February 23, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:08] the same thing did you get a roll oh okay very good

[1:03] foreign hello hello hello it is six o'clock and we have a quick announcement before we get to the fun stuff from it hey my name is wonderful to meet any of you I haven't met already a couple reminders about your microphones tonight because our setup is a little bit different we have a limited battery life on these wireless microphones um when they are turned off they use

[2:00] less power however I cannot hear you um for recording purposes so in order for me to and it must also be in front of your face it's just a quick reminder please keep your microphone about a hand's width which is going to be about this much in front of your face that's where I get the best audio from everybody um if your microphone at any point this evening stops lighting up the battery has died as I mentioned these do have a limited battery life so you are going to have to go to a different wireless microphone we do apologize for that fortunately these microphones are a little bit older and they've developed a battery memory I think that's all I have for you this evening thank you so much everybody I'm gonna go run to my little room is microphone but what about the bathroom I feel like I have been using the exact same toilet in this building for like 20 years I was like this room is like a time capsule in Boulder it has changed none

[3:29] have lots of fun stuff to do today um if you have a gander at Ye Old agenda you'll see we're starting here at straight up six o'clock with the overview of the agenda and the objectives I do have an icebreaker in my pocket and we'll do that before we jump into the work of the day we do have as our primary agenda item tonight staff reports from work plan priorities you'll hear from all the directors and as I understand it neria directors do not have slides they're just going to talk

[4:01] so you should take good notes and we'll do that and then we'll take a break around 7 45 so you can stretch your legs if we need to do that sooner we will do that sooner just signal me um and then we'll carry on at eight ish I have been issued a challenge to get you all out of here by nine despite the fact that the calendar said 10 so you understand that means limited use of adjectives and adverbs is generally how we get there so make good and smart choices if you would um before we get um any farther I do want to acknowledge that we uh The Retreat committee sent an email out to you all earlier in the week inviting some additional topics and um I have gathered those I've shared them with the retreat committee and also with Nuria and I think our expectation is some of those topics can be addressed as part of director reports today and others we can attend to to some degree

[5:02] tomorrow I did not put any red lines through those so we'll give them attention tomorrow as we can Nuri anything you want to add on that list for today no other than just really it's we will be touching on some of the questions that we saw and How Deeply we dive will be up to your conversations and I know that we've got some time tomorrow as well but I knew that some of the uh hotline questions and some of the things that came in through Heather we had already anticipated because it is part of the work plan so we'll be talking a little bit about it I would like to say I got no fewer than seven copies of the hotline mat that you put on yesterday you copied me which I appreciated very much and then almost every other person forwarded to me to say just FYI so I have read that multiple times and by the fourth time I'm like oh I have read this one before got that um so thank you but extra credit for copying me on the first time well done sir

[6:02] it made me feel special to get so many emails today um all right so uh Council what I would like for you to reflect on for today's Icebreaker I will give you tomorrow's Icebreaker at the end of our time together um I would like to know one thing that Council and or the city staff have done in the last year that you are most proud of one thing means one thing it's not seven things um so again make smart choices and then one thing that lies in the year ahead that you're most excited about I will take volunteers to go first I would like to hear from everyone but I'm not particularly married to the order um any volunteers to go forced thank you Mr Mayor well just step right into the breach here uh well I'll say in terms of what I'm proud of it is for how the city organization has executed an escape from

[7:01] the pandemic right you all have done amazing work here right we were down so much money and so many people and the organization has just come roaring roaring back and it has been a pleasure to watch so huge thank you to all of you for that and for my one thing I'm excited about I'm just saying our work plan still has a bunch of stuff left on it that we put on a year ago and we're going to get through it I am super excited to see that happen thank you thanks Aaron who next thank you Matt a profile and courage to go second silence um Aaron you you took the took some good ones um so I will be I'll have to I'll have to sort of pivot a little bit um one thing that I I think I would say I'm most proud of is specifically being in person I think accomplishment to get to but it is really rejuvenated I think our ability to work together as a council

