February 16, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[6:21] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] and welcome to the February 16 2023 meeting of the Boulder City Council and if we could start with a call to order please Elisha

[7:08] all right great thank you sir good evening everyone we'll go ahead and start this roll call tonight with council member Benjamin present mayor Brockett president councilmember Focus present friend here Joseph president Speer present councilman mawalik is absent councilmember weiner here and council member Yates right here mayor we have our Corner thanks so much Elisha and as we get started two important matters to attend to one is I would just like to ask council's permission with mayor Pro tem walek being absent if Nicole Speer who is sitting to my right if she could be the person to take over if I need to run and grab a snack or anything is that all right with folks so show of hands yeah okay you're the mayor Pro temperature and also very importantly I'm going to

[8:01] turn to councilmember Benjamin for our dad joke of the evening all right so hopefully everyone's feeling well out there um what do you call a pony with a sore throat a little horse all right all right and and on that note we can move into open comment so if we could get the public participation guidelines and slides going please before we hear from our speakers foreign coming up and uh my name is Ryan Hansen I serve our Boulder Community as Community engagement manager and appreciate each of you for being here this evening we want to be sure to share that the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive Civic

[9:01] conversations this Vision does support physical and emotional safety for community members staff and Council as well as democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives please see the link here on your screen for more information and we'll look at the next slide please wanting to share a few examples of rules of decorum these are found within the boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this Vision each of these will be upheld during this meeting all our marks 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 alphabets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the beating are prohibited participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they are commonly known by and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online

[10:01] I currently own the audio testimonies permitted online and in-person participants are asked to refrain from expressing support or disagreement verbally or with Applause with the exception of council declarations traditionally support is shown silently through American Sign Language Applause or Das hands thank you thank you Ryan all right so we've got six in-person speakers and one virtual speaker so each person will have two minutes to speak and our first three speakers are Travis culley William gretz and Evan ravitz I thought open comment was always two minutes to two minutes uh Travis if you can speak into that mic please

[11:01] good evening Council I'm winging at just a little Aristotle says to accept persuasive speech from a skilled mathematician appears comparable to demanding demonstrations from a skilled rhetorician today I'm going to try and accomplish that good evening Council thank you Tara weiner first for sticking with the rocky flat Stewardship Council committee assignment I have to commend your careful negotiating tact because of your unwillingness to serve on this board face to face a victory has been won for transparency social and environmental justice as you know this meeting has enjoyed virtual privacy since its Inception recently executive director David Abelson boasted 144 unique private interactions since February of 2006 that's 17 years

[12:03] 144 unique interactions the last meeting had over 45 people I looked to see more attendance at these meetings for the record record Miss weiner your separate oath of office with David Abelson LLC does not prevent you from making conscientious decisions on behalf of your constituents in Boulder why because there is a train when there is a trained derailment coming out of Golder Golden Colorado when there's a trained derailment coming out of the Golden Colorado on the Zephyr line it will not be the doe who will say the air is safe to breathe it will be the rocky flat Stewardship Council it will deny any relationship with the Marshall fire because it doesn't want to be tied to its cause and when Lisa Cutters Bill to unite State Fire protocols comes to a vote the

[13:00] rocky flat Stewardship Council will be decried will decry this movement mark my words we need a wildlife resistancy code board thank you thank you Travis next speakers are William gretz Evan ravitz and Robert Tony do we have William gretz in the house doesn't seem like it so moving on to Evan rabbits Evans in the house Evan ravitz North Boulder weeks ago former state representative Jonathan the singer spoke here in his new job for the Chamber of Commerce saying the chamber wanted to work with the city for more affordable housing before posing as our pal the chamber should fix what it broke former city manager Jane brodigam

[14:01] admitted at a 2020 council meeting that she worked behind council's back to obtain so-called opportunity Zone status for East Boulder part of the Trump Taps cuts for the wealthy this will speed gentrification and reduce affordable housing emails obtained through the Colorado open records act show the chamber worked secretly with City staff to make this happen chamber President John tayer who participated in the incriminating emails was on kgnu radio on October 7th and I questioned him on this he pretended that the opportunity Zone would reduce housing costs this is laughable and City council's laudable effort to mitigate And Delay the damage proves it the chamber corrupted our Democratic process to increase investor profits at the expense of the rest of us and its

[15:00] president and CEO lied publicly about its intentions and effects it should apologize and try to get Congress to repeal the legislation or to start a fund to subsidize rent in the gentrifying area that's what the chamber should be doing not a charm offensive to cover up what it did and the new city manager shouldn't be partying with the chamber that corrupted The Old City literature as the camera reported she did to celebrate railroading the CU South annexation as an emergency ordinance another fraud on the citizens [Music] thanks Simon have Robert Tony Michelle Rodriguez and Rebecca Davies and then I do hear that William gretz will be able to participate virtually so we'll get out to him a little bit later so Robert hi there Mr Mayor city council uh I love the flat irons I've been hiking

[16:02] in the flat irons for about 15 years and it's really true that nature can transform you it can any heaviness on you can disappear especially when you're back there about two years ago I started noticing the proliferation of signs of every type going up every place on the trails and the Flatirons so much so that now two years later I'm here only because is this might sound a bit ridiculous but the incredible place that just the nature of being back in nature would take me to I cannot get there anymore it's just one sign after another what was a Trailhead that was this high and this wide is now this high and this wide in signs that were this big or now this big and now there's more signs and all you do is in in the new in the split

[17:02] rail barriers are just every place and it's just it's it's ridiculous it's out of control I can't get to my well happy place um and I just feel like the open space for roughly what 120 years the philosophy has been leave it alone leave it natural and over the last two years day after day after day there's just more human um I'll call it development I guess and it's just it's kind of prevents I think people who are truly like nature people who really connect when we're out there which I'm sure a lot of us are I think that's why we live here I mean look at our symbols that everything is the flat irons and it's just it's so sad I mean for me it's actually heartbreaking

[18:00] um I hope we can get rid of some of the signs thank you thank you Robert sure now we have Michelle Rodriguez and Rebecca Davies I wanted to thank you guys for not pushing through a new police monitor on a whim and let you guys know that I am Rodriguez for uh versus Lola Thai AKA also known as and my federal case was presented to Joseph lopari the week before he announced that he was leaving for some reason I questioned his quick exit on that I believe I'm one of the ones that was never investigated also in addition I wanted to talk about a second subject um the day Center that you guys are talking about opening I have personal interest in that I am a lived experience member I have I was a member of the coordinated entry I lived on the streets here in Boulder for approximately three

[19:00] years I'm now five years into housing I still go to feet forward and with Jennifer as I know her from then I know her now I feel like anybody less than feet forward or somebody with lived experience to run that day sitter is going to be shortened the city I don't know anybody else that's stood up for it but um the people that are out here that have lived experience or or the people that are going to be able to successfully run something like that the boaters so desperately needs right now I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't even get up and find words at this year's memorial for our homeless I stood there in silence I'm disgusted to where it's it's come to be I'm disgusted to how it's being handled I know for a fact that the one person that was put in charge Kurt I guess or whoever the power set B didn't open that day's shelter for this this last storm that just happened in the last 24 hours

[20:00] until last night so those people were out there in the prime part of that storm I know that I commend the council in the city for hustling on that first RT blast that came through and pushing through for whatever it took to get that other Center open but thank you thank you Michelle Rebecca Davies hi I'm Rebecca Davies and I'm a member of tab I'm here to tell you about my college friend Kelsey Carl Cannon Kelsey moved to Denver soon after graduation and was riding her bike one day in the Cherry Creek neighborhood she was approaching an intersection when her bike hit a curb and slipped into the roadway into traffic the driver of the truck that hit her never saw her but their statement in the police report reads quote The Light had just turned green and I started to go and then I heard a female screaming I'm telling you this because I'm terrified the same thing will happen to

[21:01] someone else on the new poorly designed bike Lanes on North Broadway particularly traveling in the Northbound Direction I don't want to rehash how those Lanes got there you can read about that in the tab minutes instead I want to know what you counsel and city manager are going to do about this dangerous situation in the short term what you could do with very little cost and effort is prohibit cars from parking on the Northbound side of Broadway when large cars park in those spots the bike lane is too narrow forcing people to Swerve to traffic down a slanted curb that when it's wet will act like a slip and slide shunting people onto a road that carries over 6 000 cars per day if someone in this situation is lucky they end up with a broken leg and a concussion if they're unlucky they end up like gelsey who died under that truck wheel 10 years ago from what doctors called complications of pelvic Crush injury if you are committed to Vision zero and saving lives like Galaxy's this should be a very easy call to make to direct

[22:01] Community Vitality in the transportation department to prohibit parking on that section of Broadway until a safer design can be implemented whenever that may be please take ownership of this situation close the parking and save a life thank you thanks Rebecca actually if you could just one second um thanks for coming to us today I Know Tab had a meeting just this week at which you discussed that but I just want to clarify are you representing a personal position or was it okay great but I appreciate you coming thanks so much um all right we have two virtual speakers they are Lynn Siegel and William gretz speaking of that what you really need to do in Boulder is get a shuttle do something Way east of town and have EV shuttles just coming in constantly shuttles then going up to the recreation areas and you know this is the this is the perfect example what um the gal just

[23:01] said nobo these expansions the millennium 1 000 student bedrooms in there um 45 new micro units 300 square feet um per unit at 22nd and Pearl so what does this mean to Boulder oh yes it's covering the middle uh the the missing middle but guess what the the price of the things 1700 to 2600 that's without a parking space and do you know what a parking space costs in Boulder costs 897 dollars a month or thirty dollars a day according to cajid so cutting off those uh parking spaces up on North Broadway you know that's a big deal you know because these are the

[24:00] parking space is the the god of Boulder um this development is gonna have it such you can have as many mechanisms as you want for getting people for Mobility getting people around you can do that but you know what as as you're driving up the population in this place you're gonna have the bike pass jam-packed with people like the guy talking about the flat irons the trails wider 300 300 million dollar deficit on the Open Space Program how are you going to pay for all of this and especially with the people that are paying three or four you know three and a half 350 3 500 a month at at a 300 square foot place in downtown Boulder where they want to do nothing thank you for your testimony our last speaker would be William gretz but I understand he's not actually in

[25:00] the zoom meeting so William we're not seeing yeah so I'm afraid that's it for our speakers so thanks everyone for coming and speaking to us tonight and for sharing your thoughts I'll turn to staff for any responses to public comment thank you mayor and as always just thanking the public for their comments I'll note that our interim director of Transportation Mobility is not here today but I do know that they had a meeting with Tab and are continuing to look at North Broadway so happy to share an update at any point and then I wanted to clarify and I actually appreciate Mr Rabbits is sending me the article that he was referring to I want to clarify for community that it was a chamber event a celebration of leadership that where the city ncu were jointly presented with an award I would not characterize that with partying but I certainly respect his characterization of it I said no if I could just follow up from your first thing because it would be good to learn more about the situation

[26:01] on the North Broadway reconstruction and I Know Tab had a pretty lengthy discussion about it this week so would be interested when possible about getting in getting an update on that okay great thank you any comments from Council Members Rachel um two follow-ups one um the Flatiron signage I'd just be curious to know what what we may be doing differently on open space could we maybe get an update on what's going on there if anything I actually don't know as I sit here but I'm happy to follow up with that okay thanks and then um also in keeping with the North Broadway bike lane I actually went out a couple months ago with mayor Brockett um and and toured the area and had some concerns and thoughts and so I'm just wondering will Council have a chance to weigh in on that or what would a mechanism be for that if we wanted to I will say I'll talk to Natalie about that and then provide council with an update and certainly if there is more then we can certainly schedule something of CAC or if Council wants to learn more

[27:00] about that in a later date any other cancel thoughts Tara yeah yeah this is for Robert in regards to those signs I also love the flat irons and prior to the new signs I found the old signs confusing often they would just point up which is the sky as far as I'm can tell so I think the new signs are actually excellent so I guess it depends on the way you look at it I often in the past was walking around the Flatirons hiking and everybody was half the visitors were confused they didn't even know where they were going so I wound up actually helping a lot of people find their way so in some sense those signs even though they're larger are actually helping a lot of visitors but you can reach out to me personally but send send us an email any other thoughts all right seeing none I'll bring open comment to a close that section of the meeting and we can move to our consent agenda please Elisha yes

[28:00] Excuse me yes sir our consent agenda is item number three on tonight's agenda and it consists of items a a through I any questions or comments on the consent agenda or emotion so moved let's just say I make a motion to pass the consent agenda all right we got a motion in a second uh this will be a roll call vote yes sir we'll start this roll call tonight with council member Benjamin yes mayor Bronco yes councilmember Falcons yes friend yes Joseph yes yes sorry spear yes Winer yes and Yates yes you can send agenda items a through I are hereby passed unanimously thank you so much so if we could move to our first public hearing please

[29:05] thank you our public hearings are item five on tonight's agenda 5A is the second reading and consideration of emotion to adopt ordinance 8557 amending section 6-2-3 growth and accumulation of weeds prohibited 6-3-3 accumulation of trash recyclables and compostables prohibited and 6-3-9 special trash service requirements on certain residential rental properties at certain times BRC 1981 and this is to change the Civil process for weeds and trash violations and establish a set fee schedule to accommodate the new civil process and setting for related details thank you Alicia Council this is a continuation of a conversation we've been having for a while now and it really started prior to my arriving at the city about

[30:01] what's happening primarily on the hill but as we've been looking at the issue it really has some applications city-wide as you'll recall we came here last year and talked about sort of a timeline for broader changes as we were thinking about what are the variety of interventions we want we want to both think about how to get more compliance how to incentivize that how to report out more transparently and certainly the hill revitalization group has been working tremendously on a variety of initiatives uh this is today what we're going to be talking about is but one that staff is really putting forward as a way to really address what is currently only a criminal process a criminal summons process and really adding a civil administrative process to the the toolbox um that the city may have really specifically around weeds and trash it is but one of the uh topics that we will be discussing throughout the year staff

[31:01] is certainly working on additional things like increasing tools for tenant protections increasing transparency in the data aspect of what we're doing having more robust education being able to see what violations have been issued for specific Properties by the public all of those are improvements that we hope to bring forward at some other point and today really speaking specifically about adding a civil process to what is currently that criminal summons application so with that I will now that everybody's settled right have I taken enough time I will pass that on we've had an amazing consultant working with us and as you can imagine this has been multi-disciplinary cross-departmental work Amanda Nagel who is with unlocking government has been hurting the city cats if you will well as we have done that and done a great job of facilitating the hail revitalization working group as well so I will pass it on to her to introduce herself and kick us off

[32:03] mayor Brockett members of city council it's really a privilege to come before you not representing myself or my own company representing all of the work that's been done today by the hill revitalization working group it really is a wonderful group of people who are willing to come together and sometimes argue and sometimes agree but always an Eclectic collaborative Spirit of problem solving and trying to improve their neighborhood overall experience for all of people that were there work there and visit there and it's always also been a privilege to work with the city staff team that's come together it's always great to see that cross-departmental effort so that all kinds of ideas are brought to the table and different solutions can be found see Amanda are we having some sound problems with her Mike I don't see a green light should I leave

[33:00] in here that's okay if you use our error oh that sounds good thank you what a great support team thank you so much that was quick thanks guys should I repeat any of that or maybe the two sentence version okay just it's been a privilege to work with all the many people involved there's a whole Army of effort behind myself on this project the ordinance tonight as as you've heard is one piece could we go to the to the first slide thank you I'm sorry can I do that myself oh look at that we'd be happy to assist the people sorry I wasn't prepared to run the machine I would have practiced there we go how's that fantastic

[34:00] um I want to recognize I've been working with the hill revitalization group only since August of 2021 the effort for that team has taken place honestly over decades under different names and different processes but really heavy since the beginning of 2021 you can see there in the Venn diagram you've seen that before but that's an opportunity to identify how much had been done prior to the work plan that I'm going to address tonight both by individual participants in the hill revitalization working group and then that cross group effort that they so successfully do in 2021 we identified the priorities moving forward for that point for that group and they identified noise trash safety and overall culture change admittedly that last bullet is the hardest one to address directly and I'd like to contend that everything that we're doing will build into that we're also hearing from students new concerns additional concerns as news students join the group

[35:02] and will be continuing to identify what that really means throughout 2023 next slide oops it's me again there we go uh underneath the quality of life projects you saw those the first time in July and you've saw an update very briefly September 1st attached the daytime noise ordinance we've completed several of those as a team you can read those over on the left hand side the daytime noise ordinance came to you all the other items were handled at the department organizational level we did have some of you join us for the neighborhood safety walks thank you for doing that and there's been some work items that have come out of those as well that you don't necessarily see listed here as a project the data project over on the 2023 side is a continual project and it feeds everything else that's being done throughout the year you're going to continue to see the other items listed there some of those coming to you directly and some of those coming to you

[36:01] as an update for departmental work Jen Riley is here the code enforcement unit supervisor and she's going to give us a bit more of an operations perspective of what this looks like tonight thank you Council for having us here hopefully my mic works yes there it is how about now okay there we go yeah it's very awkward so as Amanda said my name is Jennifer Riley and I'm the supervisor for our code enforcement unit within the police department we actually heard directly from Amanda some feedback from that Hill revitalization group we also get feedback continually from the community from the people that we interact with through our daily jobs and through the students that we also interact with we took a lot of what we heard and started evaluating our process to find out what we can do better and how we can change what we've done in the past to really

[37:02] serve the community in a really responsible way not only with staff time but also with City funds because when you waste staff time it weighs City funds so we started evaluating our process and found that the last piece of our enforcement step after we've made contact we've given a warning we've worked with the resident we've hopefully overcome any barriers they're experiencing and there still is not compliance with the city health and safety codes then it does go into the next and last step of enforcement which is the summons that Maria mentioned at the beginning which goes into our municipal court system that process is very inefficient because it does have to be served in person even to out-of-state owners which we attempt through certified mailing which you'll hear more about and it's a strong failure point in the system and it only makes one individual accountable for anything that's happening at that property and it's whoever happens to answer the door the agent sometimes the owner it's very

[38:01] inconsistent so it's not as predictable or reliable as it should be so we started looking at things we've done in the past that really improve this for us and found that the bear resistance container ordinance the bear safe ordinance that was passed in 20 I think it was 13 or 14 had a civil component in that to address that last piece of enforcement that is a very efficient process it is tied to the property it's ultimately the property that is collecting the escalation of repeat or chronic offenses so as the tendency turns over it is still attached as a history of the property anything beyond that is between the landlord and the tenants directly through their leasing agreement on how any fines would be handled similar to how utilities handles overdue or unpaid fees when a tenant leaves I got it and do it for you yes

