but without it being a prescriptive rule I think I would leave it to the City attorney as to whether that the right place to have that language would be in the context of a rule or if there's some other way we could display it I I don't know get get maybe get back to us I'm not I mean if we if we just agree amongst ourselves that it's this that we strive to do that's probably fine but on the other I wouldn't mind if it were written down that would commit to

[235:00] being in person as often as we can well and not all the things in the handbook are rules so it might be something that we add as guidance in our handbook but isn't codified as a rule so maybe you can get back to us with your recommended approach on that happy to do that okay that's great and the other administrative changes and programming direction we received was clear tonight so thank you very much Council we appreciate your consideration thanks Sarah appreciate you and Taylor and all the work that you did on this and the engagement subcommittee let's hear it for Rachel and Bob and all the hard work [Applause] okay so so that oh sorry sorry right [Music] breaking our own rules um so that's the end of our agenda but Nicole there's something that you want to bring up here yeah I just wanted to kind of bring this up under the matters for mayor and Council um I was just wondering about so I heard that there is a meeting happening next

[236:00] week that is with a group in the community that's been concerned about safety that a couple of us are maybe planning to attend along with some other County State potentially officials I don't know sort of who all was invited versus who's going but it just made me wonder a little bit about kind of open meetings and you know the degree to which we are publicizing meetings especially meetings that we are we're at with community members that are also involving other elected officials and kind of what what some of the rules are around that a question for Teresa to clarify if what the rules are around the two of us attending the Queen the Colorado open meetings law part of what it tells us is that a meeting is not triggered until two three

[237:00] three or more members of the body are in attendance they're to open meetings law is clear that there are exceptions to that if you have fewer numbers on the body but for us for for a nine-member body three people um along with some other criteria constitutes a meeting uh so um council members are free to attend uh meetings individually or where one other council member is in attendance even if you are discussing City business that that does not violate the open meetings law additionally I would remind you that if a formal council subcommittee is formed then there's a requirement in our Charter that two or more council members um necessitates that that being noticed open meeting to my knowledge that's not what this meeting is to my knowledge that this

[238:00] meeting is um a a meeting at the invitation of a Community member that has I believe two council members attending um a variety of other elected officials but um in terms of us counting up heads for the open meetings law we only count our own local government body does that answer your question yeah I know it does and um I mean it's making me wonder though you know because I would I would very much like to have a community conversation about safety because I think that you know we've been hearing a lot about safety from one group in our community that has a definition of what safety means to them but safety means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and I would just really love for us you know if we are kind of thinking about what safety is and you know incorporating that into the parts of our brains that are helping us make policy decisions that we're also thinking about it in a way that is recognizing that that safety

[239:02] has different definitions um and and it's just I think it's something that for me has been coming out a lot when I'm hearing some parents talk about you know safety around the schools for a lot of us parents of kids who are are different safety actually is a concern in the schools and when our kids are out and about around town in stores and and rest restaurants and things like that so I would just really love for us to think about broadening our discussion about safety and you know if it is anything that we can fit in anywhere to just have a sort of a community meeting about what safety means that's much more inclusive of different perspectives appreciate the point um any other thoughts here where it at the end of our meeting anybody have any final thoughts before we get done all right seeing none I'll gavel is closed it closed at 9 55 pm

[240:01] thank you [Music]