[8:01] but also being able to interact with staff on a more regular basis those interpersonal connections are just far richer when they're in person so I think in terms of building that unit and cohesiveness being in person has been quite tremendous so um we started out not and the difference is quite uh dramatic um thing I look forward to the most I'll just have to yeah I'll have to copy what Aaron said the back loaded work plan there's just so much we have going on this year and I really look forward to getting it accomplished thanks Matt Bob um I I I I could single out any member of Staff here and that would get me in trouble with every all the rest of them so I'm going to compliment all this down I think that's what's amazing what's what's made me so proud not only this year over the last seven years is Staff gets um hit pretty hard sometimes by us and a lot by members of the community and I'm just so amazed and so proud about how you guys just keep your cool you don't come in hinge you don't get upset I'm sure inside you're very upset and it annoys you a lot but it just amazes me

[9:01] how you and your teams just roll with it and and just makes me real real Proud to work with you guys excited um well as as Aaron and Matt said we gave you like you know the old expression 10 pounds of we gave you 10 pounds of of you know what to put into a five pound bag and and we probably have put about uh three or four pounds in there and and we're gonna have to do some culling and so I'm excited about hearing from you all about what you think our priority should be um because we won't be able to possibly get down everything we set forth a year ago uh by the end of this year so um please do be open with us and tell us what you think we really should be working on and what you think we can roll to next year thanks Bob Rachel as long as it's on I mean the green was on already thank you he turned it to red as soon as I um put my hand up so um I was really trying to dig deep for like pride and what I have felt most proud of in the last year was um a regional

[10:00] effort for gun violence prevention that staff and city council and other cities in the region collaborated on and it's a national model and it's getting rolled out elsewhere in the country and it was a really cool thing that we did as a city so good job everyone um and what I'm most excited about is I I think we can um the one of the items that that Matt and I lifted up in the hotline post is um to talk about doing some things differently on homelessness and I think we can make some changes and um kind of get off the wheel of insanity of trying to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result and I think we're gonna knock it out of the park so I'm excited for that thanks Rachel Tara I would say what I'm most proud of is the way the city and all the different departments came together after in the aftermath of the fire and how we have all the different departments working together in all different pockets and solving some of the problems or fixing some of the issues or just making a

[11:00] better way to to handle everything that's what I was most proud of I'm not really excited about anything I was excited I was excited I didn't think there was a wrong answer but that might be the wrong answer I was I was excited that I didn't have to make dinner tonight that was okay and I don't have to clean up so that was my second highlight so but I really can't think of anything I'm ex you know what I'm excited about this is a great group of people and I love being here with all of you so much everybody's my best friend right here awesome no seriously it is a great group and I'm really excited about tonight I think we're gonna have a good time thanks Tara yep Nicole yeah I think what I am most most excited about every the hard part about going toward the end is that everybody's already taking good ones but really just about the way that you all especially as directors have rebuilt your staff over the last year and nothing that we want to do could have been done without the

[12:02] work that you all have been doing to recruit to retain to really think about how to do things differently and so just since you're all here thank you it's a huge effort um and I'm excited to hear what you all have up your sleeves that you were working on and excited about for this next year ahead thanks Nicole Lauren I'm most proud of the expertise and knowledge that everyone that brings to the table going to Consortium meetings and all of these other meetings that we go to and just being able to rely on you know the Excellence of the city organization is so fantastic um and I am excited for doing all of our pnds work plan items next year [Music] no pressure right

[13:00] the joy of a member of counsel lays in your lap sir [Laughter] thanks Lauren yep go ahead Jenny thank you uh I was thinking really hard what I am most proud of um I'm proud of the leadership of our city manager and I mean you hear all the great work that you know Council has mentioned that the staff is doing in the directors are doing and I think you probably you needed good leadership at the top in order to be able to do that so I'm grateful for that and to go in the same line as Lauren I was thinking of what I am most excited about is would be I mean housing and Human Services is working on a day Center and I know you're working on a lot of different projects as well so I'm excited to see what you know what comes to fruition thank you thanks Judy last but not least mark foreign

[14:05] I'm going to repeat what a lot of people have said about staff um I I think we have an extraordinary staff if there's a better one anywhere I'd really like to know about it um the kinds of work that you do whether or not I I always agree with the result that's produced is of the highest quality and I think it it's just extraordinary from the top down from nyria all the way down our people are producing a work product that is really quite remarkable for a city of this size in terms of being uh proud I'm very proud of the fact that we after 30 years finally initiated some ordinances to provide relief for the hill it seems like an easy thing but it was not an easy thing and a lot of stakeholders