[39:02] so um the two issues that we identified in the in the many ordinances that we enforce that this model would be great to start with is our weeds ordinance and our trash ordinance that is most commonly enforced upon or violated as you can imagine uh an unkept yard or an abandoned property that is not getting the Landscaping mowed down dries out quite a bit during the summer months and becomes a fire hazard to not only that structure but surrounding structures we do not take enforcement on Bee habitats xeroscaping water saving yards or native natural escaping that people choose to do but we would take enforcement on the type of yards that you see displayed on the slide unkept yards especially in corner Lots can prevent Vehicle drivers from seeing pedestrians or cyclists it also Harbors rodents and

[40:00] debris collects within that and gets trapped and and causes a real downgrade of the sense of safety and Community throughout the other one that we wanted to focus on is our trash ordinances this applies um to situations where you have an accumulation of trash this is why we've specifically drawn out 633 as you can see displayed on the screen these are a few examples of some of the type of things that we're talking about this also Harbors rodents and downgrades the health and safety of a neighborhood in the sense that there's broken glass there's sometimes chemicals and other types of debris this as you can see in the bottom picture can obstruct sidewalks or bike lanes and also becomes a hazard when we get our high Boulder winds and everything starts blowing around when you have large collections of debris like this it also encourages

[41:00] illegal dumping so as you can imagine in August I'm sure you get plenty of emails about the amount of move-in move out trash and unfortunately when things get left on a corner like this it does become the responsibility of the adjacent property owner to remove that and pay those fees so this is why we are focusing on these because they're highly impactful to safety and wellness and a sense of security um and I will pass it back to Amanda great thank you I'm going to walk you through a bit of the data study that's been done so far um I'd just like to give accolades to Tony Spencer I.T analyst who's not able to be here this evening who put all of this data together and has been leading the data side of all of our quality of life projects um really phenomenal work that Tony has done for us the study that was completed is a two-year stagnant period part of the data project going forward will be to create ongoing internal dashboard for

[42:00] these items a larger amount of items but certainly including the ones that we're discussing tonight so the study here does involve covet era time frame but what we have learned from being able to compare that to other years is that we really see an influx and deflux depending on bear activity in the numbers so it doesn't necessarily seem that coved was able to make an enormous impact to skew this data in any way we really wanted to use this as a visual to show you the magnitude of the problem while we're not talking about snow tonight most of us kind of have a concept of how much snow there is and maybe how many violations uh the type of snow removal might bring so we've included that here as a comparison between trash and weeds you can see trash is about one and a half times more than snow for the city excuse me weeds being about a third of the amount of snow just to give you some sort of concept of how big of a problem is this

[43:04] as far as how weeds and violation weed violations are distributed throughout the city I wanted to show you you can see a side-by-side trash and weeds here University Hill certainly over representation there for trash violations conversely over on the right side weeds violations are spread much more readily throughout the community those top items for those who may not be able to see that well South Boulder Central Boulder University Hill being the third North South East and then the university and Crossroads so the two violations do look a little bit different as far as Citywide distribution of where they occur just a visual to show you basically what you just saw on the last slide this is trash and weeds together on the heat map and you'll see that there's actually the the concentration of yellow spread in several different parts of the city it's not a University Hill only issue that

[44:01] we're addressing tonight although again trash does have we do have more trash violations occurring in that neighborhood one of the questions that has come up is this is rental issue or is this owner occupied and Rental concern and you'll see with weeds being the top bar graph there that it's almost 50 50 whether it's rental occupied or owner occupied trash we certainly do see over representation in those rental properties again likely reflected in the map you've already seen with University Hill foreign frequency of violations is quite interesting as well the first violation that you see here both for trash and weeds is going to be the notice of violation that is posted essentially as a warning and or notification where occupants are given time to address the issue without any sort of current summons and potentially future citation so they're given a time period to remedy

[45:01] the problem compliance is always the goal of the code enforcement unit and you can see that it works very very well with weeds we don't see a lot of escalating fine so even when you look at the fine schedule proposed later I ask that you keep that visual in mind for weeds that we're not seeing a lot of those city-wide on the trash side we do see a little bit more of those with the same properties being noticed for violation more than twice which would mean they're more likely to receive actually now a summons and Sandra Giannis is going to walk you through the specifics of the ordinance itself thank you Sandra thank you Amanda and good evening mayor and members of council my name is Sandra yanis Deputy City attorney I'm going to talk a little bit about um how we came about this proposed ordinance and it takes us back to looking at the bear resistant containers

[46:01] required ordinance so in 2014 city council took action to address a public safety risk that also threatened Boulders wildlife and past Boulder Revised Code 6-3-12 Bear resistant containers required to secure trash from being accessed by bears this ordinance included a civil penalty process for violations to be addressed swiftly and consistently the Civil process used in this code section allows the code enforcement unit to issue a civil citation also known as a notice of agency action and impose a fine for violations legally these civil site citations are considered properly served when they are posted at the property sent through the mail or emailed if that information is available the Civil citation method has proven to Be an Effective tool for the safety of the community and bears and in utilizing the

[47:01] code enforcement unit's time more efficiently this civil process still allows the recipient of a citation the opportunity for due process through a civil hearing if they disagree with the officer's findings in the citation requesting a hearing is easily accessed through the link listed on the citation or on the city web page which takes them to a short form the bear trash code also has a fine escalation schedule a hundred dollars for a first offense 250 for a second and 500 for a third each August the fine escalation is reset for all properties to avoid the situation where a new tenant moves into the property that has received prior violations the Civil citation process used with bear trash violations has been very successful in issuing warnings citations when needed and ultimately getting compliance the proposed

[48:01] ordinance for weeds and trash mirrors the bear trash code AS and is intended to bring the same efficiencies and compliance improvements in addition weeds and trash violations will follow the same consistent protocol in place for several years with bare trash violations by resetting the fines in August the proposal to add the Civil process to weeds and trash is not intended to replace the warnings given nor the attempt to educate and gain voluntary compliance rather it will allow the code enforcement unit to utilize the less cumbersome civil citation process when violations are not corrected this change will also leave the criminal summons in place as an alternative option if violation is still ongoing or becomes chronic next slide please

[49:01] so let's talk about what we currently have in place currently weeds and trash violations receive a warning which is also known as a notice of violation and a time frame in which the remnant in which to remedy the violation if the violation is not remedied the Violator is personally served with a Criminal summons to appear in court a municipal court criminal summons is subject to a maximum fine of 2 650 and or 90 days jail when the person appears in court they can either plead guilty and pay a fine or set the matter for trial the fine amount is up to the judge's discretion but typically is a hundred dollars for a first offense criminal summons must be personally served and signed in order to be considered valid legal service and requires a court appearance currently if no one is home the code enforcement officer has to come back sometimes

[50:01] several times on various days and times to attempt to serve the summons this results in inefficiencies and a significant amount of resources spent on one property due to multiple visits the same location while criminal summons may also be mailed to the owner especially in cases of out-of-state owners these mailings must be sent certified mail return receipt with restricted delivery to obtain the signature of the Party named on the summons if the certified mailing is signed by the party and if the officer receives the signature card back from the post office prior to the court date then the summons will be accepted by the court to proceed otherwise it has to be dismissed there has been a high failure rate of attempting to serve criminal summons through the mailing process lack of service leaves the enforcement

[51:00] process stalled with no accountability to the violating property the sooner a corrective action is taken in relation to the occurrence of a violation the more effective the correction of the of the behavior can be the delayed time frame between when a violation occurs and when a criminal summons is issued can diminish the desired outcome of compliance next slide please so let's talk about what we're proposing here tonight ordinance 8557 is being presented to council for two primary changes in process for the code enforcement unit the first is the addition of a civil citation process for weeds and trash violations and secondly it's the establishment of a set fine escalation schedule to accommodate the Civil process there are no substantive amendments being proposed to the weed and trash violations

[52:02] proposed ordinance 8557 provides an additional method of enforcement for trash and weeds violations that is civil rather than criminal in nature violators will still receive a warning posted on the property and emailed to the owner or agent and a time frame within which to remedy the violation the warning notice contains the issuing officers contact information should there be any questions on the action required the individual may also contact the officer to discuss an extension of the time frame to correct the violation however if not remedied they would receive a civil citation rather than a criminal summons similar to the bear trash ordinance the citation would be posted on the property to provide notice to the tenant and also emailed to the property owner and agent the property owner agent is responsible for the citation would not

[53:01] have to appear in court but would resolve the matter by correcting the violation and paying the fine as appropriate they would also retain the ability to contest the violation by requesting a hearing if there is a financial situation that prevents them from paying they have the ability to work with the court on a payment plan or find alternative the majority of community members will not see any economic change because the current typical fine imposed by a municipal judge for first violation is a hundred dollars chronic violators may see an increase in fine due to the escalation of fines if they receive multiple citations the second part is the fine escalation schedule the proposed change to a civil citation process is needed because identifying

[54:00] repeat offenders under the current system has been problematic particularly with houses containing multiple units and summonses being personally served to different tenants rather than one owner or landlord this fine escalation schedule will allow the code enforcement unit staff to improve the effectiveness of enforcement when a citation becomes necessary improving the overall condition of neighborhoods the proposed escalation of fines for repeated offenses can also correct behaviors that are causing the violation but currently repetitive criminal summons must be served to the same person even within a single household for this fine escalation to occur many of the properties that are cited have multiple tenants this scenario creates challenges to holding repeat offenders accountable delays the incident to consequence time frame and may not result in the desired Behavior which further frustrates neighbors and adds to the negative

[55:01] cultural and aesthetic aspects of neighbors excuse me neighborhoods next slide the current standard practice of resetting citation finds in August is intended to allow the ferris response to the high turnover of residents in some neighborhoods this allows new residents at a property to start with a clean slate and builds a sense of understanding and trust with the landlords and property managers that are integrating new residents to the rules in their leases and the city's ordinances the intent of the resetting policy is to avoid penalizing new tenants with escalated fines for the acts of previous tenants this level of community engagement and cooperation is supported by all levels of City staff and has been vital to the successful application of the citation process since the beginning this has worked well with the current bear trash code and if this ordinance is adopted will be implemented with weeds and trash violations as well

[56:02] the resetting procedure will be memorialized in an internal policy document known as general order 242 governing the code enforcement unit secondly providing notices of violation also known as warnings are a current code enforcement standard practice the specified correction period varies depending on the factual circumstances of the violation and is determined by code enforcement on a case-by-case basis this procedure will also be included in general order 242. also the addition of the email notification should improve the owner's and property managers with the ability to respond in a timely manner and notices are still posted on the door for tenants emailing of both a warning and a civil citation of administrative action began on February 1st of this year this is being manually

[57:00] emailed by the issuing officer independent of the current capability of the records management system code enforcement is committed to continually improving its service to the community and agree that emailed notices are in line with this commitment lastly the rental licensing database is a vital record for communicating with property owners and agents keeping the license and County Property Data up to date as changes occur is crucial to timely notification and a proper property owner's responsibility the city has made this process easily accessible the code enforcement unit consists of four officers a working supervisor and a part-time Administrative Assistant shared with animal protection this team enforces exterior nuisance violations across the city due to the due to these finite resources

[58:01] and community members request for more active patrols and enforcement the team has looked to process Improvement strategies to obtain greater efficiencies simultaneously trashing weeds and the corresponding need for proactive enforcement has been identified by the hill revitalization working group as both an issue and a viable solution to improve Aesthetics health and safety and build toward a more positive neighborhood culture on the University Hill Neighborhood these issues also impact other neighborhoods such as Martin acres and Goss Grove the proposed ordinance applies Citywide why is enforcement of weeds and trash important the Boulder police code enforcement unit actively patrols for in responds to complaints of unsecured and accumulated trash throughout the city the effective storage and control of trash directly

[59:00] impacts the health and safety of the community as mentioned earlier trash is a wildlife attractant to animals such as Bears raccoons skunks and rats containing trash reduces human and Wildlife conflicts accumulation of trash creates a nuisance to the community and degrades the safety and sense of security of residents in addition the regulation of the type and height of weeds and brush that are allowed in the city is necessary to protect the public health and safety and Welfare and preserved neighborhood environments at this time I am going to hand off to Brenda right now our community engagement manager thank you hello and nice to see you in person Council I know I get to see you a lot on screen so it's nice to stand here before you tonight so we did do some targeted conversations with folks around this issue as well as a be heard Boulder page that you should have received each and every response to

[60:01] in the memo and by hotline yesterday and I just want to reiterate that while this was a priority issue identified by the hill revitalization working group the actual work around what type of tool might help in this situation was decided and crafted by staff we did take as one of our first conversations this ordinance draft to the hill revitalization working group out of respect for their deep engagement on many quality of life issues and the various perspectives that sit around that table that can give us a lot of different types of input in one meeting and they asked a lot of helpful and insightful questions that we've included in attachment F to the agenda memorandum most of the group expressed support for these changes with concerns expressed by the boulder Area Rental Housing Association and CU Student Government you have copies of both of those documents that they sent us in November in your memo as well as well as staff

[61:02] responses that were offered to those those concerns also included in the memo are summaries of conversations with and the insightful questions asked by both the community connectors and residents and members of the Martin Acres neighborhood association's steering committee as you saw on the various visuals presented in the data South Boulder was also identified as a hot spot for some of these issues so we wanted to make sure to get those voices in the room too and then the be her Boulder page was open for everyone in the community we received 63 responses from about 26 different neighborhoods by my account I may have missed a few and I'm going through there but so certainly this was an issue of Interest across the city as should be since it will be enforced that way I just wanted to highlight some of the support that we heard for positive impacts on neighborhoods such as saving officers time people recognize the value of that cleaner spaces overall help with the

[62:02] overflowing dumpsters that people experience increased landlord accountability reduction of noxious weeds and an overall Improvement of health and safety we also heard a number of concerns on be herp Boulder that I wanted to highlight overreach of law enforcement we know that that's always a concern when we start to look at our ordinances and how we enforce them there was also a mirror concern of a potential lack of follow-through on enforcement so folks are worried about both sides of that there are folks that are concerned that reducing the consequence will actually lead to more violations instead of less I apologize for the typo that should be more violations um and we've heard about a lack a concern about the lack of opportunity to dispute the charges currently when you get to go to court you get to stand up and tell your story that's not something that happens with a citation process although as was mentioned there will be information on that citation allowing folks to call the courts and request

[63:01] that type of hearing there's a concern for an unfair targeting of students and on top of that potential for creating negative relationships between the students and the City um and there's a fear of a concern about increased cost of living for renters due to the fines being passed on from the property owners and landlords to the renters we do and have have tried to make public and available to folks expressing those concerns that we have our community mediation Department that does a lot of work on disputes between landlords and tenants and it's always ready to help folks have those conversations if tenants feel like they're being treated unfairly under the agreement that they've made with their landlords I did want to highlight that conversation with Community connectors and residents it was something that I instigated with that group because we did realize there may be some concern over a new type of fine particularly a fine escalation that had not existed in

[64:00] the past so with that in mind I went to visit that team and talked with them about it and and had talked with the courts and with Jen Riley before I went to visit them to make sure that that citation would include the court information and make it very clear that folks could have the opportunity to walk in front of a judge and tell their story or potentially discuss that fine with the courts before they were required to pay it so that was helpful information for that group who did raise that concern and so they did not feel like there was too much concern around that given that that information would be easily available instead we focused on some other topics in that conversation they too were concerned that violations would go up with the reduction of consequence going from Criminal to civil so we talked a bit about around that they also really encouraged holding property owners responsible they wanted to make sure that this wouldn't land only on tenants but would support

[65:01] Property Owners being a partner in this situation and they really wanted to talk about a robust education program around all of our zero waste commitments in Boulder talking about maybe if there's less trash then maybe trash is less of an issue and also concerns echoed by many people in the community about the large item dumping that happens at our intense move in and move out times and suggested that the city place dumpsters in some of those hot spots to help out with those tenants are those property owners that end up responsible for those items that are not theirs I'm happy to answer any questions and I think this is the time where we all open it up for your questions well thanks so much to all of you for that very clear and informative presentation really appreciate that so Council questions for staff before we go to the public hearing I have a clarification question

[66:00] um it says proposed ordinance 8557 provides an additional method of enforcement for trash and weeds violations additional method meaning you're not completely taking away the criminal so do you mind just explaining to me one more time in case I missed it at what point it goes from civil to criminal at one point in the repeat offender world I'm happy to answer your question um cancer um so it's really up to the officer to decide whether to use the Civil process of the criminal process I think that the officer has discretion and would more than likely use the criminal citation method for more egregious circumstance but I will let officer Riley speak to that so she is correct summons would be used if we had something that was very egregious or impacted Public Safety in a extreme manner or for a property that

[67:01] had received multiple citations and had proven that that method was not effective to correct Behavior then it would go back into the summons into a municipal court with a judge appearance the questions I'll call on myself oh here I got Judy that's right so as you mentioned tonight you're just looking at the Civil aspect in the criminal penalties already exist and that's not what we're revisiting today I just want that to be clear at least for me that's correct thank you I'll call them myself and then go to Matt um so what about a situation well just first of all to be clear so we're going to continue to post notices right on the property so the the citation will go to the property owner but notices will be posted as well

[68:00] so let's say that the a tenant at a property sees the the notice posted looks at and says oh well that's an error because of whatever factor or let's say they they see and they say oh gosh this is second offense 250 bucks that's a real hardship for me and so I I don't want to pay this right now out of a potential hardship but the citation has gone to the property owner separately so how would the tenant in this situation kind of work with the property owner or with the city to either you know correct the violation if it was an error or to make sure that they didn't have to pay a fine that they couldn't afford so the way that we address those kind of situations if the party that's receiving the violation let's say you tenant in your example does not agree with the findings of the officer they feel that there's been an error made because we are not infallible they can contact the officer because their number and their email address is on the notice that was left and also the one that was mailed and emailed so any of those three

[69:00] parties could could intervene during the correction period to say hey I don't agree with this and if a citation had been issued both the owner agent and tenant can file an appeal with the court to stop that fine and say no I want a chance to say I have a hardship the court does have a built-in process for financial hardships and the Tenant is just as able to file that appeal as the owner or the agent would be great that's great to understand what if the uh the property owner paid the fine while that was still being worked through yes yes so we have that happen occasionally um we will have one that pays it right away and and it does stay very clearly on the citation if you are going to appeal do not pay the fine we'll let the judge decide if they're going to reduce it or do payment plans or something but sometimes that crossover happens when you get a bill you pay it type thing and we can actually refund that payment and

[70:01] or stop payment if it depending on the mechanism that they use to pay that fine so if a landlord paid a hundred dollar citation the tenant appealed it to the court and we received documentation from the court the disposition of it let's say it was dismissed or reduced that fine would be fully refunded and then reissued in the proper amount or dismissed entirely and then it would be handled that way great that's really helpful and then uh noria this may be a question for you so as part of the the budget that we passed for 2023 I believe we did include some additional trash service options centered around move-in and move out do I remember that correctly uh you do and I think that that is part of the continued work this team is going to do uh we also added an FTE and pnds to continue to help us think about code enforcement uh generally in compliance as we also partner with PD about the issue but we really will continue to be thinking about what are those timely