[15:01] were involved and we we had to coordinate a way through all of those stakeholders and we did it and I think it's important for government to actually solve problems and this was a case in which we saw a problem we analyzed the problem and hopefully we've solved the problem and I think that's that's the root function of government is to do things that make people's lives better and I'm hoping that's what we did there are you most excited about something mark excited by that excellent excellent proud and excited all accepted and counted twice excellent Nuria um you know it's no surprise I am proud of this team people before you and you'll hear it today and I've told them in person but they are extraordinary and kudos to the

[16:02] leadership and the camaraderie and for people who make hard decisions and make that look easy because I'll tell you that it is hard work what we do day in and day out and the camaraderie and how this team has come together as truly a team and I can't necessarily say that I've always seen that in in different jurisdictions this team is extraordinary and I'm super proud of both their expertise and frankly their sense of humor along the way so thank you for all um I'm excited about a lot of things that are to come you all mention some of them but I'll say honestly and genuinely I'm really excited about tonight I I think it's an extraordinary opportunity to lift up staff work in ways that we don't usually do I think it's an opportunity to hear what is sort of beneath the iceberg that you all don't get a chance to see in some of those uh really hard and sort of time consuming work that we

[17:00] do and I'll say that there are topics that are coming up some of them that we have talked about some of them that the retreat committee has talked about some of them that are brought up the heart in the hotline it's time to have a conversation about some of these hard decisions with this particular Council body we recognize there are some things homelessness being one of them is not something that we have done yet with this Council body and it's just time to do that and so the kinds of conversations the suggestions the wrestling with us on approaches which are not always consistent that may be to borrow a director's term a bit Whimsical as we ask everybody what that looks like um I think it's going to be really exciting and I'm thrilled to to see what the year brings thank you council is everyone wondering which director said whimsical anyone want to own that we're pretty curious [Laughter]

[18:08] you are a Wordsmith of the highest order my friend it wasn't you oh it wasn't oh I was like dang day that was harsh really no one wants to own that one laughs hmm all right well we'll find out the sleuths are upon us um thank you all for indulging me um noria am I right to understand that all the other people around this table are directors and they can introduce themselves when we get to their reports to council uh they sure are and we have uh Pam too who's our assistant city manager Chris is not able to join us today um and judge cook who is uh also with us as we um partake I'm trying to see if I've missed somebody nope okay fantastic in that case um love to get to the work of the day do

[19:00] you want to tee this up before we get to staff reports um I'm happy to I don't need to mostly we want to like I think there were some instructions about asking you all to sit in your seats and let staff go through this this is a great opportunity for um departments to share it out we have asked departments too to be mindful of their colleagues and really lift high level what they're doing um we actually tried to do this in three to five items you can see that many of our priority areas have now landed on four and six items but really just a high level discussion so that we can get through it and then we're really hoping to then dive deep and we gave you a little place to write notes if there are particular areas that you want to ask more questions about or dive deeply into and Council my one request is that you let each director get through his or her or their presentation before you ask questions or have comments to make sure we hear the universe of things they want to share with you before we get sidetracked all right who's up first are we going alphabetically down the sheet

[20:00] we are not okay glad I asked so I'm gonna kick it off and then um and then we're actually gonna sort of um give our internal Services Department top billing here because they are they are not folks that necessarily come to you often there are other things and so we'll do it that way and then frankly Heather we can popcorn any way you want um so I'll start from CMO because uh not just the title but we are also a department and sometimes we forget that as we move through our day I'm going to leave the first priority area and they are as I mentioned they're not in any particular order they're all sort of important as we move forward there's a lot of work Beyond this list that is happening but I'll start with ranked Choice voting uh getting gearing up for that uh Elisha and the clerks team is really all into that as we move forward um we're ending the we're sort of getting and finalizing the communications and engagement plan so that's almost done and frankly just

[21:00] gearing up for the elections and working with our colleagues at the county the priority area of police oversight that that shouldn't be new right we want to strengthen our police oversight unfortunately we are going out but we want to make sure that our uh next independent monitor is the right fit for our city um and so we will be doing that um we want to continue to support the panel the panel will start there's training that's happening the first week of March we have brought in an additional resource to support Amy and the panel as we move forward happens to be a former colleague of mine from Austin who was the in the monitor there who I have great trust in and she will be helping to consult and help the panel and support them as they move forward she'll be here in person um at that first orientation so if you happen to be around and want to meet her happy to make that introduction um we have and we hope to launch this um in Q3 or Q4 but uh the great work

[22:00] that Amy and the entire Equity team and kudos to it they've made something we've called the equity index it really is a mapping tool that goes by census blocks it's intended to be used in conjunction with the racial Equity instrument so that when we're making decisions policy choices and thinking about the hard questions of who does this policy hurt and who does this policy benefit we can really take a look at that with data and we will be publishing that out soon we hope that we can add in the future layers like cost burden households or some other sort of equity uh indicators in that but we want to launch that towards the end of the year and really excited about that tool for the use of water departments we have a big focus on small and underserved business es in the city we know that there is a need to continue to support them we are actually with in conjunction with our great team at Finance we are having a

[23:00] position under Equity that really is the sort of the Strategic partner for underserved business support while our great team in finance really does the operations and the mechanics of that we're thinking about whether we need a disparity study so that we can create a race conscious program for procurement a city is a large procure and so want to do that and if the disparity study does not come out in that way I'll say that I bring a little bit of experience to that from my other cities that we will do a race neutral program that focuses on small business because we know the majority of our women and minority-owned businesses are in that small business space and we'll be able to help that way so that continues to move forward and I know Jennifer pinsono in our office is working to update the economic sustainability strategy which formerly hasn't been updated since 2013. there have been some updates informally in the comp plan updates but we have not done something on that and she's hoping to do that by the end of the year I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we'll be watching the legislature and

[24:00] working with you all as we move that so I know Carl's moving on that but I really wanted to highlight strategic planning and um I think I've I think most of you have heard me since I've been here we've done a lot of sort of um we've done a lot of foundational work like I imagined those before me a lot of the effort is concentrated on your work plan priorities and a lot of that is external facing and so sometimes we don't pay enough attention to what we're doing and I Define strategic planning a little bit more broadly so we are embarking on a collective leadership team strategic planning effort that starts to align all our work to the objectives laid out and the sustainability equity and resilience framework we want to make sure that all of our staff can Cascade up and see how their work strengthens and unifies to those goals and those objectives and they can really see and be able to save for themselves like how their work contributes to strengthening and serving our community

[25:00] so the other thing I'll say that is that that also helps us with our Recruitment and Retention efforts I've said often that our employees are our best and um our best asset as we move forward we have focused a lot of the attention on Recruitment and Retention we will continue to do that and as we do that we've got as a collective leadership team some priorities this year we're going to be working a lot and discussing about workplace safety that has been a topic that has come up not just physical safety but also psychological safety as they're doing their work it's a lot of hard work and it is hard to sometimes engage and feel that their work is either contributing or advancing our city goals and we want to make sure that we're um that we're nodding in that direction and we'll be working on that as we move forward and then the other thing uh that I want to highlight and that's one of the reasons we want to give some space to our internal services department is that we have been looking a lot at inefficiencies in our system and so we are looking to centralize our internal

[26:00] Services we don't need three it departments we don't need eight HR departments we need more consistency across the board and we want to make sure that particularly those operating departments whose expertise is in other areas that they actually get to do their jobs versus having to replicate some of the things that we're doing in our internal services and that has been really great so excited to think about that and if it's all right with you I'll stop there and send it over to our first internal Services if that's how you'd like to proceed do you want to hear from internal services and then take all the questions okay go ahead so then I'll go to Sarah good evening I'm Sarah Huntley the director of communication and engagement and our department is a little bit unique because we are both a service provider to internal colleagues and

[27:00] other departments as well as providing service we hope to our community so we're both internal and external as such a large part of our yearly work plan depends on everybody else's plans and we I know you know often here or we're going to do communication and engagement about X and about why and about Z and so we're integrated throughout the whole city we actually love that about our jobs because it means our work is always relevant and never boring as a department though there are some initiatives that we have to be lifting up and making sure we're making progress around on the city and I actually have seven but I'm going to go really quick okay so the first one is we'll be partnering with risk management and I.T to make sure that our website any other digital platforms we use and video are in compliance with new state accessibility standards that are going to come into effect in the middle of 2024. we did some great work on this when we updated our website recently but there are still some gaps and we'll be working over the