[71:01] targeted efforts particularly around move in and move out we're also thinking as part of the work group that was not part of the budget about potential incentives I when I take my city manager hat off and put my former regulatory hat on I'll say that some of the things such as whether or not we can provide discounts with local hardware stores for cleaning supplies that could incentivize property managers to join us when those move-in move out dates are there or things like that or things that we're thinking as well so we will continue to bring package of Reform as they are set great but we are bringing some additional City resources to bear on the on the issues of trash collections in general yes great thanks Matt Lauren thanks Aaron this first question is for Sandra and it kind of has to do with with I think in the current um criminal uh proceeding that this goes

[72:00] under I believe that there's an opportunity for at least CU students to plea with the judge or the court to sidestep the fine and go through the cu's restorative justice program is that is that correct that would be up to the judge to decide but yes that's an alternative option to a fine has was that thought of did we think about carrying that uh off-ramp off for students with regards to our Evolution to a civil penalty system did we want to do was there any consideration of bringing that option forward as well I I don't think that it would work only because there's no court appearance required and so unless the person were to reach out independently and request it um then that could be an option otherwise it wouldn't you sort of was you sort of LED where I might want to ask a question later on in comments of you know could that be an off-ramp perhaps on the initial maybe

[73:01] 100 summons that that tenant may have a choice to say oh hey I don't want to pay the money can I off can I ask and then request to move through Caesar sort of justice system as a way of bypass and hopefully get some sort of societal and Correctional Behavior out of it so anyway but thanks for answering that question um the other question I have to have has to do with sort of um with regards to annual reset saying that it was memorialized sort of internally is is it is there any issue with making that more forward and more uh upfront and in a forward environment like on our website and stuff so that people have know that that's there and know that it's reset versus you know new tenants not knowing that it was or wasn't and so I just want to make sure that it's not buried so people don't quite know what's available to them or what their rights are yeah thank you for the question um you know there are definitely lots of different areas in which we could share that information you know see do CU also does an incredible job in educating students in terms of what their

[74:01] obligations are to be good neighbors and um they have a landlord tenant toolkit online and all kinds of resources available the city also has a lot of resources available related to tenant landlord situations and would certainly be another resource but I think in addition to that we could certainly put some information online related to weeds and trash specifically about that and and and be able to to carry that out and educate folks about it appreciate it thank you I'll just add to that that has been another topic we've been thinking about and so confirming um what Sandra is saying that we've been thinking about how to do that in a in a way that is more user-friendly sometimes we talk a lot in coach speak and how do we make our website more accessible more visual more easy to

[75:00] understand and I think that that's one of the things that this improvement process will yield as well so that is coming thanks Henry I mean it maybe comes together with a larger sort of tenant rights kind of information package I know that has its own connotations and context attachment but but sort of something in that ilk would be sort of helpful for everyone as a One-Stop shop for everything that you need to know so thank you for that there's one more thing I'd like to add if you don't mind and that is that there is a requirement for landlords to provide a disclosure statement and in that they are required to provide information to tenants that they're signing a lease with related to the ordinances that are commonly issues for tenants and so there's another opportunity for that education as well that's actually required by law and I'll just jump in and add that as part of the resources through the community mediation and res and resolution center they do have a tenant rights handbook that's available online

[76:01] on our website so that's definitely a place where we could include this education as well thank you Aaron um let's see So currently how many citations or incidents happen before there is a court summons it sounded like that didn't typically happen on the first incident so to make sure I understand your question correctly like how many times do we need to violate before you actually end up with a Summons to court would that be correct yes okay so that varies um the officer has discretion built in for a reason some are tremendously egregious violations that are Public Safety so you could receive a summons immediately for those type of situations however our whole goal as a unit is to educate and gain compliance on an ongoing basis so we do try and help all

[77:00] residents understand why the ordinance is in place how that protects them personally as well as the community at large so we do that first and we do issue notice of violation with a period correct when an officer walks up to a property they have no idea who lives there or what they're particular circumstances are until they knock on the door and they start that conversation so in the case of let's say um an elderly Widow that was living alone that was having trouble keeping up on the property we're going to issue a notice of violation we're going to work with extensions in the Boulder County uh cultivate program to try and get her connected with the resources that she would need if she were to reviolate because those resources fell through we wouldn't just go well you already got a warning so now you get a ticket so it has to be dynamic because there's so many different situations that the code officers come in contact with so I can't give a definitive one two three now you have a summons but we definitely strive for compliance and understanding because that has a long-term goal of ongoing

[78:02] compliance thank you um I think I read somewhere that the ticketing a ticket for an initial summons was typically around a hundred dollars what are the current fines for second or third offenses well this is the consistency that we're trying to build into the system because it's up to the discretion of the judge that they sit in front of it could be 250 it could be a thousand it could be a dismissal um it it ends in a variety of different outcomes so it's not really predictable thank you oh Judy do you want to colloquy thank you that's the word I have hardly ever used um I'm sorry I how did you come up with the two thousand six hundred and fifty dollars

[79:03] at least for the maximum yes that's the maximum fine that's allowed by law okay has the municipal judge been part of that conversation as well since it seems that most the fine is left to her discretion so in terms of the maximum fine that's set by Statute so the judge doesn't have discretion on the maximum fine that's the same for all General offenses not just weeds and trash okay I think what I heard from Lauren in her question when she asked you she asked you about the amount of the fine right and you mentioned that is it is left to the discretion of the judge correct so I'm wondering has the municipal judge been part of that conversation as well we we have not discussed fine escalation under the current process because it's an already set process so as far as the Civil hearings go and the escalation in

[80:00] the bear finds that is a set by ordinance as well and is working under the current system under a different model did you want that well I just if helpful I wanted to give sort of some context to what we're seeing and to clarify because um I just want to say that the current maximum fine and or up to 90 days is an existing code that is that is not a new thing and then we got we did get some information from the municipal court on some of the appeals now this is not the universe of fines that have been issued right but in a three-year period from the first of January of 2020 to February of 2023 I'll say that there were 28 appeals for trash overall and 13 of those were dismissed or no action were taken or their pending dismissal 14 of those were in fact allotted fines seven of those 13 were 50 fines four were

[81:02] between a hundred and hundred thirty dollars two were between 150 and 165 and only one was five hundred dollars as we so just if that is helpful for context I wanted to provide that Lauren thank you um I was also wondering what the current finds for snow removal are and first second third offenses so snow removal is not subject to the summons process that's handled by a civil abatement process because snow is an immediate threat to life and safety for Falls we actually we under the ordinance you get one notice personal season the ordinance dictates the season to be October 1st to May 31st after receiving that one 24-hour notice should you be in violation again during that season we send a contractor which is hired by open bid process and the fine are fees that we are charged for that abatement are

[82:01] built back plus administrative fees to the property owner so the snow is removed immediately well within when the contractor it's usually within a day once we submit that to the contractor and they bear the fine or fee for that do you know typically how much that costs depends on the time of year as you can imagine a spring a spring snow is much easier to remove than a hard Frozen sidewalk on the North side that's been traversed multiple times by pedestrians and now is Rock ice those are a lot higher than than the other ones but I would say minimum to show up it's about 185 dollars for a basic abatement and we've had some that go as high as four thousand that was an extreme circumstance for a very large Frozen area and it wasn't a residence it was commercial property thank you I know that we all Beyond sort of our

[83:00] weed ordinance we also have site triangle requirements and visibility around driveways and streets do those have fun like I know of them through my work and making sure that there is a that we're not intentionally planting things of the wrong height in those areas but if someone were to to plant something um what mechanism typically comes into play for how that situation is rectified so I'm going to pull one of those items out because it's not handled by my unit so I don't want to misspeak as to how they handle it and that's the site triangle that's actually handled by right-of-way inspectors in the planning public works department so they handle that one portion of that the other ones that you speak of we do handle that's overhanging trees and shrubs and obstructing a sidewalk so that is also handled under a civil

[84:00] abatement process where it's an immediate threat to Public Safety and we always issue a notice with a time period to correct for overhanging even if we told you last spring that you have to cut the Hedge and this spring you haven't cut the head yet we're still going to give you that opportunity to correct it and if it's not corrected we hire the same contractor and in the same process as no they will come and cut the hedge or the tree or whatever's overhanging we do try and work really specifically with owners or tenants about that to give them enough time because some Hedges are tremendously big some trees are very sensitive and need to be cut at the proper time so we do try and work within reason still keeping the public safety and the need to keep those public walks open but it is subject to the Civil abatement process to remove the hazard because it's encroaching on the public area thank you let's just have two more um we're here all night it's all right if a resident of a multi-family property is ticketed and then a second tenant who

[85:01] may or may not have any idea of the original citation um would they be ticketed with the second offense like because they're both from the same property would they have the increased fine so I'm gonna make sure I understand your question correctly by rephrasing it back so you're saying we have a property that let's say has four tenants in it and uh the first tenant got sided with first citation and then the next time it's the other tenant would that escalation apply is that correct yes okay so the citation goes to the property not the tenant so it is attached to the property so depending on how that landlord has that leash written it's going to be a hundred dollars for the first fine let's say it's accumulation of trash and when we go again and they have the same issue and they have not corrected and we end up with a second citation um it's going to go to the property and so that gets mailed and emailed to the property owner there is notification

[86:01] left at the property that a notice of agency action has been issued to this property this is how we handle bear trash currently and we want to model that because it's been very successful the tenant is aware that we're issuing a citation the citation is issued to the property owner by Rec tax record and that is handled as far as who pays or how that gets paid between the leasing agreement that that owner has with that tenant or the seven six five four three tenants under our current summons process if I cite the first tenant they personally are liable for the violation and go to court if I cite the other tenant the next time they're personally liable for that violation and go to court have depending on their history with court if they it's their first citation or summons I apologize then it would be a first violation for John as well as Sally and that's part of the problem with accountability and escalation under the current system and the other two tenants then get cited

[87:01] at all so in the way the in the modified program would a tenant be associated with the citation at all no thank you it's attached to the property other questions cool thanks so much for the presentation and um thanks everybody for bearing with us on our questions um I have a few as well um so what my first question is that this ordinance is going to go into effect as the same time as we're starting this email notification system change and we've allocated I think it was an additional sixty thousand dollars into additional trash pickup at the end of the semesters so if something changes how do we know what it is that created the change so if we're seeing changes in trash and things like that like there's three things that are happening at the same time and do we have a way of knowing what's leading to any improvements I'm happy to take a first stab at that

[88:01] and see if others want to correct me but I'll say you know changing behaviors is generally not just one thing we will continue to track it the monies we have allocated to really at least about additional trash containers have really focused on move in move out but trash frankly accumulates all throughout the year so we will be looking at differences there and then actually tracking and again the data project will help us do that tracking properties and seeing if we see behaviors I'd like to think that the whole package of what we're trying to do both increasing awareness increase opportunities for people to know what's there the improvements on a website this particular ordinance change all of it we're hoping is what really changes Behavior I don't know that it's One Singular item as much as a package of improvements and happy to have improved Behavior no matter what causes it I would say as far as my piece in this for this particular ordinance we would be able to track previous Trends in repeat

[89:02] violations communication with tenants and really have they corrected being a chronic issue or not um has the engagement with the emails improve the the notification process for the landlord so they feel more responsive we can track that as far as how the cases are trending and if we're seeing a different Trend within that system thank you and then I was wondering are the notices that are placed on doors are those bilingual it has a link to a bilingual version okay if someone were to call the department and say I received something and I need help with it we have multiple officers and resources that can help translate that for them or directly mail them their own specific language because we have a very diverse community and it's hard to know which language they're going to need until they identify that for us the same as if someone had a

[90:00] financial need or or a need for elderly services we don't know until we knock on that door and then we can assist them with that and that so that kind of leads into another question that was a good colloquy which is if you're getting rid of the the sort of one-to-one contest we are not oh but so the notice of violation I thought it was just going to be put on the door and that's if somebody doesn't answer okay we still knock and try and engage but if if they're at school taking a test or a class or if they're on vacation in Europe um sometimes people don't answer the door they're at work sure um so we we don't want to keep repeat going back and going back so we do leave a notice um our notices are designed to be very educational uh so it does not only list the no the violation that we're citing there but it has a variety of other violations so they can be like oh I didn't even know that was an issue so I'm glad I didn't get that one um and then the mailed version that follows that up to the landlord and tenant actually has the verbatim ordinance language correction period

[91:01] contact information all of that as well yeah I think I heard you um it was in response to one of the other questions just talking about how you know having that in-person contact right where I think it was the criminal summons right you're issuing it has to be to a person and so um I guess I'm just wondering you know how do you kind of find out what those what what the things are that people are telling you so it sounds like you're you're a resource a lot of times for folks that may not have even known right or having issues getting to getting to their weeds or getting to right trash bag or something so I think it's just how how do we how are we helping people to eliminate some of those barriers that you might not know unless you're having a conversation right so the conversation around the summons is for service only um we are way past the point of having a conversation for correction or resources so the slide that I asked to be put up is actually our code enforcement flow so what happens when we get a complaint so

[92:00] if you see at the top where it says complaint and then you see that highlighted piece that says citation summons all that process happens before that unless it's an egregious or chronic violation which means we've done this process during the first interaction at that property so we are still knocking on the door issuing a notice violation period to correct trying to identify resources that are needed giving them an opportunity should they not be there and we post that they can call us back email us back get online to inquirebolder and contact us there or call our Dispatch Center or or our office hotline if you will to let us know what that issue is so that we can get them connected or sometimes it's as easy as I've hired a tree company he can't be here until two weeks and I only have a week can you please extend it absolutely every time we definitely want to work with people so the summons conversation is saying you're in violation of this please sign here this is intermission of guilt this is a promise to appear the court date

[93:00] listed above and this is your opportunity to have due process because we're at the end of the process so a lot of that identifying and education and contact has already happened yep so it's happening earlier and we do not want to eliminate that none of these changes are eliminating any of that it's just a more effective end tool when it becomes necessary thank you and then just a couple of questions to just help me understand about this ordinance how will this help with the overflowing dumpsters because that that to me I the connections yeah so when you have an accumulation of trash currently under our system we would give a notice it's not corrected uh we would see the violation continue we would try and write a summons which we've explained how difficult that can be and if no one ever answers the door or Returns the mail we're stonewalled we're eventually the trash guy comes and takes it right and during

[94:01] certain time periods that's why we have six day review which is listed in the one that would be eligible for citation so if someone has an overflowing dumpster for more than a day because the trash is supposed to be coming the next day that would be identified as not being signed up for your your six day trash collection as required during those specified time frames and we would be able to cite the owner for that not signing up for that service and accepting those trash charges and if they still didn't then they would have an escalated fine of a second and then a third so the whole point is um to have the consequence match the behavior that's happening at the time instead of this service delay and then hopefully the landlord goes well it's a lot more worth my time to pay the trash fee for the pickups instead of the 100 250 and then 500. okay thank you and then it sounded like with the current court process often people aren't getting fined more than 50 or 100 I mean for the most part so my

[95:03] question is just Why why the fines escalate um and so why why are they kind of getting higher every time when kind of the maximum that we're currently charging people is is lower so part of the problem is um the example that I gave with the tenant where we cited John the first time and sadly the next time that's the first and then first and those are probably some of the dismissals that went into the CU student route instead of paying the fine which has proven as a successful uh process and we would like to bring over into our civil hearings and can have conversations with the court about that because they like that system as well so I think part of it is let the difficulty of the escalation being accountable to the to the person instead of the property so that accounts for some of it and there is an escalation in ordinance depending

[96:01] on which one we're citing for example 635 has an escalation but we aren't bringing every ordinance to you at once we want to bring the most egregious and the most impactful to Public Safety for this change like we did with bears refine the process make sure we're getting the results that we want and and proving the success of it to add it to 635 at a later date and and expand that ability to improve the service overall I'll just add two I don't know if you were gonna jump in but I'll add and maybe Amanda you have that slide about the frequency that we'll know too that we've been fortunate that most property managers are responsible I want to really lift that up um that there's a lot of great landlords out there doing the great job there are with trash violations a third that require repeat instances and it is in those instances where you will still have uh notice a first fine and a second

[97:00] fine it allows for escalation because about a third of our properties require that but we are always hopeful and actually I think that is a really indicative sign of the responsibleness of our property managers in the city thank you um and then the last question how are dried out weeds different from like a dried out Bush or a dried out native grass or something like that when it comes to fire hazards um it's the it's usually the amount of and the proximity to the structures so that's that can be one of the biggest differences especially on our vacant Lots where you have a building that's been removed and there's no one there maintaining the property and you have growth that has grown up through the the wet rains and everything and now it's completely dried and you have cars going by or any sort of accelerant to to kick that off so and then as you can see in the example photos where it's all against the entire structure usually when people have

[98:00] native landscapings and things like that they're not immediately up against the structure and there's someone tending to those uh in a responsible manner they're not abandoned or unkempt thank you that's well I appreciate how we've gotten into the Weeds on this topic but but maybe we can move to the public hearing all right no trash talking now um uh so if we could go to the public hearing if we're done with questions we have five speakers two in person three virtual so each one will have three minutes to speak I think we've already heard our um guidelines for public participation so our first two speakers are Chase Cromwell and Quentin fellows good evening Council I'm Chase Cromwell that you all know me I work with see you soon government um I'm here tonight hoping you'll reject these changes and ask all the stakeholders involved to work for a

[99:00] larger more suitable solution these changes that presented been presented at times is the way to solve long-term nuisance properties and create more property owner responsibility from our perspective that simply is not the case I respectfully like to contend that these changes do not positively impact the culture problem we hear is so crucial when you're talking in the hill revitalization working group and we're talking about the hill environment if we want to address residents who are creating safety health or other concerns with the community we should look for a solution that engages actually engages with them not just an administratively simpler way to issue fines I'm not here to argue that students or blameless here but we already know that engaging directly with students and showing them that we expect a little bit more from them virtually guarantees that behavior is corrected alcohol and disruption quiet enjoyment tickets which go through the University's restorative justice program as part of a plea bargain with municipal courts results in a two percent or lower recidivism rate depending on the year you look at the numbers this process educates hundreds of

[100:01] students every year on the law the issue at hand and treats them with dignity a fine does not guarantee any of these outcomes and further worsens The View that behavior on the hill is a behavior to complain about report and police making these changes tonight represents this presents a serious risk of worsening tenant landlord relations particularly for the larger and already predatory management organizations on the hill when a state patrol officer pulls you over for speeding or BPD gets you on a red light unless you have a crazy track record the entirety of that conversation is community engagement and educational opportunity do you understand why that speed's dangerous do you realize how little time you have to react why didn't you stop why do we think this kind of an ordinance one many residents have never thought about is any different these changes only further encourage a no contact citation where tenants have zero chance to discuss the issue with a code enforcement officer it is way harder to dispute these changes in these citations when the landlord is the one named and then paying the fine