[28:01] next year to address those so that everybody can access information regardless of whether they have a need a screen reader or captions or some other kind of assisted device the second thing we're going to be doing is dusting off our practice pre-covid of doing a community-wide survey every two years we will partner with a company that will do this in a randomized way so that we can try to get a good sense of Representative sense of our community and some of the key issues so we are scoping that work right now we did not do it during covid because the advice we got from people who were in the survey business is that we were in such a unique moment of time that trying to compare that data point to previous year's data points would be very challenging but we think we have stabilized enough to return to that initiative the next thing which we mentioned not too long ago actually in the context of the fire update you received we are

[29:00] going to be updating our social media strategy it's been a number of years since we've done this and the social media world has changed considerably we know that our community has come to rely upon this as a a really important tool in our toolkit we want to make sure that we're learning from all the lessons of the last several years that we're understanding the new expectations looking at new platforms reevaluating platforms we're currently using so that will be happening in 2023 another one is just generally what I would call our Equity work so for each and every member of my team one of the core purposes that motivates them is the concept of being inclusive and accessible to all and so this is really integrated into almost all the decision making and work we do but there are three specific areas that we'll be focusing on with this which is implementing our language access plan I think you've seen us trying to become more bilingual and we'd like to become multilingual for critical areas and then

[30:00] eventually ramp up so that we are providing that level of service to all languages that need it we'll be conducting a Jedi which is Justice Equity diversity and inclusion evaluation of our Department's practices policies norms and budget decisions and we'll be continuing to evolve the community connectors model which we've learned so much about in the last several years the next area is neighborhood grants and community building we are coming back to a neighborhood services program that's kind of been on Hiatus given kovid and we're super excited to build capacity and a sense of place and belonging in Boulder's neighborhoods we also will be returning the what's up Boulder event some of you may recall we did that for three years in a row before covid it's a coordinated family friendly um information and engagement Fair essentially and in previous years we've drawn as many 600 community members to it so we'll be doing that in September we're going to do it outside this year

[31:00] so I'm actually hoping that we will get even more sort of organic traffic of people coming by the park and and engaging and then lastly I am proud to be partnering with Parks and Rec HHS other departments to do a child-friendly cities initiative with UNICEF and growing up Boulder which will um really be an opportunity for to us to assess all the disparate ways we serve young people already and then work with the young people themselves in our community to identify the gaps and other action items that they'd like us to take on as a city we have a unique opportunity with some seed money from the Broncos to be able to support youth programming and we want the youth to help us decide how best to use that money so we'll be um doing an initiative around that thanks Sarah so let's go ahead and pause here and let me ask some questions of Nuria and Sarah on those two topics then we have several other internal departments to visit about before we go

[32:01] on I want to say that Mark did not just stomp out in Outrage at Sarah's comments um he had notified Us in advance that he's not been feeling well and he said he would last as long as he could but if he was done he would leave and I said he should do that so is that what you're going to say okay great um so we will miss him and hope that he feels better all right questions for either Nuria or Sarah related to those two preliminary presentations yep uh we'll go Rachel and then Matt thanks for those presentations and Mark if you're already watching feel better um I wanted to say on nerias I'm super excited about the equity index that sounds like a really great addition and my question is under your priority area for strengthened police oversight you've got revised the ordinance does that need to be added by city council to the work plan or is that like on your to-do list and and it's we believe it is firmly in our to-do list we are doing that we are actually already talking with the panel and uh we will be asking our consultant

[33:01] as well to give us some advice as well as working with City attorney's office so awesome and we'll get updates at some point before opportunities to weigh in on absolutely okay thanks that's all my questions Rachel strikes again and takes where I was headed um so I just just to clarify given that we is sort of regarding the pop um now that we are back in the hiring of the policeman I know that our original sort of guidance was can we couple our uh revisions to the ordinance as sort of action with the new monitor but I presume are we not holding up on that and not waiting anymore and sort of sort of still steam ahead on a similar time trajectory or has that been sort of pushed out in a timing aspect independent of the rehiring and and putting it back out there we are moving forward um so that we didn't want to delay that work we wanted to move that forward very quickly and frankly one of the benefits of having a consultant that has been a monitor for several years will enable us to do that and support the panel in

[34:00] asking those questions as we move forward so we didn't feel like we needed to wait cancel any other questions for Nuria or Sarah on engagement okay hey Sarah do you want to talk to us a little bit about um I.T so whimsical so I'm Jennifer Douglas the I.T director is ill tonight so she asked me to present the three items that her team has prioritized um some of them actually tend to touch on Communications and engagement as well so I think it's a good Synergy so the first one is to replace all of the audio and Technical equipment that's in this room I think we've all noticed that there's some pain points and frankly the things we want the system to be able to do has changed so dramatically over the last few years and so we are partnering we are currently in an RFP process and evaluating potential vendors to help us get there but we hope to have a brand

[35:00] spanking new facility at least in terms of the equipment and the audio the second piece is something that you were briefed on just fairly recently um we are going to be working on the constituent relationship management systems that we have in place as a city it will be taking the lead on this but really we're going to be trying to implement a new system as well as the business processes that always have to come with any kind of technology to address known challenges across a number of tools including our inquire Boulder ticketing system where people can put in requests for service on specific things Council email correspondence in general counsel hotline and then the integration of these tools with various operational systems that different departments have Asset Management tools work planning tools to make sure that we have an integrated approach to addressing feedback from our community the last piece which you also were

[36:00] briefed on very recently that Jen Douglas asked me to share with you tonight is community Broadband phase two so with the impending completion of the city 60 plus mile fiber backbone we're going to have to decide how the city will leverage this new asset to deliver high-speed fiber-based broadbands to homes Broadband to homes and businesses so um we're going to be doing some additional analysis based on the feedback that you all gave to the it leadership team and staff just a few meetings ago and trying to lean into two potential approaches one of either a public-private partnership or is fully funded City funded and or operated ISP so we'll be doing a lot of robust research and financial modeling for both approaches and it will be bringing that information back to the council any questions yep Aaron Sarah you may not know the answer this since you're subbing here but do you know are we looking at service levels for email

[37:00] responses as part of the CRM overall like for inquire Boulder it's just constituent responses because I don't think we have standards currently uh we do actually have some standards um that are in place but it's a decentralized system so that's often makes it difficult to have that kind of consistency whenever we Implement any kind of new technology we always want to step back and look at what are the processes that support it and support the community expectations that come with it so I would imagine that would be part of our discussion great just put in a request to maybe do a little collaboration with Council As you move forward with those because I think we might have some input okay perfect yep Bob a similar you may not know the answer to this do you know what um Jen's plan is on timing on the Broadband initiative what's the next touch back with Council going to be I'll have to get back to you oh you want to phone a friend no phone a friend your friend's gonna say the same thing I mean I I know that we have to get back to you on

[38:00] it I'm just trying to visualize in my head right now because there is a timetable and I just can't put my mind on it at the moment if it occurs to me I'll let you know right any other questions on technology things all right Sarah thank you very much um let's maybe move on and uh talk about HR David good evening thank you for the opportunity to visit about human resources this evening I'm David Bell Chief Human Resources officer I joined the organization in July so I've had about a half a year to really begin the assessment of the human resources product that we're delivering to all of our supports all of our partners and in that time I've also learned the majority of the human resources team has been here for around the 24 month Mark which means we're very much focused on recalibrating and rebuilding our foundation our team is focused in two main areas trying to calibrate our work back into two primary buckets one of them of course would be employee supports or employee growth

[39:00] over time and the other would be leader Effectiveness and that's really what you see is the theme through these five priorities that we've shared here tonight the first piece is Talent acquisition structures and best practices it has been an initiative of our leadership team and the human resources team to improve and reimagine many of the supports necessary for talent acquisition recruiting interviewing Etc the world has changed we're using more video interviewing different touch points for connection with talent but we need to refurbish those supports and re-train individuals on how to address recruiting and interviewing and selection of high quality talent in this new environment our next piece is around employee relations support and in the vein of leadership leader Effectiveness we're really looking at the tools that are available to give consistent application or interpretation of our collective bargaining agreements our processes our practices and other employee supports those are tools that are in some ways left out in the open for individuals to make their own interpretation and apply