[101:00] out right it's sad that we as Community view it as our priority to amend code and police Behavior instead of treating our student Community specifically our student Community as neighbors these changes only make it easier to issue more citations in a day and coming back to this code a dozen times the next two years to make one small change after another only makes the entire process more confusing and since I spoke a little bit faster than I intended I do want to acknowledge and thank Council and staff for moving these changes from the Thursday after finals to now because there's no pressure to make these changes right now and it makes it so much easier for all of us to just engage on it so it means a lot to us thank you thanks Chase now if uh Quentin fellows all right good evening Council my name is Quinn I'm a senior at CU Boulder as well and a part of student government um tonight I want to Advocate a little for the members in our community who are responsible tenants and may be harmed by

[102:00] these proposed changes if they go ahead um we heard a little bit about the process where landlords will be fined and then can refer to their tenants whether or not it will be disputed however we are aware that from the report issued by the boulder Area Rental Housing Association in November that a lot of the property managers here simply intend to pay the fine outright and then pass it on to their students um I'm sure in some cases they may consult with their tenants on how they'll go about disputing this or if the fine will be paid but I also think that thinking practically we can't expect that Boulder property management or four star is going to seriously work with every single one of their tenants to try to fairly adjudicate the issue we also know that on the hill it's not uncommon for passerby to litter or dump trash on properties that aren't their own and I think that if these changes go ahead as proposed right now it's almost certain that some people who through no fault of their own will end up paying more rents to their landlords to cover

[103:00] these fines I'm not looking to say that there's no issue or to deny that we need policy change on how we handle weeds and trash in the community however before energy changes are approved I think we ought to look to find a solution that won't inadvertently cause unnecessary harm to our residents thank you thank you Quinn we'll move to our remote speakers now who are Kel Darnell Lynn Siegel and Steve Armstead I can't tell if I'm on or not you're on okay thank you um thank you for letting me speak this evening my name is Kel Darnell and I'm a hill landlord I'm also the president of the boulder rental Housing Association that our friend just spoke about barha is a local trade associate association with that with represents over 1400 rental units in Boulder um and before I go further I'd like to

[104:00] thank Jen Riley for the great and informative presentation she made to our board about this topic um it is our understanding that the purpose of this ordinance is to implement process Improvement strategies for code enforcement staff in order to help increase compliance among residents in our many discussions both in the hill working group and with CU Student Government the importance of members of the public knowing both the consequences of violations and fines and their rights in the process has been stressed our position on this issue is that adding fines that are easily administered without the benefit of personal contact not assessing the positive change of the new notification system we have just implemented like two weeks ago and placing the fine reset and obscure internal document is not good public policy the recent reinstatement of the email notification system for landlords should make a big difference in cases for weed and trash violations and we would like a chance to see if that will improve the situation before you add additional fines for these types of violations we have had less than three weeks to evaluate how that major change

[105:01] in communication will affect this issue during that time we have advised all of our members to update their online profiles with the city of Boulder in order to assure that they will get the notifications when they come therefore we ask that the final vote on this proposal be post phone by six months in order to review the data we Echo the sentiments of Cu Student Government regarding the placement of the fine reset in the Boulder Police Department general order as opposed to the ordinance we have not seen the proposed language and we will not have any way to know when there are changes to this document while it is important that this policy be written down we would prefer it be included as part of an ordinance placing this information in internal policy manual lacks transparency how will the general public look this up we urge you to vote no on this proposed ordinance or at the very least postpone your decision for six months to see if email notifications are having the desired impact thank you for your consideration thank you Cal now we have Lynn Siegel and Steve Armstead

[106:05] I think you ought to do to do sort of Justice program I think you ought to have a working group including students um I don't think that it's it's going to benefit anyone if you treat you know bad behavior like um like the people are not you know um even like their children you know um it's if you if you treat them like adults maybe they'll behave like adults and if they don't then you go into really catastrophic expensive um reprimands because guess what they can't afford they're it's you know they're at school you know they can get Catch Hell from their parents if their parents are are you know footing the bill for their travesties and that isn't

[107:00] ultimately the way you want it to work they're in young Independence and they need to work with restorative justice or maybe something like if you put a fine for one person in the household a really big fine that person will place the others because they don't want the big fine and it'll cause them to you know work out the problem themselves um and I say try it out restorative justice it's a real concept it's like Chase said it really works well um and obviously a lot of things aren't working over many many years from the images of all this trash it's just unbelievable it's worse than the homeless problem and then think about your policies when you approve see you South making the problem worse that's that's

[108:02] that's counterintuitive doesn't make sense and I think if there's any way to reverse that decision on CU South that might be the only saving grace of Boulder and I think you need to have um more minutes that you're gonna listen to the public from on these hearings you don't need three minutes as much as you need three minutes for all the issues coming down in the city and especially today you got away with murder you got you know seven people at two minutes each for no you got it was a little more than that it was 19 minutes well historically Aaron and everyone you know I've been around doing this for 30 years there's been 45 minutes of listening to the public you know if you think you can solve all the city's problems yourself go right ahead good luck with that because it's not working and this is an

[109:02] example of it so I say try things out doesn't work then you really slam on it thank you then last speaker Steve Armstead good evening City Council Members I'm Steve Armstead of pollinator conservation specialist with the Xerxes Society an international non-profit dedicated to the conservation of invertebrates and pollinators I live in Berthoud Colorado and support pollinator conservation work all along the Colorado Front Range Xerxes is a partner in the cool Boulder campaign focusing on natural climate Solutions and collaborating on establishing native plant biodiverse and ecologically resilient pollinator habitats or Pathways throughout the city I'm speaking tonight to address an important related topic to the your consideration of ordinance 8557 and the need for staff and city council to review the definitions and exemptions in the city

[110:00] code that apply to the control of weeds the current city code does not clarify that natural appearing native plantings such as a native plant Meadow or Naturescape are exempt from potential consideration of being a weed problem and thus could be at odds with city code the current code excludes plants in flower or vegetable gardens is being defined in weeds though many Native plantings may not take the form or be easily identified as a garden the xers society and other partner organizations involved in local efforts to promote and increase the extent and diversity of native plant habitats in Boulder are doing so based on increasing scientific understanding that Urban Landscapes can contribute to and support native pollinators and other beneficial Wildlife while also creating Landscapes that are ecologically diverse and more resilient to the impacts of climate change additionally as there continues to be increased Focus about the water saving benefits of replacing turt Lawns and incentive programs that help to support conversions to other types of Landscapes hopefully this will result in

[111:01] even more native landscapes in Boulder the conversion of turf Lawns which are very poor pollinator habitat into Landscapes that include native wildflowers grasses and shrubs will result in even greater Improvement to the ecological Vitality of Boulder's Urban Landscapes the integration of more native plants and the lack of common knowledge about what native plants are makes it even more important to be careful about codified definitions in weed management specifications in summary is there is a very intentional and important shift in Boulder to move away from where traditional Landscaping practices to integrate more ecologically diverse and climate resilient native Landscapes there should be a corresponding review and consideration of the city code around the definitions and requirements for weed management that may be needed to be more modified and aligned with a more to allow more non-manicured landscape Style thank you for your time and consideration thank you Steve and that concludes the public hearing so I'll bring it to council for discussion

[112:01] and maybe I'll just ask a real quick follow-up question based on the last testimony we do already exempt natural plantings from weed enforcement correct we do that on a procedural so code enforcement definitely enforces both sides the letter of the law as well as the spirit of the law in the spirit of that weed ordinance is to keep unkempt and dangerous Lawns under control as I mentioned in the public hearing we don't take enforcement on Native Landscapes zeroscapes bee habitats we do trainings and directly coordinate with rela Abernathy who has counseled us very much on what the vision moving forward for that wheat ordinance is and I know she's currently looking at revising that to be more in line with what we're talking about today but on a procedural basis we do follow that her guidance as well as City's philosophy and go with the spirit of that and prosecutors we have met with them and they are also supportive of

[113:01] that direction okay that's great to understand rela is very very good at this so if you're Consulting with her I'm sure you're doing I have to say we asked her for a definition of weeds and it was six pages long I thought it was I know it if I see one but that's her anyway so who would like to kick off the council discussion there you go first thank you for this work and for those that are listening who aren't in the room thanks for I mean this has been going on for years if not a decade or more this the collaboration sort of get to these points to bring people to the table and understand the issues at hand so just a big just a lot of gratitude to everyone that's worked to get us here um and so I think certainly the people in this room will get the credit for the work but but I think it's just the final stamp on a lot of Labor over many years to get to this point so just make sure everyone's appreciated for all that work um I think for me right now I think my my

[114:01] place is I I like where this is headed out of the the municipal into civil I think the structure is good there's really just there's really just the two pieces that I sort of was asking my probing questions on that I like to see changed I'd love to see restorative justice folded into this in a meaningful manner and I and I think the right place for that is at that initial hundred dollar uh summons where there's like okay there's a penalty to be had and you've got a fork in the road I either pay it or you know get compliance and then I route through the restorative justice and so hopefully since it is going there's a notice going to the owner as well but if whatever stuck to the door if that can be crafted in a way that a tenant reading that knowing they're a CU student they know they have that option in that moment they know that oh this is going to be a fine that's either going to be paid directly or trickled down to me through my landlord or I can take proactive action and join in on this use restorative justice and then have that nullified and then act on that that sort of change Behavior I think we know the successes of that restorative justice

[115:00] program and I would think it's really important that we make sure it's folded in here um and I think that's just a great place to do it certainly right at the penalty phase I'd love to hear what my colleagues think about that um and if there's some better Alternatives but I think that's a real key piece and then really the other one was just lifting up that issue of the annual reset just making sure that's front and foremost I think that's a concern we heard from not just students but also barha and I think that's an easy thing to just make sure it's front and forward so people have a really clear understanding of what what's in front of them in case there's a clerical error on our end too right if we mistakenly not reset and then all of a sudden the first thing shows up is is 500 someone would it'd be nice to know that they can quickly easily see that there might have been an error in that and know that that was something that wasn't reset so those are sort of just my comments in general but I love where where we've gone to get to this place and hopefully we have some good compliance and and get that behavior right and I think all of this to nuria's point earlier about the package of things that we're working on over 2023 you know hopefully build a more resilient community on the hill but also build trust among neighbors and so I'm

[116:01] really hopeful that we don't just look at this ordinance in a vacuum we look at it as part of a complement of things that we're building towards over the next year so great work to staff and the community that's been a part of this so thank you thanks Matt other thoughts kind of volunteered we're gonna have to finish up Rachel I just have a colloquy question for Matt on the restorative justice what would it take to like nail that piece in is that something that is just optional right now or or would we be looking at a third reading or what would that look like that would require some coordination with the court which I I think that um she uh judge cook would be open to that we we've definitely used restorative justice for many years and it has been a successful program I don't want to speak for judge cook I think she's actually available so she might be able to speak to that but it would involve some kind of just behind the scenes coordination really

[117:02] so it would not require any change to the ordinance that we'd be voting on no it would not understand Tara let me get get into that mic please thanks you lost your mic do I yeah thank you three times three times as a charm I think Quinn did bring up a good point and you know me always worried about unintended consequences so my question is is let's say we pass this in some landlords that let's say not the great ones okay decide that they are just going to pass they're not even going to tell this the uh the tenants that there is any sort of a problem they're just going to pay it they're going to have a budget for this let's say and they're going to just pay it every time and there's not going to be and it's definitely let's say it does get passed on to the tenants

[118:01] by raising the rent just so that they can afford this is there anything that we can do when it comes to discussing like tenant uh landlord leases for example and building something into the lease where they have to discuss the first uh the initial um the initial um citation citation before they pay that fine I'm concerned about that so that potentially can go in the boulder standardized lease or the disclosures statement there will be a little bit of process to amend that we are also posting notification to the resident directly at the property so they know that this action is happening it's not in a vacuum where we send a really really discreet little email over to someone and that's the end of it we email the agent the owner if they have that on file even with emailing we also

[119:00] mail it to their to their address records we don't just rely on email and that posting at the property we do that with our bear ordinance currently it does explain the fine escalation we would be happy to add the reset to that as well as information linking them directly into the appeal process so that they don't have to rely on getting a copy of the citation from the landlord we can certainly enhance that document to add those features and a disclosure on that that's left at the property saying a owner agent and tenant are all available or eligible to appeal this citation one more question so you you said earlier I think that within the lease you have to tell the tenant all about like the trash and what to do about their trash and such correct correct it's called a disclosure statement and by city ordinance landlords are required to have that in their lease I actually there's it's very easy to find in the

[120:02] tenant section of the city website I have a copy of it if anyone wants to take a look at it and as you can see it lists all of the nuisance violations throughout this document what the code section is what is required to comply and at the end of that disclosure the tenant is required to sign that they acknowledge these are the rules of of the city that they need to live by in this we can enhance this document to add the reset the fine escalation and the ability to appeal under the description for the trash ordinance is that it applies to fun story my daughter lit was on the hill she lived on the hill with a bunch of friends and during that bear ordinance change the bear trash change the Bears were coming into the alley and they were knocking down the trash and so they got their first citation complaint they got their first complaint they didn't know what to do they cleaned up all the trash with their gloves the Bears came the next week and knocked it down again and this time they had a fine so they did not know what to do they

[121:02] didn't their trash cans were broken and they didn't even know that they could call Western Disposal and get new for free get you know get new cans so for some reason there's a disconnect between what the students are reading in their lease I think and what and what they know so I have a question and this is for student government is there a way for the the hill tenants to have more clarity when it comes to what they can do about trash besides just being in the lease which I know personally I've never read my own lease so I can imagine that students probably don't read these it's a lot of signings yeah so the most important thing is knowledge for the students because most of them do want to keep their place clean they just always don't know what to do so I'm hoping we can go outside the box and really yeah I can say when we initiated that original process which is why we're doing this not everything at once we learned a lot of lessons about notifying um we they got a notice for a broken

[122:01] container I I'm sure of it and on that notice a broken container it says in the remedy to contact your waste hauler whose number is on your trash can to have this replaced free of charge or at uh if you don't have that model and you're required to provide the container that you need to replace the container and here's like four links to resources to buy that container right so we do definitely listen to you yeah the good it worked did um so we do try that education up front as your your daughter experience with the notice and the information and when it's not resolved and they repeat that behavior by not changing the circumstance that caused it that's where the fine comes in yeah so thank you for this because ultimately I don't think trash should be um criminalized so I appreciate the change over to civil and I'm hoping that we can just work out the Kinks but I think this is the right direction I have to say code enforcement is very open to hearing

[123:02] feedback from you from the community from student council from landlords that's why I went to the director's meeting for Barra I do apologize to student council for not interfacing I honestly did not think of that because you were part of the Hill revitalization group so I kind of sum that all together but that will change in the future for sure and even the feedback we've received tonight I have many notes as to add this to this and change the language for that so we are going to keep improving I just wanted to add to that what you're hearing right is and what we're hearing is that there needs to be multiple points of Education right is what I'm I'm hearing and I just want to commend I saw a recent brochure uh that Jen shared with me that she created um that is something that is handoutable to anyone who she is interfacing with I had shared that in Minneapolis we had done uh actually in concert with the university a visual guide in Spanish and in English for folks and I know I offered that to Lori Cole is speaking to

[124:01] chase yesterday and I just appreciate the time he took to talk to me a little bit yesterday what really sort of resonated is we need more places to talk about this in plain language not just in code so thinking about all the great improvements that Jen is already thinking about plus where are the ways in our website that we can do that what are other opportunities for Education will continue to be part of not just this process but frankly like that there are others so for example we're really really continuing to work on what is that relationship and what are tenant protections as we move forward because we're talking right now of weeds and trash and the potential because I want to be thoughtful again that there are landlords who will not pass on those fines to um to their tenants and there are landlords for whom it will not get to a fine right they will correct that behavior really quickly so I want to lift that up always but we want to be thoughtful about what that looks like because it's not just weeds and trash where fines can be associated with so we

[125:01] want to make sure that if there are predatory landlords if there are practices that people are concerned about we as a city want to hear about them because there are other ways to address that right quick okay so but ultimately you know sometimes money fines are a motivator and so my daughter when they got that you could bet that they called up the trash people and they got their new containers so I do think that that is a way to get compliance I know that um I did stop I did once make once make a right turn on red at a certain intersection and the police gave me a ticket and I said but I didn't know and they said we don't care it's the law and that's the first time I heard that concept but anyway um so it was a motivator for me I never did that again and so I do think that fines can be good for creating compliance and that's probably one of the reasons why the bear trash was

[126:01] successful okay other thoughts there we go Nicole good people of course I have thought there first I just want to say thank you to staff and Jen I have heard such glowing things about you and your team from everybody that I've talked to so thank you so much um it's clear that folks appreciate having you out there so I understand what we're trying to do here about streamlining what's a pretty time consuming and resource intensive process I know we're really interested in giving renters more protections and that's part of the motivation for these changes and I hear the frustrations of a lot of residents that we're hoping to address not just from homeowners but from student renters and non-student renters as well we stayed at a goal of these ordinance changes is to build toward a more positive neighborhood culture on the hill and I share the students concern that not having buy-in from the people who are most affected by these issues in terms of living with these issues and

[127:01] being recipients of violations and fines doesn't move us toward that goal of a more positive neighborhood culture and this is why I'm struggling to support these ordinance changes at this stage even though I agree with where we're trying to go with regard to empowering renters simplifying City processes and having a civil citation option the people closest to the problem ought to be closest to the solution and I haven't felt that here renters and especially student renters who are going to be most impacted by these changes haven't gotten we haven't gotten their buy-in for that so I'll be voting no again but I really hope that you all hear my no vote as a not yet I really do appreciate the goals of this work and I think there's still more to do given who is opposing these changes I could definitely get to a guess I just want to make sure we're getting buy-in from the groups who are most impacted by our decisions what I'm hoping is that if this does pass tonight we can maybe get a check in on how this is doing in a year or so I think that's one of the things that people in our

[128:00] community often struggle with is that we make these changes but we don't really follow up to see if they had their intended effects if they had unintended consequences like my colleague councilmember weiner talks about and also just to make sure that we can hear from students on on how some of these changes are impacting renters and also as we move forward in the future I really hope that we can always make sure that we're getting by in from the folks who are most impacted by our decisions I know we're never going to get to consensus but if we can get the people who are closest to the problem to agree that these Solutions are the right ones I think we'll be in a good spot thank you cool I had Rachel and Mangini and Laura okay Lauren first okay Rachel Jeannie I got you um so I just wanted to also thank all of you for the hard work um as someone who worked on the hill revitalization work group for a lot of years I've seen up close that the work