[40:00] in their departments and we really need some consistency and understanding so we can have the customization and practice where appropriate in our departments and as we spearhead the union negotiations with our partners it's important that we have that consistent touch Point interpretation across the many aspects of those collective bargaining agreements and policies third piece here is a familiar to all of you it's a bit of employee benefit review and specifically around seasonal and temporary employees when we had an opportunity to visit in the fall we were looking at the family insurance program and learned at that time that the expressed interest in different supports to some of our employees who do not receive other benefit structure supports what that might look like for us is an extension of medical coverages dental vision coverages for seasonal and temporary employees but the Crux of that issue was around leave supports sick leave disability leave care of self-care of family so we're looking at multiple options that could be specific to Temporary and seasonal employees or that cover the full spectrum of employees

[41:01] however we have a web of benefit programs and leave programs that we need to dissect in order to rebuild in a way that supports more broadly all of our employees so you'll hear more about that as promised in the month of May as we visit again with you about the family program and other benefit changes the fourth item on this list is business partner supports business partners are our Consulting arm of human resources and while it's a small team they have direct interaction with all of the directors and managers in each of our departments so what we look for there is reaffirming the direct contact points that are appropriate for that consultation navigation and empowerment of leaders to move into that leader Effectiveness space what we would like to see over time is the tools that we might build in regards to interpretation of policy and collective bargaining agreement become an empowered place for managers to make the quicker and most efficient decisions that support our employees and a major initiative there is to kind of move out some of the pieces that have been extraneous or custom support until we have the

[42:00] foundation rebuilt for that navigation Consulting and empowerment space for human resources and last piece here Learning and Development we have a lacking foundation in our Learning and Development program and as mentioned in the introductions there was some reduction of staff and effort during the covet period and now a rebuild and learning development was one that was minimized during that time and now we're at the place of redefining that foundational point of Learning and Development for employee support and for leader effectiveness questions [Music] go ahead I just want to say great job with that presentation like you didn't look down once you had all five of those memorized that was amazing there's no Whimsy in human resources hahaha also no pressure other directors who have been writing copious notes about their own remarks really no pressure like I looked down

[43:01] all the time that was just I was sitting right across and it was amazing the bar has been raised that's right his mirror knows all the things about what human resources is doing right now all right no questions we'll carry on tonight I have notes and I'm going to cheat a little so I put four areas but really the first area encompasses many items on our work plan but I wanted to sort of package them together because it's really work that we see as um priorities to really put us in the position to be able to work on a long-term Financial strategy or a financial plan and um that work frankly was um prioritized when the financial strategy committee was formed I think three years ago right pre-pandemic and it really just got sidelined because we had to deal with the pandemic but we're really positioning ourselves back to do that

[44:01] work and we're anxious to do it we know the financial strategy committee is anxious to do it but we think that we've taken good steps to be able to get back to that work so we built that capacity of the budget team we implemented or we developed a three-year budgeting for resilience implementation plan and we executed year one which you all know was implementing opengov which is the budgeting tool in a transparency tool and then we really reoriented our decision making and our discussions around key policy issues and key funding issues and then we're now going to be going into year two of budgeting for resilience which is really a focus on outcomes uh and with those outcomes focusing on data data Gathering and then eventually building key performance indicators we're also really heightening our community engagement we're going to be partnering with Sarah and her team and as well as the office of equity in our community connectors to really enhance our community engagement through

[45:00] the budget process so but budgeting for resilience is only a piece of that Foundation to be able to really get into the long term we're also looking at two of our internal service funds looking at how they're structured how they're funded and really trying to improve efficiency and transparency there we are reviewing all of our dedicated funds and what really are the restrictions on the uses for the dedicated funds we also will be leading discussions and presenting some options with respect to two specific general fund funding issues this year the uh monies that will become available because of the formation of the library district and then we also intend to bring some options with regard to the expiring 0.15 sales tax that's not expiring until the end of 2024 but we think we should open that discussion this year that increment of tax right now is currently undedicated and frankly programmed for ongoing uses and we would recommend that that also if it were