[129:00] that each of you has done Sandra that's where we first met and I was uh yeah happy to know you um already in 2021 so um just want to give some perspective from that background um there's there's been some emails and discussion that we haven't listened to students or didn't include students in this process I want to say that we have been doing that for literally years and I just wanted to read some excerpts from something that we got in 2021 from the try exec student body president who is a multi-year participation or participant in this effort this is just before the hill riots she said as we have discussed many times before the general lack of enforcement not only sets a precedent for poor student Behavior but also frustrates the students who do choose to follow restrictions and general expectations it is impossible to enforce without accountability so while students may be aware of it or not them engaging in this poor Behavior sets an example not only for them around for them and around them but additionally a precedent of

[130:00] non-compliance obviously the hill and the university in general is an attractive party hot spot for students but those Tendencies can be easily checked by better enforcement and accountability when it comes down to it the hill lacks oversight accountability and enforcement well typically this is something students May stray away from I believe it is in all of our best interests to pursue an enhancement not only to improve town and gown relations but improve our quality of life as well all while reducing the possibility of students to face legal repercussions that will affect them far after their University tenure so just want to say that this is what we're doing tonight is really in keeping with the feedback that we have gotten from students for years and you know we could try to reinvent the wheel I think that given that we looked up down and around at so many different options um again with with all the stakeholders around the table I think we would probably end up in the same place and we would spend a lot of time and staff time and take away from other work plan items

[131:01] that I would really like to see us move on to this is not a substantive change this is not a new trash or weeds law it's just basically How We Do notice it's staff efficiency and it's really a reduction in the number of times that police officers will be at an address which is pretty important to me it potentially eliminates points of face-to-face contact by a ticketing officer and it eliminates some judicial discretion whether or not to you know ticket or how much to sentence and I mean no disrespect to anyone when I say this but points of discretion in the criminal justice system are not always a great thing statistically outcomes are subject to bias it is part of why we see black men ticketed arrested convicted and sentenced to longer terms for the same conduct as white men so if we're worried about Equity here these improvements are actually helpful and they will they will reduce discretion and just be really clean ticket amounts and fewer times that people the police department is at an

[132:01] address and and fewer points of of interaction with the police department and the police department can um be working on real crimes rather than spending additional time doing this um so I love it for that reason also um this is semi-related but I am I'm a fan of increasing occupancy so that people can better afford to live here in Boulder that aligns with racial Equity climate crisis responses and happier community members just overall who don't have commutes there are a lot of people including on the hill and and that have interacted in this work group who are really skittish to that idea um and and I reassure them that quality life worries are not falling on deaf ears for me or I think for my colleagues and we are working hard to fix deficits in reporting and enforcement systems um I I pitch that it's not going to be worse to have more neighbors because it's not going to be more noise or trash we want people to be able to live here um and you know I don't mean to sound too like hippy-dippy but we want people to live in peace and Harmony so I want

[133:02] us to welcome and love our neighbors but that also does require us to be good neighbors it's a two-way street um and so what we're talking about here is a a not large number of of renters who are choosing basically not to clean up broken glass and and leave heaps of trash and and things that that really do impact quality life and staff laid out some of the um serious issues like infestations and fire hazards that are attended to that rotting trash piles and noxious weeds and and rats so this is just another path for enforcement and accountability I appreciate the work that's gone into it and I'll be voting yes thanks Rachel Junior and Lauren thank you my hand raised was inadvertent I just want to thank staff and or CD manager for all the work that they've done thank you Lauren

[134:02] in the introduction it was mentioned that these are not primarily affecting students but the areas in the heat map are the hill Martin acres and gross Grove which are all areas and areas of town where we see a lot of students living I hear that they're I hear the issue and the need for a cultural shift but I don't agree that these help create that shift I take issue with the fine escalation and policing how people choose to upkeep their yards in general we have separate regulations for both health and safety regarding site triangles and if this were about flammability we would include requirements around Juniper bushes we could create the requirement for buffer zones around buildings to keep grab grass and shrubs away from structures separately but our current definition of weeds is

[135:01] highly problematic it doesn't include Provisions for Native Landscaping and in general I find our Landscaping odds often at odds with our environment or sorry I find our Landscaping standards at odds with our environmental ideals making these changes continues the dialogue and impression that students should be reported and ticketed and that these issues can be solved with fines we are looking in the future at revisiting the definition of weeds um but for now the the fine rates seem arbitrary and so does all although you've put a very kind spin on it and I think that you know I believe that you're working very hard to do this well the enforcement also seems arbitrary I would support taking a second look at these fines the definition of weeds and figuring out how we can Center a

[136:01] restorative justice and mediation approach but as it as it stands despite what I believe to be a lot of hard work and the best intentions I cannot support these amendments next one Bob and then I'll call it myself it's 2023. it's time for us to decriminalize wheat I'm a yes [Laughter] I've had all the serious stuff to say um well um I'll Echo the thanks uh the to everyone who's been involved I know this has been years of work on this and then the related all the related work that's been going on this Rachel referred to and thanks for your work on that and also to our absent council member colleague Mark for his years on that

[137:00] that group as well uh so appreciate all the work you've done stakeholder engagement and coming up with this this set of proposed changes and I'll just say uh fundamentally I I don't think we want to allow uh out of control uh weeds in in the city and I don't think that enormous piles of trash should be left without any kind of Remedy but having it be uh those be criminal behaviors uh doesn't make sense to me right like right now those are crimes and when um your served a citation you have to go to court to defend yourself and and I don't think that's the right approach for um having too many weeds in your in your yard so I think there's a problem to be addressed but I think addressing it with civil penalties rather than criminal violations is is the right way to go so I think that's fundamentally what we're doing here tonight and I think that's uh absolutely a step in the right direction so um I appreciate the the testimony from uh folks tonight and Chase and Quinn

[138:00] appreciate you being here and representing uh student government and the voices of students that's really important and I appreciate that we took a few minutes to talk this afternoon and that was helpful for me as well and so it thinking through their concerns I think that that split between you know the tenant getting a notice and quite possibly being ultimately responsible for the fine but the property manager being the one who's found responsible and may pay the fine without consulting the tenant I think that's an issue that we need to resolve so I appreciated your answers uh Jen earlier about how there is that notice posted and there is the opportunity to reversify if it's found that in fact it was done in error or their outstanding Financial stances right and I also really liked what you were saying I think it was in response to some Council comments before about increasing the information that's on the notice I think that would be really helpful as well as the standard documentation that we have to to get

[139:00] this all this information in there so that if there is a tenant who gets that notice and is like oh my goodness what's going on here I'm not sure what to do like to tear wouldn't your your daughter had this issue to make sure that they do know what to do if we have all that information if they read through the notice and so that they can prevent the situation where you know they weren't at fault um and but the landlord pays it anyway and then they're stuck with the fine so I think we need to make sure to work on that as we implement this new process to make sure that that's as friendly as possible to the tenants to make sure they're not you know there's no mistreatment in any way because the imbalance that could be present I liked Matt what you're saying about the restorative justice so I I would like to see how we can weave that in to this new process going forward because I I like you say I think that Sandra you said that Center that takes some work right to figure that out but um hopefully we can we can do that and then I would like to clarify about the annual reset of fines because we've heard concerns from pretty much everyone

[140:00] involved with that so personally I would like to see that in the motion that we passed tonight to get that explicit and also make sure that the information about that is on the notices and everything else that's posted so people are fully aware of that with all that said I'm in support and look forward to getting this pass tonight and so I think everybody's had a chance to say something if they wanted to so perhaps someone would like to to make a motion yeah I could so well and then I'd look uh to you all if if we wanted to uh be explicit about the annual resetting in the motion that we do tonight maybe I'd look to you for the recommendation on the best way to do that I can certainly throw some language in but if you want to think give advice yeah I'm happy to do that and and and and I guess if if it's all right I would like to take an opportunity to explain why it's important that it's not in the

[141:00] ordinance and um so I'm going to take a a broad approach here but I I think it's important to explain the reasons why um so this the city of Boulder is a city manager Council form of government as you all know Council has this legislative role in setting City politics policies by enacting laws and ordinances generally speaking those ordinance set forth what we can and can't do the implementation and operational aspects of ensuring compliance with these laws is entrusted to the city manager and all of her departments and staff one of the tools used to provide consistency and procedural aspects of operations is through the adoption of internal policy documents by Department I'm providing this background to explain why it's important not to codify operational procedures in an ordinance one of the most important tenets in ordinance drafting 101 is to be consistent consistent in the use of

[142:02] terms consistent with format and consistent with with form this becomes critically important when it involves interpretation of the code for example if we were to include resetting the fines in August a procedural matter into the ordinance it could call into question why this isn't included in other fine escalation code violations of which there are many other fine escalation code violations run the gamut from parking to alarm permits to dogs off leash to enforcement of drought response measures if procedural requirements are not included in the ordinance does that mean that we can't Implement them do they now need to all be codified for example if parking violations that have fine escalation schedules are silent about warnings does this mean that parking officers can't provide a warning this

[143:00] creates a slippery slope of introducing ambiguity where it isn't warranted and for that reason I have strongly opposed requiring that I think that if the solution is providing folks with that information there are many Avenues in which we can do that without creating ambiguity in our code thank you for the opportunity all right Sandra clearly came prepared for that proposal yes Nicole yeah I just wanted to make a comment about that um I I think I mean it sounds like there are some things that folks are looking for you all to kind of sort out and you know fix after this passes tonight and so I'm just wondering if that can be one of the things maybe that um that you're having a conversation about is you know how how is that information getting out to barha to cusg to the folks who've asked for it in a way that feels transparent and where you know they will know where to go for it or be assured of some way of finding

[144:02] that information or having it brought to them if anything changes in the future because I definitely I hear what you're saying and this feels like a place where some additional conversations with the folks who have concerns may help I can speak to that we can certainly add this not only to our City website for code enforcement for my unit we can add it to every notice and every citation that will be issued we can make sure that we have a public campaign around that as baraha mentioned I did go and speak to them directly about it our city and departmental policies for all departments are available at any time to the public anyone could look up a policy or a question a policy but we're more than happy to memorialize that in every document that we send out on this issue this is the fine reset this is the fine escalation that can be included in any appeal paperwork it can be included in

[145:02] the original notice it can also be included in the citation on the code enforcement website and any Communications to any student or landlord groups we're very forward about that it's some something that has been vital in adjusting the enforcement for the bear ordinance and that's why we want to bring It Forward because it it really takes into consideration that just because somebody is there doesn't mean they were there for the last citation and it does reset a blanket reset in August but let's say you move in in September and you miss that that reset as soon as we become aware of that it's no different than I can't pay it or I'm elderly or something if you say hey I just I just leased this property a week ago we're going to immediately make that adjustment to a first violation so we're always open to that conversation into that's where the discretion is is very important to be able to adapt to those situations whether you move in in

[146:00] August as most of the students do or if you're a regular tenant that's not a student and you moved in in July we can certainly make that accommodation and bring that information forward and all the documentation and website and education materials we'll even put it in our brochure and on a t-shirt see I'm waiting for the tick tock video with all this stuff this is kind of what I'm what I'm waiting for but um no I'm so I'm just I'm wondering if just having that conversation with folks because I mean I I don't I don't know if you know these things sound like they are going to meet the needs that the barhan cusd were asking for but I think having that conversation and asking how can we you know get this information but I'm wondering if that may be something yeah so what what I wonder is thanks for that Nicole is if we could uh have an additional motion after the ordinance passes with uh requests like Council direction to request certain things including the language to be included in

[147:01] all this information would would that not be overstepping our division of uh separation of powers here I think that would be a totally appropriate okay and so because I would like to memorialize it in official action even if but your point taken about the dangers of putting it in the ordinance so the t-shirtbubble.com if we're memorializing after we take action on this ordinance um could I friendly can I make a friendly addition to your request on the language on annual stuff but also with regards to restorative justice so at least those two pieces we can memorialize and if there are others but I just want to see if that's a friendly hat I can do on the back end that was that was my plan again appreciate it so while I got the floor do you all mine if I move forward here so I'll I'll start by making a motion that we adopt ordinance 8557 I won't read all the words second yep okay we've got a motion and a second

[148:01] any further discussion before we move to a vote on that motion okay seeing none um do we do a roll call here yes so we do we'll start that roll call with you mayor Brockett yes council member Focus no friend yes Joseph yes spear no weiner yes Yates yes and Benjamin yes sir ordinance 85-57 is hereby adopted with a vote of six to two much then I will go ahead and make a further motion that we give direction to the city manager and um to include information about the fine schedule and find resetting schedule in

[149:01] all public materials about this ordinance including notices posted about violations of the ordinance and to and to also include work on including restorative justice techniques in as with how we implement this new ordinance it's a little unarthful but yeah I go ahead Rachel I just have a procedural question is this maybe more of a not a five situation because it seems like Overkill is emotion so I'm I'm trying to memorialize here and you only get memorialized in the permanent record if you have commotion but if you tell me I shouldn't do it you turn the mic on um you know I I don't know if I've ever been asked that question before um I think that um that if it's important to the council to

[150:00] make it part of the record in a different way then it's it's whatever the will of the council are you okay with this I'm okay with it I know that we will do it whether it's emotion whether it's a not a five we have an interest in doing this ourselves we have a message from the judge that she is certainly willing and open to figuring out how to collaborate on restorative justice so we are committed to it however it needs to be memorialized it will be memorialized in this recording and in the summary I will note and in the official minutes so whichever action you decide to take whether it be a pole a short hands or a formal motion it'll be memorialized so go ahead Nicole well if you want to finish yeah well that's why I made an emotion was to memorialize it but yeah I just had a couple of requests to add uh one is to make sure to include cusd and barhoff in some of these discussions

[151:00] um especially with regard to um not codifying but documenting the um the resetting in August because that was one thing that I heard from both of them and the other thing is just to potentially have a check-in at some point see happy to do that I meant to mention that as well that we are happy to come back in a year and report back where we are okay okay so there's a motion on the table we don't have to do it this way but we could finish it real quick if somebody wanted to Second it we have a show of hands a second Let's Roll all right just to show of hands all in favor right because that's unanimous all right thanks for working with me to just get that on the record and a little awkward but and just a huge thank you again for all the work and uh the engagement with the community

[152:00] you can I just wanted to address the CU students here in the audience as well as anybody listening in and I just wanted to apologize I read some of the comments that folks put in the B hair Boulder survey I think some of them were really referring to students as sort of being nuisances who aren't really welcome in the community and I'm sorry for that nobody should have to feel like they don't belong in our community so I hope the entire Community can just think about when we're having these discussions and having these disagreements how can we do so in a way that is still respecting the fact that we're all in community together so anyway just just wanted to know that I'm sure it didn't feel good if you read those and I apologize all are welcome including very much our student student neighbors and residents okay well if we could move to our second public hearing please Elisha all right sir thank you our second public hearing

[153:00] is item 5B on tonight's agenda it is the concept plan review and comment for proposed Redevelopment at 2801 J road to include 84 for sale dwelling units ranging from 1050 square feet to 1800 square feet consisting of town home duplex and Triplex housing types the plan proposes 40 percent that is 34 middle income affordable units the percent of affordable housing community benefits will be finalized through annexation reviewed under case number lur 20220038 thank you Alicia uh and to kick us off I believe we're going straight to staff and uh I am going to send this to Shannon as you get yourself organized and set I wish I had more pithy things to say to buy time for you but I don't so I'll just keep talking for a moment there you go

[154:01] we have a lot of jokes going on tonight if you want to throw in another [Laughter] thank you all right good evening Council I'll provide a quick overview of the proposed Redevelopment at 2801 J so if you don't mind introducing yourself first yes I'm Shannon Mohler I'm a member of the planning staff for planning and development services department um so this proposal requires a concept plan review because it exceeds the thresholds in the land use code to

[155:00] require a mandatory concept plan and a site review um so I'll just briefly cover the information in staff's memo including the concept plan and purpose context the proposed Project tonight some key issues and public feedback received so far so the purpose of the concept plan is to review and discuss a development proposal and identify key issues in advance of more detailed submittals so the planning board held a public hearing on this item on December 6th and city council chose to call up the item in January and referred the item to Tab and dab no formal action is being taken on this item tonight it's intended to be a discussion and to provide feedback and guidance to the applicant so next moving to the site and surrounding context this proposal is in unincorporated Boulder County it's Northeast of the intersection of 28th and J and it's immediately east of city

[156:01] limits the site's 4.58 acres and contains the existing City Church Boulder building this property is in area two of the bbcp which is the area now under County jurisdiction that can be considered for annexation the underlying bvcp land use designation is public which reflects the current religious assembly use as the property is currently in unincorporated Boulder County it would require annexation and initial zoning with a City Zoning District the existing property contains the church building and a parking lot the property contains an active prairie dog colony and during prior reviews Neighbors have commented that Wildlife can be seen on the property it's mostly flat with a gentle slope it contains some mature landscaping and trees and has some obstructed views of the foothills the surrounding areas primarily

[157:01] single-family residential low density here you can see some neighborhoods identified nearby the Lubavitch synagogue is just to the South across Jay Road and the Peace Lutheran Church is located to the Southwest here again are some photos of the area to the north you can see rural areas to the north um and then below that is the intersection of 28th and J where the property is located at the bottom of the screen are some examples of types of homes that exist in nearby neighborhoods one of the unique aspects of this site is its context and location right at the edge of the city it's not part of any specific area plan or sub-community plan that would provide guidelines for its development there are a couple of Master plans that are relevant to mention here you can see on the left there's a large Park property owned by the city that's north of this site within the planning Reserve it's planned for future

[158:00] long-term Park needs there's no development plans currently in place for that park space on the right you can see some existing and proposed Transportation connections there are existing on-street bike routes on Jan 36 and a multi-use path is identified on the transportation master plan shown in the green line that's intended to connect up to that Future Park space for some additional historical context in 2015 the planning board considered a concept plan review on this site that consisted of 94 permanently affordable dwelling units in somewhat larger format buildings um at the time the planning board generally agreed with the staff analysis that at that time which was to support a lower density than the 94 units that were proposed then when the 2015 bbcb update was happening the city reviewed a request to amend the comp plan land use designation on the site The Proposal was for mxr mix

[159:01] density residential and City staff had recommended Mr medium density residential that request was ultimately withdrawn so that's why the site is still designated public and then in 2016 an annexation and site review were reviewed by staff but again those items were withdrawn so no decision of an approval or denial was made on those items so now we've talked a little bit about the site in history so we'll move to tonight's proposal this concept plan proposal includes a request to amend the BBC from the current public land use designation to mxr mixed density residential this designation is intended for developments that provide affordable housing and have a variety of housing types and densities that allow up to six to six to twenty units per acre um this proposal would require annexation and initial zoning the applicant has proposed rmx to

[160:01] residential mix 2 this zoning is intended to accommodate a mix of densities through the site review process this zoning can allow for densities of up to 20 units per acre if certain density bonus and site review criteria are met in particular a provision of affordable housing the rmx2 zoning also requires a mix of housing types which this proposal would provide through a mix of town homes duplexes and triplexes the conceptual site plan you see here includes the 84 dwelling units on fee simple Lots the unit sizes range from about a thousand to eighteen hundred square feet and the Lots primarily face onto proposed private streets the dwellings have a compact form with minimal internal setbacks and they have a mix of front and Alley loaded configurations there would be 38 for sale middle income affordable units toward the Eastern edge

[161:00] of the site and the site provides for the planned multi-use path running north south and it would connect to an existing Access Road East of the property in terms of this specific site plan proposal staff provided feedback on several aspects of the design that are included in the memo a few items to note were the non-standard street sections and the proposal to provide private streets which the city is typically not supportive of due to long-term maintenance concerns staff also recommended additional attention to the design and alignment of the multi-use path and the Open Spaces on the site in terms of the overall review processes this proposal would require it would include those listed on the screen including the bvcb land use map change annexation initial zoning and a site review so after tonight's hearing the applicant would take the feedback received and would need to provide those as future applications moving to the key issues for discussion

[162:01] at the planning board hearing in December the board provided feedback on these key issues which I'll go through next on this slide you can see the first two key issues that were discussed which are the land use designation and the zoning so this chart shows a summary of the existing the proposed and what staff had recommended so for key issue one this proposal requests to amend the bvcp land use map designation is currently public and the proposal is mxr mix density residential staff had recommended Mr medium density residential at the planning board hearing the board members were not primarily concerned with whether the property was designated mxr or Mr but were rather mostly concerned with the design of The Proposal in addressing some of the issues such as Transportation quality open space and providing a desirable development under key issue 2 The Proposal would

[163:01] need to have a zoning District established a majority of the board members agreed that the proposed rmx2 zoning District would be appropriate and consistent with the goals of the bbcp in particular because it would support for establishing a range of housing the next key issue that was discussed was regarding compatibility of the plan with the surrounding area staff considered things like the density form and architecture among other items at the planning board hearing a majority of the board members felt the proposal was partially compatible with the surrounding areas and they provided feedback on revising the proposal to improve that compatibility such as providing a more appropriate transition to rural properties and the careful placement of open space and massing and they also discussed that the use of smaller size but higher density numbers of units which has proposed would better meet the city's housing goals rather

[164:01] than moving to fewer larger sized units um the last key issue was just general feedback on the guidelines for review and comment as part of a concept plan so the planning board had provided feedback on several aspects of The Proposal they had General support for the aspirations of the proposal to provide a mix of affordable and modestized market rate housing they provided design feedback on the Open Spaces and the multi-use path and feedback on Transportation concerns such as access Street sections parking and general traffic safety and they also provided General feedback on the design to create a sense of community and address the natural environment and climate concerns lastly to talk a little about public notification and feedback written notice was provided consistent with the land use code and notice was posted on the

[165:00] property the applicant held a virtual neighborhood meeting on November 9th and the planning board held its public hearing on December 6th many written comments were received and are included in council's packet at the planning board hearing six members of the community spoke in support of The Proposal in particular with regards to the affordable housing 12 community members spoken opposition including expressing concerns specifically about traffic such as access cyclist and pedestrian safety and existing conditions at the intersection of 28th and J there is also opposition to the proposed density and concerns about the compatibility of The Proposal with the surrounding area so that concludes the staff presentation the applicant is here virtually and has a presentation prepared as well great well how about we ask staff questions first and then we can hear from the applicant and ask the applicant any questions we have after their presentation so questions for staff

[166:03] except I'm not seeing any oh there we go Rachel I maybe just have one general question about the um Tab and dab referral and timeline you know this is it's not something we that is often done or has been often done before so it has to be done when we call up for concept but then we don't have the feedback in time for this concept so I just want to understand the timeline for future knowledge not not necessarily this one it seems like yeah um because the concept plans that we get and the level of information we receive is pretty preliminary we typically find that it's best for it to go to Tab and dab during the site review process because then we have a really specific level of information for them to give us like specific feedback on the final design that's that's coming forward at that time so that would be our typical recommendation is to get into the site review process and get that feedback at that time and is that sufficient like some of the times what we're looking at is like Transportation connections and

[167:01] so that's not too late if it's at site review already for like that seems maybe theoretically conceptual some of that yeah I think the at the site review that's when we kind of have that the the numbers and the level of knowledge of specifically about things like traffic studies and things like that that would be really helpful to for us to have enough information for them to really give us helpful feedback then okay thanks well thanks Shannon I guess we'll go to the applicant presentation we could please um could I make a request that I have a screen sharing enabled please great Emily is that something you can do right okay may have it already

[168:00] give it a try it should be ready now right now yep there we go you see that it's on Zoom but it's not in there we go yep we got it great thank you good evening mayor and members of council my name is Margaret freund and I'm the developer and applicant for this project I own and live in a house in Newlands here in Boulder and I develop in Richmond Virginia where I also have a home we recently completed a project in Virginia that is mixed income and includes new construction and the restoration of a former School in that project residents ranging in income levels from 40 Ami to 150 Ami live together alongside creative offices art studios a Market Cafe and a ceramic Studio I truly believe in the overarching benefits of mixed income communities at 2801 J Road There's an opportunity to achieve some of the city's most pressing

[169:00] housing goals in 2016 I submitted a plan for smaller rental apartments at this site that were less suitable for families I pulled this application as the requirement of 70 permanently affordable housing made the development unfeasible over the last three years I've had many discussions with the city's inclusionary housing staff and other city leaders to try and find a way to bring a viable project forward I heard repeatedly that for sale middle income homes suitable for families is the housing type that is most desperately needed in Boulder as a result we created a plan that would work from a development perspective and bring Community benefit to Boulder by providing as much for sale middle income family housing as possible as we understand from housing staff the proposed 34 permanently middle-income for sale units is greater than the total for sale permanently income units in the city we have been in discussions with Flatirons Habitat for Humanity to build the middle income housing on site and you have an email of support from them

[170:00] here's a modified plan responding to planning board's comment on the need for more open space it reduces the density by four units resulting in a loss of two middle income units and doubles the open space at the center of the community note there is a 200 acre Park 900 feet directly to the north in the comprehensive plan the modified plan also shows the addition of a right turn lane at the site exit slightly reducing parking the good news is that an updated traffic study done in January of this year showed traffic at the 28th and J intersection has decreased since our required traffic study in 2016. airplane envision's middle income and market rate home homeowners living in a cohesive community the planning staff has suggested lower density this is no surprise as density is often viewed as the enemy of good neighborhoods in fact lowering density has the greatest negative impact on affordability and we believe affordability is compatible with good neighborhoods we understand that the for

[171:01] sale component of this proposed development will be a covenant in the annexation agreement there are ways to increase the success of middle-income homeowners by reducing monthly fees that are available due to the annexation and we're happy to discuss this further or answer questions the streets must remain private to preserve the density and we would like to use easements for right-of-ways and other areas that have shared public-private use rather than dedications for the same reason this site is well suited to getting as much middle income housing as possible it's bordered by a highway and a main road on two sides and while there is rural land to the north and east this land is the future solution to the affordable housing options Boulder seeks here we present a plan that maximizes the middle income housing while integrating the market rate housing to make a successful mixed income community the market rate homes are smaller due to the higher density and while not affordable they are more accessible than homes twice the size

[172:01] the middle incoming Market homes will create a community that reads as one where there's not much difference in the home sizes and the type of families that live here you can see the benefits of what we seek in the holiday neighborhood nearby the holiday site was annexed is rmx2 zoning mxr land use at 20 units per acre and was adjacent to rural land planning board and staff support rmx2 zoning and planning board was agnostic on the land use they agreed that something between 66 and 84 units was appropriate however the land use must be mxr to achieve more than 66 unions reducing density results in both fewer middle-income homes and larger market rate homes not only does it take many of the middle income units away but it forces a greater divide in the type of homes and families that will be a part of one community if you reduce the density the impact on massing and the experience of the neighborhood for those living nearby or passing by will be minimal the impact on

[173:01] the quality of the community and those who live there will be great I know you will carefully consider this opportunity to make such a significant amount of much needed middle-income housing a reality our architect Dan rottner will now walk through the proposed plan and we really look forward to your comments great thank you Margaret and thank you City Council Members I'll just give a quick summary of the unit breakdown for the project the uh we have two uh two elements of the market rate component uh two-story units around the perimeter of the project facing the uh the north and west two and a half story taller units that face the the right-of-way at Jay Road and 28th Street and also at the uh at the internal streets on the west side of the project the middle income housing component is the blue red and dark gray

[174:00] and beige that you see on the uh on the what easterly portion of the project I would like to point out that this project does include two one and a half Storey units where the main level is designed to be van accessible uh unit so we're trying to provide an option a variety of different housing is in this project this is a quick overview of the overall diagram of the circulation open space and parking elements of the Project Blue of course is vehicular circulation 28th Street J Road at the South and West and then this is the existing right-of-way easement at the East side of the property that provides primary access and of course we have an internal Loop and a variety of internal Street fronts and drive aisles accessing units orange is our multi-use path connection that's envisioned in the transportation master plan that connects to the Future Park

[175:01] use that's defined in the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan red is our parking which we've tried to configure the maximum set possible as an on-stream parking surface parking there are also garages within the units that are in Illustrated on this talk about uh really our goal was to create a unique sense of community and uh and through a neighborhood of single-family attached dwellings really to not be multi-family buildings but individual units within the property the neighborhoods focused on owner occupied middle-income housing not found elsewhere in Boulder we really have a purposeful integration of incomes and family structures as Margaret discussed in her intro we've included flexible unit planning to allow for home occupations and or multi-generational housing particularly in the two and a half and three Storey units where there's options for potential home office space and so forth at the

[176:00] grade level we've worked hard to provide as much for sale middle income family housing as we could on site and create a unified community in this project the other topic that's important for our project is open space preservation and really there are a couple of pieces to this you know the project strives for a higher utilization of open space surrounding the city both in the intent to utilize Open Spaces Annex into the city to meet the cities middle income housing needs and also at the same time make the best use of open space that is incorporated within the new neighborhood one good example is the Central Open Spaces that are to find the plan which are really used as a tool to help unify the middle income and market rate components of the neighborhood uh this is actually a precedent example that we refer to this is actually in California um it's and just want to make note of the mix of two and three story forms in this open space example um the other uh strategy we've employed

[177:02] is using some of the perimeter spaces uh abutting right of way at the west and south uh boundaries of the property we've tried hard to integrate water quality and storm water management features of the project into quality open space and the strategy that we've seen used successfully in the past this is actually example in Boulder this is the Rosewood neighborhood in North Boulder and you can see this is a detention Pond but it really doesn't feel like a piece of simple engineering it it provides a quality Gathering space for the neighborhood uh the other strategy we've used dependent upon the different conditions surrounding the site is at the west and north frontages where we have private yard buffer to the adjacent property this is a good example of how we envision this space working and really providing some Quality Private spaces to really help not only buffer the surrounding neighborhood to the project

[178:01] but also allow people to take advantage of the more a residents take advantage of the more oral conditions for the project you know there's a one of the key elements uh to the project and you know we see is very important to creating a great neighborhood as individual unit identity of the street um and where we haven't been able to front units on the street we've fronted units on on our perimeter open space where it abuts the right-of-way this is actually a good impressive example of a similar approach where we've got these uh obviously very much individual homes and not one big building with multiple units one of the challenges that was identified at the perimeter and this is a new staff comment we agree it's a challenge is parking access from the street it really is a key element for cell utilization to limit the amount of paved area within the property the alternative we've explored is the cover ground level areas that are

[179:00] suitable for parking Gathering playing tinkering they have a multiple potential uses and here's a few precedent images for how we envision these spaces being ultimately utilized so they could be parking it could be outdoor use area or a mix of uses in these in these spaces at the perimeter of the project another strategy that we've employed in the design are these uh the narrow one-way streets with uh parking on both sides of the street uh rather than a parking lot we created a street where the the individual homes front on uh they have the each their unique address and place in the community and uh again this is something that's been done in Boulder this is Yarmouth way uh Jason to the holiday neighborhood and this is a relatively constrained site and we developed all right a this is actually a program development developed this uh

[180:01] Narrow Street with parking but yet you can see it does not feel like an alley internally uh it again provides a Quality Furniture um you know really the one of the key things and just driving this point home again I'd hate to repeat the point but it is important the density really does allow us to uh um provide a cohesive neighborhood at a lower density in order to achieve feasibility for the project the market rate units need to get larger you have fewer middle income units and they tend to be smaller it just creates a more Stark divide within the neighborhood and kind of erodes some of the principles that we see employed so successfully the remodeling everybody and you know we really feel like the intent the intent of our proposal our proposed approach really does realize the intention of the density bonus in rmx too and provides that unified mix that we're striving for and really you know while we can't solve all the

[181:00] problems in Boulder with one project we do have an opportunity in this case with unique circumstances of the project and uh and this location uh to uh to do the right thing uh with this opportunity so Morgan I don't know if you have anything to add at this point um I just wanted to thank city council for your time considering the merits of this project I know it's your time is very valuable and uh and I know this is it always takes a lot out of everybody to look at the stuff um Margaret and I along with our transportation consultant Chris mcgranahan are available in the meeting if you have any questions thank you great well thanks so much Daniel and Margaret appreciate that presentation the additional information any questions for the applicant Tara I want to get up and point to one of the slides but I don't know that you can see me if I do that I'm not sure

[182:00] which slide would you like me to go back to your last one does that help this one no this one but you're going too fast sorry it's probably lagging um not that one not that one nope nope nope keep going try what was on the slide it was a map not that with the other map okay right there okay do you see where there's the blue and the orange houses on that street and in the middle it says one-way private Street did you see my arrow my cursor Arrow okay well yes we see it okay that's not what you're referring to yeah far so I see these two like these three light green areas do you see them

[183:00] um they're blocks are they representative of Park open space like Community um Community areas correct that's the in the in the plan that was submitted for concept that's what we Illustrated them in the plan yeah well I love that because I think that these kind of neighborhoods really do well with Community grass space and I had a Community member that gave a great idea that I wanted to share maybe this is the right time and I'm wondering is this a question or is it not okay feasible there you go question I like it it's Is it feasible for you to do the you know how in the holiday neighborhood they have a really large uh Green Space it's almost it almost looks like in Europe in England you know they have those giant green spaces is it possible for you to go across the street and possibly bring that green park across that one-way private Street I don't think you're gonna lose many if

[184:02] any parking spaces if you do that that's I would say that's something that's worth looking at to narrow the street at that uh at that intersection of the circulation spine and the park I mean technically you could just have the one-way stop right at the one side of the park and then at the other side of the park but we could talk about some other type that's some other time I was just throwing that out there if there was a way to make that green space bigger you know sorry go ahead that's it that's all I have to say the answer is yes so great thanks for that and we can get back to that in our comments that's great great question uh Lauren um one of the things I've noticed is that it there definitely are some units here right that have the garage

[185:00] pretty prominently facing a main street or you know you started to touch on that with you know looking at different ways you could have a park under space instead of a garage um between that and sorry the number of streets that I see for circulation because in a lot of cases you're also adding sort of additional Alleyways to allow the garages to not be facing main streets I was just wondering if you looked at any alternative parking circulation strategies that might have allowed you to have less overall streetscape or less overall automobiles focused streets or um have fewer garages facing

[186:01] Street areas or sorry have that didn't really make sense let's just go with the circulation for the streets are there any options that you looked at to reduce that so it's always a little bit of a challenge with these you know we've done a bunch of these townhome subdivisions over the years and the perimeter of the project is always a challenge right because what happens is that to minimize the number of streets you want to make sure your streets have units on both sides running on the street I mean if you have a street that's only serving one side or even an alley that's uh that's inherently inefficient so when we get to the edge of these projects especially a relatively small subdivision where it ends up being a large proportion of a project you end up having to tackle with you can make a choice we you know one of the things that we looked at is like oh you could run an alley down the perimeter of the project

[187:00] but the uh you lose a lot in that if you think about the opportunities for private backyard spaces for all of these residences around the perimeter and also the adjacency to the surrounding community um it's uh it's it's a pretty little bit of a harsh trade-off so the the and and the other thing is is that everybody the street and Alley scenario has an element to it where it creates more street because if your front if you have garage doors fronting a street well you don't have an alley um you know the I think the trade-off is is that you don't need driveways to access your front entered garages in one scenario but I think this balance um and finding the really creative way of using the perimeter I think it's it's the way of getting maximizing the number of units that have that on on Street identity with alcohol from which so all of these units

[188:00] which front on there the internal Straits throughout the project and where we do have garages front uh aligning new streets here these units do have individual unit identity on the adjacent right-of-way on Jay Road and 28th Street so it's we realize it's never perfect but I think that um the strategies that we are working to uh to perfect here uh with your input allow us to kind of balance that equation of uh of streets and alleys and then well we will put uh we'll we'll come up with a creative solution for street fighting part Street fronting parking where we have uh where it's the best approach available from the site utilization thank you right um not seeing any other questions we can go to the public hearing we've got 13 people sign up a few in

[189:02] person and most virtual each person will get three minutes to speak hopefully you heard our guidelines on public participation earlier Rachel no thank you uh well I guess at nine o'clock we we do need to check in but we have one agenda item we're in the middle of so I'll just have to get through it but be mindful all the time okay so everybody gets three minutes to speak our first speaker is Byron Hewitt in person and then Robin cubey who is pooling time with two others who'll get five minutes and then Pauline Hewitt I'd like to let you know I appreciate all that you guys do I'm really impressed listen all this these proceedings tonight if you can get into the microphone please I will do my best to speak into the mic thank you so I have a number of concerns about this development this I I sent an email about this is putting five pounds in a three pound bag okay you're talking about way

[190:01] too many units way too little open space the the issue with getting cars in and out not enough parking um you know just all kinds of issues it's not eco-friendly okay so it doesn't mean what we're trying to do here in Boulder County about being green it's not green it's a car Centric development it's also one where it's an island it's surrounded on to its North into its East by open space okay people own that land it's private land so they are a community unto themselves they are an island the traffic issues there are Monumental I can tell you I feel for the caros that live down that road that they want to take to use for Access there they are be completely screwed okay getting in and out of that thing is going to be impossible so this really needs serious study there's also issues with groundwater Neighbors in the area have wells that are only 10 feet deep so if you start Excavating that you mess up the aquifer which could be really easy to do all those people that live around

[191:00] there can be screwed in terms of their water so we've talked about parking we've talked about the open space issue there's a height issue there's nothing near there that is 35 feet high nothing everything is one and two story so not a big fan of having My Views to the West diminished trying to look over top of three stores instead of two and then also I mentioned the Ingress and egress issue also I think she's talked about having Habitat for Humanity do the work that's great have they agreed to it is there a contract in place can they afford it how long will it take are they going to do their stuff their development in parallel with her development or is there is going to be later in other words it may never happen so what can we do to ensure that whatever happens there is done correctly not opposed to development just don't want 84 units on that corner I bike that corner all the time it is dangerous as hell so I would encourage everybody to look at the traffic aspect of this very carefully and

[192:00] um the fire department should look at it as well because with this now alley that they're talking about in there how do you get a fire truck in there to put out the fire and after the Marshall fire I'm nervous about this stuff how do you get 84 units people out of there if there's a fire they can't get out it's just not possible so there are a number of issues here that need to be looked at I hope you will take them seriously and like I said not opposed to development on the corner but 84 units is too many it's just way too many completely out of keeping with the community thank you thank you Byron have Robin QB with for five minutes and I understand your two poolers are present virtually okay so my name is Robin cubey I am speaking on behalf of myself and my two neighbors Paul strupp and Peggy Brule who are um as Mr brockachison said are intending virtually I'm a long time Boulder real estate and land use attorney and I've lived near Jay Road and 28th Street for

[193:01] almost 35 years and I've ridden my bike regularly along J Road for all that time my significant interest in this development has to do with the increased density but not the density per se but the impact that density will have on the traffic on J Road and um especially the intersection at 28th Street as the prior speaker noted I got involved in the original application on this because of my interest in the safety and density issues back at that time in 2015 the applicant was just under contract to purchase the property and she submitted a plan for a mixed-use development which included a coffee shop a daycare originally the 90 plus units that ultimately got dropped down to 66 affordable units with 121 parking spaces those units the affordable ones were intended to satisfy the applicants the inclusionary housing obligations for a companion project she

[194:02] had at IRS and Broadway in the earlier process planning board and staff raised significant concerns regarding the Project's density its incompatibility with the neighborhood the significant adverse impact it would have on what was then an overly burdened dangerous and generally neglected intersection at JN 28th Street the lack of imagination in the proposed design and layout of what would effectively be a Gateway project for the city and the failure to incorporate renewable energy attributes as noted before the applicant then withdrew the application in the intervening years the applicant has purchased the property at 28th and J the traffic I guess in my anecdotal observations conflict with whatever traffic information she has but that intersection has only had more traffic and has become more dangerous and congested and you need to do almost every weekend there's a new Pile in the street of debris from car crashes and as

[195:02] a cyclist it's scarier than anything the green air or the green striping is help but now the cars just race in front of you to try and get by um the new project she's offering has either 84 or 82 units um that are going to be for sale only 30 some out of which may be affordable and that's less than half of what she was proposing the last time around and the um Market units will be sold for expect to sell for a million dollars plus a piece this increased density makes the plan even less compatible with the neighborhood than the earlier one and as I noted before will only serve to increase traffic in that regard the parking has been increased by 45 percent which again will just trap add traffic to J and 28th and the plan that she's offering today does not address the concerns that the earlier staff comments

[196:02] were that she needed to that the intersection of J and 28th needed to be improved with a left turn only lane a straight through Lane and the existing right turn lane and unfortunately I'm sure that she's that is not addressed at all in her new plan rather the sole effort to address the Jay Road issues is the offer of a write-in right out access to the property and I have a slide up there that shows the property in yellow with this access road to the right or on the east side of the property and that access road is over private property I think Matthew Carrow will talk about this later but more importantly the whole east side of this property has Frontage that will remain accessible to County controlled J Road so how the city can impose certain in and out or whatever kind of striping or

[197:00] whatever would be needed on County property is a question to me and the design can you show the second slide please the design of the property anticipates that the entirety of that road will be used as part of this project even though that is not part of the applicant's property it's not part of the annexation and like I said I believe Dr Carew will testify that he's not been consulted about whether he wants to allow this access over the road on his property so um in short at this point I think the applicant needs to be sent a message that she has to deal with the traffic issues that the density may be one part but this traffic is really a big problem thank you thank you thank you Robin Paulina Hewitt and Daniel banjo

[198:02] about this development can you speak into the mic please oh sorry I'd like to start by saying I'm not anti-development and I do believe that we need to have more housing that is Affordable for Middle income however six years ago Fulton Hill properties present an almost identical concept to the city at this very location for 94 units the feedback given at that time was that no more than 66 units could be considered six years later the developers only deleted 10 units and now that they want to raise them three stories high versus two stories high in 2017 the property was owned by the pastor of The Seventh-Day Adventist Church davalba has since purchased the brand with full confidence that she can influence the City by giving her multiple except in fluency to giving her multiple exceptions if the carrot of affordable housing is offered I'm concerned about the density of this

[199:01] proposed on what it already is already a very complex intersection first let's address the safety issues Jay Road is the most biked Road in Boulder there are a number of annual biking and Triathlon events that use this route because of the proximity to the reservoir as a result there are no there are numerous recreational cyclists athletes as well as regular commuters that use this stretch daily sadly it is all it also has a history of several deaths caused by vehicular impact both pedestrians as well as bikers the proposed site is at the intersection of two very busy two-lane roads J and 28th Street there's also a bus stop that blocks traffic and cyclists in the right turn lane at the intersection um on the east side of the property there's a small private dirt road that is

[200:01] maintained by the neighbors who live along there the combination of these factors create a huge safety liability during rush hour when the traffic turning in and out of this small access road is increased a minimum of 20-fold Jay road is not a walking Road there are no pedestrian sidewalks and no warning lights at The Pedestrian Crossings there is no easy walkable access to shopping parts or schools public transport is very limited this will be basically a vehicle heavy Community with no street parking allowed on G and 28. let's talk about the environmental impact majority of Green Space proposed borders that green space proposed borders J and 28th there was a mansion that you loved the green space that green space is on two busy roads and most of that is Eastman anyway um where will children play

[201:01] is there space for community recreation sorry all right sorry I'll bite all the rest of my stuff please do thank you Paulina uh last in-person speaker Daniel banjo good evening uh my name is Dan banjo I'm a resident at 2807 J Road I've resided in Boulder since 2007 I moved here because I'm a cyclist um I am the guy that maintains the private dirt road with a 39 horsepower tractor we live on Seven Acres I have sent a a list of detailed concerns to the council via email I'm not going to rehash those some of those were brought up by um others before me um I should note that we do not oppose Redevelopment of this property nor do we oppose the city's desire and need for affordable and middle-income housing

[202:00] what we're looking at here though is a round Peg and a square hole you've already heard all the compromises that the developers had to make to try to make this happen private streets three stories questionable parking Etc um that's just kind of smelling like it's not the right time or the right fit especially given the fact that the 2025 planning Reserve phase 3 plan is coming before us that has hundreds of acres under consideration for development so if you want to put these type of properties you have acres and acres to do it right during the um the planning boards review Mark who I think sits on it who is a traffic engineer I believe said that the city owns the rights to that intersection so if they really wanted to put a piece of property there that had to exit 300 cars then you didn't put a traffic circle there or something that could

[203:01] safely um accommodate those many people that many people and in fact the day that the planning uh board heard this application there was a pedestrian hit on J root there's been multiple cyclists killed on Jay road so we can't just Jam this there and not expect that there's going to be unintended negative consequences if we don't think about doing it right so our desire isn't to have this to be a not my backyard situation we're looking at this as our property included being part of the planning Reserve review in the coming years which has already started I believe they've already started the the utility study for that area so trying to Railroad this through in the last minute knowing that you can do it right and consider all aspects of safety and Community involvement is is just

[204:00] negligent so we would simply ask that you guys wait and acknowledge their desire to do this and make it happen with the whole comprehensive plan thank you thank you Dan we're going to move to our virtual presenters and speakers our first three are Lynn Siegel Matthew Crowe and Melissa Penn well it seems like you could do the same thing on this place as 22nd and pearl it's like a bedroom community and like 22nd and pearl but there could still be a real conversion from Cars there could be like a few cars that this community has to use for big trips or large trips why should it be any different than the place on 22 Pearl um that's in the center of town um but first of all I say you should not

[205:01] be developing either of these any of these not the Millennium not the olive not the CU South none of this stuff until there is a jobs housing balance we don't have it the and the Boulder Valley comp plan I think incorporates job housing balance and infill based on that but not just infill because the more jobs the more housing the more housing the more services the more services the more demand for housing and it's a cycle of Despair and this is just too much growth my dad moved to Boulder to get away from New York City not to come to New York City so why are we developing this way why are these kind people that are devising these developments allowed to until we

[206:02] have a jobs housing balance it's very simple otherwise this is just growth for the sake of growth until the whole thing collapses because growth doesn't just pay for itself you have to consider all the infrastructure it's like Rock Creek built years ago you know they just stuck it there and then they found out all the all the things that you have to do that the the place needs this place doesn't have any services but it's going to demand plenty another 100 units for something loaded onto the city of Boulder um I don't know what can you say it's a lot of work and why we shouldn't be allowing people to waste their times this way we should have jobs housing balance and then planned growth

[207:02] properly carefully planned growth it's not that we don't want anyone else to live here it's that we want to know how much specifically we want to grow before this just endless stuff continues and before CU takes over the whole place because now they're down on the flats at the millennium this is just expansive thank you Lynn next we have Matthew Carrow Melissa Penn and Tucker Brock hi can you hear me yes okay my name is Matthew carrot my wife and I moved to Boulder in 2000 we lived in the city we started family we moved out to 2825 Jay Road since 2006. we moved here for the rural Field open space and a proximity to the city the developer brought essentially the same

[208:01] proposal in 2015 and 2016. there were significant problems with the proposal then and those issues have not changed there have been no real alterations in a proposed in relation to the issues brought up back in 2015 and 2016. this property borders Area 3 land that is privately owned we do expect there'll be development in this area this should be done in a comprehensive fashion so that Land north of U.S 36 is not a hodgepodge of poorly designed developments even plan bouldering their letter dated December 6 2022 recommends this development be part of the bvcp in 2025 so the site can be integrated into the vision for the area maybe the question that was asked by the city planning board should not be about density about land use chain from public to residential currently a church is on this property and clearly serves a very important public service members of the planning board had reservations about this project such as not adhering to the Boulder Valley comp plan being a major land use change and moving ahead needs to be in the right way and they come in this was essentially a gated community that did not interact with this

[209:01] surrounding neighborhood and required cars to get back and forth other members were only concerned with housing and stated since they're behind the curve and housing they need to catch up annexation is the discretionary act by the city and annexation should not be taken lightly and should get formed to the Boulder Valley comp plan quoting the bbcp 1.17 D annexation of existing substantially developed areas will be offered in a manner and on terms and conditions that respect existing lifestyle and densities this proposal doesn't either this proposed development also goes against almost all of the BCC goals except for housing you can look on pages 307-309 of the packet with the conflicts with bug Valley comprehensive plan this proposed development also goes against Vision zero goals for Boulder the intersection of J and 28th is very dangerous adding over 450 automobile trips from the development will exacerbate an already dangerous Corner in summary I feel this is not appropriate use of this site is it the wrong density wrong place wrong time current infrastructure is not sufficient to support the prose density the site plan does not integrate with any

[210:01] surrounding public or private property I believe rezoning this site will have a negative impact in the surrounding community and the adjacent Area 3 planning reserve it does not conform with many policies to build Raleigh comp plan this is not an enclave with the city and annexation is not akin to infill development in the city annexation of this site should be coordinated with a larger Boulder Valley comp plan three planning Reserve as a site is in a unique location surrounded by Area 3 on the Northern edge of the city it's a time to discuss annexation of this property and change Amy land use own is when the bbcp is updated to include era 3 planning reserve and land surrounding this site as I've been mentioned before the current plan calls for use of our private property for Ingress and egress to this site we will not allow our use of our private property for this development I appreciate your time thank you for allowing me to talk thank you Matthew I understand the next two speakers are not present Melissa pen and Tucker Brock so we're going to go to Wiley Hodgson Ernie Anderson and then making Coles

[211:00] uh good evening can you hear me okay yes hi well my name is Wiley podgson our family lives at 2823j Road we went through this process with the sand developer regarding the same parcel and regarding a similarly proposed development back in 2016 little if anything has changed with staff's analysis and recommendations since then and that the proposed density of the development does not conform to the surrounding area as this is the time to provide feedback to the developer I do hope that the council will heed the prior and current status analysis and signal to the developer that the requested mxr land use and the open zoning to rmx2 is not appropriate for this site maximizing allowable far to increase the return to the developer and her investors is not reason to Annex Land from the county and then the process destroy an existing neighborhood and Community Gathering site that's currently provided by City Church now it's been noted by some of the other speakers this parcel is a very unique location 2801 J Road sits in area 2 but is

[212:01] surrounded on three sides by privately held land all within the planning Reserve during the prior application process in 2016 we learned that this parcel despite being surrounded by the planning Reserve was designated as area 2 only due to its destination as a public land use so therefore reassigning any land use or zoning first needs to consider the impacts on the planning Reserve as this person most likely would have been part of the reserve it had not been for the public designation and so at the timing here is actually pretty perfect the city's signaled that it is going to move forward with a Services study as a first step opening up the planning Reserve in the upcoming Boulder Valley comp plan updates and now from a planning perspective it doesn't really seem to make sense to push approval of this proposed development just prior to the start of that comp plan update doing so well at a minimum end up with a poorly planned housing project that creates traffic and safety issues and lacks Conformity over the surrounding area but worst case is you've now set the precedent for what the planning Reserve is going to become and in doing so you risk subverting the

[213:01] entire comp plan process instead the city should take a forward-looking strategy to this proposed development by incorporating it to the broader planning process for the planning reserve and allowing the community to weigh in through the Boulder Valley comp plan update to help shape a development that supports the affordable housing goal without jeopardizing and detracting from equally urgent needs that include safety transportation and above all climate thanks for your time thanks Wiley and Ernie Anderson then making calls here we go can you hear me yes all right um don't create a traffic nightmare here that the sake of trying to create more affordable housing let's not put the residence in a torturous situation causing more frustration and road rage

[214:03] we would hope city council and City folder planning department would have the wisdom to really look into the major traffic nightmare this would have with the entrance so extremely close to the intersection this needs to be looked at Hands-On eyes on during heavy traffic rush hours while thinking of even just adding 60 plus more Vehicles trying to enter or exit this area say what you will traffic will only increase in time we've seen it with this entrance so close to the intersection this would not even be a good location for a low density development at times it's hard enough for us living in the area to get on and off of the road off on or off of Jay Road let alone

[215:00] another 60 to 100 plus more Vehicles trying to do that a direction-controlled entrance exit such as right in right out is not practical in a location with few other roads or streets in the area this proposed density is extremely not compatible with the surrounding area don't create a traffic nightmare there's enough road rage thank you thank you Ernie our last speaker for the evening is Mick and Coles foreign Council Megan Coles at 17th in Mapleton I'm so happy about the questions that I heard from Tara and Lauren about this

[216:00] project at the beginning because that's exactly the type of thinking that you should bring to a project on concept review and it's really nice to see that this development is giving us what we want what we have said we want 84 for sale units of which 34 are permanently affordable for sale middle income units we say we want these and that we want permanently affordable units as part of the development a part of new developments well here it is what the developer needs to hear from the council is that you will support this density with a zoning of rmx2 if the developer brings back a well-executed plan on site review the planning board failed to wholeheartedly endorse this plan because of the complaints from adjacent Neighbors about the things that adjacent wealthy homeowners always complain about in opposition to housing the height the

[217:02] density the traffic the parking the compatibility with the neighborhood here is a quote from what one of them said at the planning board hearing but which really deserves to be called to refrain because we hear it in every project proposing significant affordable housing quote a great project but not here you should not have to do this counsel to call up every concept review because planning board's three longest serving members object to any density that is not the same as adjacent Neighbors and yet that's what you have had to do here just as you did on water view on diagonal Plaza with Celestial Seasonings and with papillio in this case the complaining neighbors are not residents within the city those in single-family houses in the city on

[218:01] the west side of 28th Street are not here complaining the complaining neighbors are County residents whose nearest house is more than a city block from this site we have a very tight Urban growth founder in Boulder and good for us this project is within the urban growth boundary of our city in area two that we have been expecting to Annex into the city for 50 within the next 15 years and it's been about 40 since this has been an area too we cannot allow the rural residents of the county to think that compatibility with rural Lots is going to limit our meeting housing needs of Boulder in the planning Reserve so let's start practicing that here by standing up for these 84 new homes thank you for your time thanks Macon so close the public hearing and bring

[219:00] back to council maybe first with any follow-up questions I've got one Rachel man I have two I'm just gonna return to one of my earlier questions about the referral to tab we heard so much tonight about cyclist safety and um kind of a car-centric development being on an island is this not maybe one that is worth going to tab twice for like at the concept so that we can maybe get some stuff earlier if if relevant is one question and then the second is um way off topic here but I was just looking at the map and it occurred to me um I I'm not a big gun person we'll probably surprise no one but this is um very it's about a mile away from the rifle range I just want to know is that well you hear gunshots at that distance and and would we should the applicant consider maybe some noise mitigation measures as part of this project if so I maybe I'll turn to my colleague Matt

[220:00] Benjamin is that can you hear gunshots from a mile away so I mean I think there's right now it's it's a there's nothing else built between the rifle range and where this would be going so just in in out of what's up sorry it's fine no uh not much between so um I I don't think that we would want to uh you know set people up for a lot of noise pollution if it were preventable and I don't know if it is looks like maybe Brad can answer so I don't know who can answer the tab referral Brad you're you came closer on that gun thing so I'm gonna give that one to you uh hi Brad Mueller director of Planning Development Services uh I am not an expert on gun noise but uh we can certainly bring that to the attention of the developer and that really does get into the final stages of design and that type of thing and then your first question if I just follow the the wins are different but I live closer

[221:01] to the Rifle Club than this development you do not actually hear the the gunshots from that you do from the um the skeet shooting at the American Legion but not from the gun club at least in my location but not doesn't mean we shouldn't look at it well and I don't know again if there's nothing but there's nothing but the the Gateway that's between them I don't know how much that yeah that absorbs I don't know just to respond unless you wanted to untap or if we can take we can take terms on that one um I think one of the things we recognize is to have that very quickly wants to know details about volume and geometry and other things that come with this traffic study and we don't have that at this point uh the the actual entryway is fairly limited just by the nature of the the site and the existing Road Network we certainly can go back to them at this stage and we will consult of course and have been with transportation and Transit and

[222:00] other in our own transportation experts but but certainly look at that that makes sense could we maybe just ask them would you like to look at this as already you know is it yeah would it be attractive to you as tab to weigh in twice maybe I'll say no and I would just double check I mean we we haven't gone to tab on this is what I understand yeah okay yeah we can do that right Brad oh did I work those squats sorry you could have moved to the back of the room and wouldn't have called anybody you moved forward so you knew it was going to happen it's all good um um so it's really kind of a follow-up with with Rachel a little bit and then I have a separate question of it seems like they're I'm hearing that there might be some conflict or reconciliation with regards to the development requiring private property access for Ingress or egress and I'm just trying to wonder what where where's the truth in that I don't know but but that seems like a very obvious conflict if that's

[223:00] indeed true so I just want to get some clarity on what that is and how that is or is it impacting uh the plans on this yeah honestly I made a note for myself about that too do we do we know why in maybe the developer Shannon can can explain the assertion that private roads are necessary for what I'm guessing are the street standards in this case or a revised Street standard possibly yeah I think I think at this time um you know the questions that are being raised are a question of legal access um and so we would need to review that you know carefully at the time of site review um I would say that typically when we're looking at projects that are in the county and are being proposed to be annexed a lot of times those do have questions of legal access that we need to look carefully at when it when it comes in for annexation and site review so that would most likely be the time when we'd be able to really go through those documents and determine that

[224:01] I I appreciate that I just wonder that at site review we might that that might force a completely different concept and so I wonder if there's some understanding of that before we get to that stage so we have some sense of what our expectations are going in based on what we're looking at from concept to get to site and if something like that becomes a non-starter or fundamentally changes the project that becomes something that I think maybe we would like to know at an earlier stage so we know what we're kind of getting ourselves into more or less yeah good feedback and we appreciate that my second question um has to kind of do with the planning reserve and timing um how I mean I know we're doing the Baseline Urban studies how far out do you think we are until we're in a process of maybe developing and starting to actually you know create a housing and built environment on the planning Reserve so I'm just thinking of just timing how far out is that if you envision um assuming we do our part in bottleneck

[225:00] um things yeah I I would say it it could very well be quite quite a ways out I mean even if um uh the infrastructure study and demand studies that were uh a part of what's what's being envisioned in in the short term here uh showed you know relatively few issues then you've got the capital planning for actual infrastructure out there which is really the motivation for that study and then you have private development that then comes along and says well we're ready to do that that's market conditions that's who's going to be the first one to put down infrastructure things like that so you know I'm a little hesitant to put a year to it but I mean it's it's it's going to be a while most likely um I know you don't want to put a year because no one wants to be held to that but we're not talking like two years out but we're not talking 30. right five to seven to ten yes that's all I'm looking for yeah appreciate just not the numbers yeah thank you because I was going to jump in and I was going to say numbers like that so I think you're

[226:00] yeah great thanks Brad appreciate it cold chip and I'll call myself yeah thank you I've just got a few questions um so uh some of the commenters were noting how this was the same plan that had been brought before but um I thought I heard that these units are for sale and the previous plan was for renters so or for rental so I was just wondering if somebody could clarify that may have just misheard um yeah I was I did not um I was not the Planner on the previous plan when I looked at the files I believe the previous concept plan had it was four sort of larger buildings that were more apartment style in nature um that's my recollection of what it was so okay thank you and then this is just a question around how we work with the county on Transportation issues when developments involved both County and City roads and access to both of those I was just wondering if you could talk through the

[227:00] process of that yeah for sure this one um like many of the ones we get when it's an annexation or changes to to you know roads that have to do with the county um typically we would refer the application to them and work with them pretty closely on a staff level to determine um you know what their understanding of the roads are in that area what kind of improvements we can expect so I think in the past and going forward we've just worked very closely with them to kind of understand and make sure we're all on the same page so thank you and then the other thing I was wondering about was regarding the traffic study that I think was just recently completed in January I think the previous one said it was completed in May and I was just wondering about how how comparable those two are at least for me what I perceive is that when I'm driving north on 28th around that area

[228:00] it is heavier in May than in January with both bikes and and cars and things I was just wondering if you could speak to that yeah um I think the the study that the developer referenced um from January I don't believe that was part of our review um so I don't think we've seen it um so I I think they do have their folks here if they want to address that question and then my other question was just to clarify the relationship with habitats they heard a little bit of concern that habitat might pull out or not actually participate in building some of these affordable for sale homes but it sounds like we have a letter of support from habitat in with all this too so I was just wondering if somebody could speak to what that means to have a letter of support

[229:02] good evening Council uh Kurt fernhawbert director of housing human services so that's preliminary just like this concept plan is and um so I know they've been having discussions with habitat I also know that the the architect has um laid out the the development uh and the the plans as such so they would be comparable to what's being anticipated out of the modular home Factory so there's a very uh there's a overlap there with that with that approach I can't speak for uh how how committed habitat is but I knew I know they've been in discussions with the developer on this great thank you great so I had a question which was to what extent the this development could be required to make some improvements to the 28th and J intersection and I know

[230:02] generally my understanding from a legal perspective is that you could only require a developer to make changes that are required specifically because of their you know their development and not to account for other off-site impacts but would this uh potentially Merit be a high enough level of impact that we could say hey you should do a raised Crossing at J or some additional bike ped approaches and improvements it's kind of a legal question well I'll give it a whirl but I think that that would be something that could be discussed with developer and certainly if that's something that they can do they they can agree to it I don't know what the ramifications would be in terms of working with like for example the county or whatever needs to be done there but that certainly could be

[231:01] discussed at a later point and I would just add to that that you know the caveat on something like a specific Improvement like uh pedestrian Crossing if there's not a Nexus to this uh to your point um then it may not be able to be required that's when we get into the asking kind of uh scenario but certainly if there are off-site impacts that can be directly attributable to that we can do exactions of a a number of of things including intersection nearby intersection improvements turn Lanes Crossing blocks that makes sense so I'll get to that in my comments then all right well if we're not another question Lauren um but I look through this hundred and provided parking spaces and only 120 required parking spaces is that correct

[232:03] um so the way that the parking was shown on the plan um there was yeah like you said 120 I believe that were provided on the individual lots and then there was about 50 that were in the proposed private streets typically we wouldn't count on street parking on on our public streets toward the minimum parking requirements um but yes you're correct that that was what the calculation showed is that it was over by by 50 if you were to count up all the parking spaces that were provided typically would we require on-street parking in a project like this um for our for our public streets we you know they're just they're just public streets where anyone can park so we that's why we don't count the parking toward our minimum requirements generally thank you all right could we get the key issues up

[233:02] please to framework Council discussion and I'll just remind my colleagues who are not making any decisions here we're giving feedback for the applicant to that they can incorporate as they move towards site review so it's open-ended comments but with an eye towards creating a potential project that might comply with the criteria see and I have my slide up I'm not sure if there needs to be a different setting great okay I'll just read them real quick and then we'll go through them one at a time well I might combine these a little bit but so is the proposed land use designation of mixed density residential appropriate is there proposed initial zoning of rmx2 residential mixed use 2 appropriate as the proposed conceptual plan compatible with the character of the surrounding area and finally feedback on any other topics in general for the development

[234:01] so um what we might start with is I actually would start with number three if you all don't mind because it's kind of a broader issue that can then follow from that to answer some of the other questions so um if maybe people would like to weigh in on kind of their overall compatibility of the of the plan yeah um so this is a unique environment because it's not just what the surrounding area is per se it's what we intend to make it with regards to area three and so I see this property not just for what it is and what's currently surrounding it but what our intent is for the 500 acres to the North and the east of it and to some extent to the uh yeah to the Northwest so in in light of what we're likely going to be doing with area three and I'm going to hold Brad to those timetables no I'm just kidding uh he said it he said the numbers um I I think yes I mean it meets not

[235:00] just where we're going but our larger housing and needs it I think this does go in that direction so I think that it definitely goes in that place Tara I mean this is what we've been asking for we've been asking for home ownership for Middle income we've been asked and for upper even for upper middle income honestly and so what somebody mentioned million dollars will in Boulder that is like not a bad thing anymore so between the middle and the upper middle it is exciting not only that it's family oriented this three a lot of three bedroom units what we've been asking for and it has a community feel so I think I don't know how popular holiday was when the initial discussions went out but now it's the most talked about place like wow you live in Holiday wow I wish I did just because it's the truth

[236:00] so to me it's creating another you know uh year 2023 or whenever it gets built um holiday too so to speak um just with a few differences so for me it's very exciting I had the opportunity to listen to Governor polis's speech this weekend and it was I I was really very excited about it I would say inspired which is something I'm not usually right so always worried about unintended consequences but in this time at this time I am inspired because in this time in Colorado right now we need desperately housing and this seems like I'm to me 28th and J it's I understand what the community is coming from but it's it's a really good place to start like Matt said we are going to be starting to develop this area so I have to say that to me this is an exciting concept Bob well just pick out piggyback on what

[237:01] Madden and um to have already said I mean this is exactly what we are looking for exactly I mean I don't know that if we sat in the nine of a sat in a room this is what we would we would create uh the only complaint I heard tonight was it's in the wrong place and I don't know what the right place is I mean we have a limited number of of parcels of land available to us we may have access to some of the land to the north as Matt pointed out in a few years but it's gonna be a few years probably more than five to seven um so this is this is the um this is the ideal development uh in every way shape and form as far as open space as far as height as far as number of bedrooms as far as affordability of units uh affordability of of both um deed restricted and non-drestricted so this is exactly what we've been asking for and if we turn this one down I don't know what else could come to us that would that would we'd want would like so this is this is the right thing I I know there's concerns about um impact on traffic those are things that

[238:00] I think can be addressed and looked into when we get to site review and we can have you know TDM done we can have transportation look at this perhaps there's some exactions as Aaron suggested around traffic to make sure that that uh the impacts on the existing neighborhoods um is um is minimized and also the people that would live in this new development um can live there um we're going to have to deal with traffic up and down um 28th street because we're looking we're talking about this is you know this is 84 units we're talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of units up and down 28 so this is this will be the first step in what will be a multiple step process as we kind of develop this whole area over the next decade or so so I'm very supportive of it I have actually no negative comments to to offer to the developer I'm sorry I wish I could offer something constructive but they've already been said let's learn then I'll call myself thank you yeah I think when we're talking about whether the conceptual plan is compatible with the character of

[239:00] the surrounding area we're not only talking about like Matt said what's there but what's going to be there but also how this site will be redeveloped because it is not going to remain as it currently is and so you know the different kinds of Redevelopment that we could possibly see there I think that this is more compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and with the future use of this area then pretty much anything else I could imagine thanks I'll call myself then and and uh generally agree with my colleagues that I think this is you know moving us in a positive direction I think it's a positive development I'll mention that when holiday was started 20 years ago it was that at the edge of the city at the time and was surrounded by much more rural um smaller parcel uh smaller Building Development and and there and so it stuck out a bit at the time but um became a very successful development

[240:00] as people know I've lived there since 2004 and is a wonderful place to live and is I think has worked out with the the neighbors nearby in some lower density housing and has not you know there's hundreds of units in holiday but like Yarmouth that's right next to there still has just a modest level of traffic so you know the traffic study will be important because I think that's the one area of concern in terms of uh compatibility with the the surrounding neighborhood but I think the travel will find that the traffic study you know says that the the roads can handle it just fine the the one thing I would say is that I would want to look at closely is the the bike ped uh Ingress and egress because I think there are some safety concerns there and so I really would like us to look at the possibility of making improvements to the intersection of Jade and 28th as part of this development to increase the ability particularly bikes to because once you get across that intersection you have a pretty good bike safety routes in through the rest of town so I think if

[241:01] we can improve the safety going across there for the residents of this new place but it also would benefit some of the others but I think the residents there's enough of a Nexus I think to justify that but no I think this would be a really positive development place to live middle income housing you know for sale housing I think it's moving in the right direction uh for sure so I'm supportive as well other thoughts we don't all have to say all the words yeah well I will in just a second so if nothing else on three actually then what I would turn to is say I just heard General support so are we okay with one and two with the proposed land use designations and initial zoning okay good and the art I'm I'll just have to say I'm a big fan of rmx2 has that affordable housing density bonus that gets you to that kind of holiday level of density when you have included on-site affordable which we're always looking for which we rarely get but is present here in this proposal so then what I would say is then the the wrap up would be feedback of any other

[242:02] kind about the development in in the item number four so if people have any additional thoughts of changes they'd like to see our feedback this would be your chance cool thank you um I just had a couple I really loved the flexible parking spaces that could be used as other things like little patios or other kind of spaces Outdoors so that was really cool and I would love to continue seeing that that also made me think about some of the stuff we've been doing with thinking about straces public spaces and parklets and all that kind of thing so you know given that I hear that car traffic is one of the bigger concerns and that that intersection is also a little terrifying um in a bike or a car you know can can we think about that can we think about lowering some of the parking that is there giving people the option of using even some of the the streets those little

[243:00] um just little parklets or little spaces that they could have some extra space there bring in you know some more open space and community so um anyway just something something that I think about but I really love that idea I really also like the idea of car shares and things like that whatever we can do to try to minimize the number of cars that are in this space in general and I agree with Aaron about the thinking around 28th and J improvements at that intersection Rachel I just formalize I guess my feedback that I think it would be helpful to to study whether you can hear the gunshots and mitigate that noise because I don't think um we want to intentionally create like an airport situation where neighbors 15 years from now who bought a middle income house are stuck with a lot of noise violence from a gun range noise pollution not noise violence although maybe it's the same thing Lauren

[244:02] I really appreciate the simple shapes that the applicant has brought forward where each unit is identifiable you know as like Classic Home shape um but one of the things I would be interested in having them invest investigate a little further is sort of future adaptability so in the Wonderland development for example there was space left for Port front porch editions and things like that so that the units themselves could evolve over time and I think that something like that could be really nice for this neighborhood to allow it to start you know a little more uniform and with a simpler shape and then allow people to sort of Express their individuality through small Editions um in that vein I would love to see you

[245:00] know sort of the ridge lines um running lengthwise on the properties so that your load-bearing walls are you know you're in between in between the units instead of at the front and the back um and I would encourage the applicant to continue looking at that streetscape design and to see if we can reduce the number of overall streets we have there's just the way it's set up with the sort of Main Streets and alleys ends up devoting so much of the parcel to cars and car infrastructure um I understand why it is that way but while it does hide the garage faces it ends up with the street parking being on the other streets that sort of every street is dominated either by garages or street parking instead of having like

[246:02] more pedestrian focused through ways so I would encourage them to continue looking at that to see if there are any increases we could make there and potentially reducing the number of overall parking spaces we're providing good thank you I just wanted to say um I think the concept view a document that we have it's very beautiful I've been to the holiday neighborhood I think it's very nice as well every time I go there it oh it feels like family it feels like Community just driving actually in the area it's just so nice and another comment that I had was about the gun range Rachel just mentioned I wonder is that in the city or is it in the county do you know it's okay well if it is in the county I just

[247:00] want to say um there is a bill going through um well that depends there's actually a bill going through the house by or onrip in Boulder a mabale you might want to check it out and that might maybe it might answer some of your concerns thank you and then I'll call myself thanks Aaron um first I've said really like the comments for my colleagues it's nice that we're heading in a good unified Direction here um so uh one comment I had had to do with um certainly was sort of following up on the J Road and um 28 mostly just because it would make some sense for us to start actually planning what that infrastructure needs to be given what we're going to be doing on those 500 Acres so I I this this development should kick-start that conversation not just with regards to what Jay the this development is going to do but that larger piece going forward um and second of that where it comes

[248:00] back to parking what we're going to be likely doing at Area 3 is going to demand a lot of mass rapid transit in order to move people around in which case I think this development would be able to take advantage of that and so I think we should really look at reducing the parking for what the future is going to hold for this property not for what maybe it is today where it's kind of in a Transit Island it won't be in in too many years and so I think we can build for that future by reducing parking now knowing that there's going to be the transit to accommodate those people getting anywhere they need so I think we can start to build future forward in that capacity and the other piece I'd add is you seem to be focusing so much so much on the affordable middle income housing it's just as important to be talking about the missing middle housing that's going to be a part of this because that at the end of the day is the biggest nut we have to crack we have the fewest abilities to do middle income but our greatest Gap is the missing middle which allows that greater scaffolding for

[249:00] people to move up the socioeconomic ladder and build that equity in our community so it's a selling point that is just not mentioned so I think it's important for us to actually highlight that because that's an important piece of the remaining properties outside of the affordable middle so appreciate that thanks Matt sorry okay I'll just a couple couple of overall just additional comments well in terms of uh going back to Tab and getting their input in addition to some of the other Transportation related things we've been talking about one thing I'd love to hear about from them about is the I saw the there was a revised uh concept that they brought forward that had left and right turn Lanes coming out of the development and that seemed better than the right and right out only but I would definitely like to hear from our transportation department and tap about that as well as the the multi-use path like I really like how they've got the multi-use path coming in and then going through and then heading out to the north because eventually there'll be a need for an a non-road way to get bikes and pets to the north for for future phases of

[250:01] development that might happen but I staff had some comments I thought were good about it being kind of right in front of somebody's door and that maybe that's not the most effective way to get bikes through the the project so love to hear more thoughts from tab on how that could be done in the best way possible and our transportation folks as well and then I want to really Echo Lauren's comments about looking for ways to reduce the amount of Street space because it does have a lot of Street space and a lot of parking and if you could find some clever way to reduce both of those things I think you could create more of the centralized open space that Tara was talking about because I think the the concept that went to planning board is I think it's a little light on that Central usable open space and I know the applicant was talking about the city park north of there that that Park is many many years away I mean possibly decades and we don't have the funding for Valmont park yet and it could be 20 years easy before that this new part gets built so I think

[251:00] it's important to have functional open space for the people that that live here um along with the families that we expect will live here because there's family friendly typologies in here which I think we're all excited about so that that's kind of my funnel is in better open space with hopefully some less asphalt asphalt and parking but also love that flexible patio idea that was really cool like it was a way to make some future proof some of the spaces that could be parking spots but could be Community or gathering spaces or individual room for individual creativity like Lauren was talking about that's all I got Tara well you just said what I was going to say I'll beat you to it good yeah all good all right any other final thoughts no well I guess I would uh it's our habit to turn to the applicant after a concept plan and see if our feedback was clear or if you had any questions for us before we wrap up

[252:02] um I think I just hang on let me my video back on uh I just want to express my appreciation um for the thoughtful consideration and uh I guess I would say I didn't expect to be encouraged tonight um but I am and so I'm I'm appreciative and uh we took notes so we'll uh we'll try to work on the plan and um see if we can come forward forward with something that incorporates these comments very good thanks so much for listening and attentiveness all right any other final thoughts on this are we done okay very good Shannon thanks so much

[253:01] and Brad and Kurt already headed out so I'd appreciate the feedback from the community as well that's our last agenda item any final final thoughts before we wrap up for the night seeing none how gavel is closed it 1008 pm [Music]