[46:01] approved by voters remain undedicated and that's really in line with the blue ribbon commission recommendations so all of that work we think is really foundational to then positioning us to be able to do that long-term Financial strategy work so we're excited to get there I also just wanted to highlight that the team really does support many of the projects that you're going to hear tonight so as those projects evolve those projects and the funding needs that result from them will become also part of that long-term Financial strategy work so um our team's you know keenly working with many people around this table uh the next thing that I wanted to highlight is something that's more sort of back office but we are going to be partnering with it and frankly people across the organization as well to replace our financial Erp system so we will be getting the work to implement workday for our financials moving away from our current solution which is munis which is a local

[47:02] government solution and that work is huge it's going to be huge on top of you know the work that the the team and the department needs to do just to do daily operations and and such so we're going to be in with looking at our chart of accounts and see if there are changes that we can make there that will be beneficial to the organization in terms of um how they can see and track costs for both financial reporting Grant reporting operational needs as well as just frankly communication and transparency to the community so that's a big project that we're starting this year third that I wanted to highlight is we're going to be also partnering with office of equity and climate initiatives department on purchasing um I think uh Nuria brought this up on hers but we want to help them with a partner on the underserved Business program and then also with climate initiatives exploring how we can incorporate environmental social and governance framework into our purchasing policy and practices so we're excited to move

[48:02] forward on that work in 2023 and then last I wanted to highlight the work we're going to begin with regard to our building a city-wide Ada transition plan we have hired a Ada coordinator so we're centralizing that function and going to provide some Central support across the organization with regard to our Ada work that we do but then also just the first thing that that person is going to do is sort of do a current state assessment we do have um Ada transition plans in various different departments but just seeing what those are and then coming up with a city-wide Ada transition plan so we're excited about that work Council mayor any questions for Cara [Music] all right hi Joanna sorry I'm not that tall um hi I'm Joanna Korean I'm the director

[49:01] of the Solis and Fleet and one of the internal Services departments um as Nuria and David both mentioned recruiting is a big focus and specifically we have a critical focus on trade positions for facilities in Fleet this is a big deal but also in transportation maintenance utilities maintenance Parks and Rec we are all challenged with filling positions the trend over the last 10 15 years has been for our trades not city but Nationwide for five that retire only two come in and after as you can imagine over time it's compounding and now we're at a real critical point the other part of that is during covid the data suggest and and demonstrates that an age range from 20 to about 40 age 44 45 of men are not entering the workforce that is where we have a predominant

[50:03] number of folks coming with the trade so you can see the compounding Factor we are struggling mightily to uh recruit to even get folks to apply and then to actually get them in the door we are seeing this play out unfortunately in specifically on our maintenance side in both facilities but even more acutely in Fleet so we normally have eight mechanics we have five certainly folks around the table can tell you about the trials and tribulations fire most recently with trying to get our vehicles out the door to be repaired and used so this is a big area that we're going to be focusing on obviously in partnership with David in HR and others trying to figure out just not only the immediate but longer term what can we do our other big area is developing Financial strategy uh like Cara was

[51:00] talking about specifically around implementing our facilities master plan so you all were part of our first master plan actually being accepted which was exciting and now we're tackling the challenge of how do we finance that and that's been some great work that has been going on and that actually will be coming to you in April for a study session to start bringing forward some of that thinking and figuring out how we're going to move forward with that and a big part of that is the consolidation around our buildings which is a big part of that master plan so that's big one that's coming soon our other big area that we're focusing on is developing Fleet electrification implementation plan all of you on Council in the community have had great discussions and put forth exciting climate initiatives climate goals as well as a council res resolution that focused on our Fleet electrification specifically making a commitment to

[52:00] Electrify our Fleet the city's Fleet by 2030. we have been working towards that certainly on the vehicle component although unfortunately Ford had a fire in Detroit and shut down their plant for sending our way in other communities ways electric vehicles that aside our challenge has been on the infrastructure component we have taken opportunities to get grants so we have some popcorn style where we have some charging infrastructure but not a really robust plan nor the funding to support that and so that's an area that we are desperately trying to focus on and will be with climate initiatives with Central Finance and others trying to pull together a strategy so that we actually not only get our vehicles that are electric but then also can operate them by having them charged and then a fourth area that we're

[53:00] focusing on is managing our large construction projects so you all are familiar hospital going down Alpine Balsam work that's happening as well as construction of our Fire Station 3 the North Boulder Library also some major Renovations deep retrofit at the rec center so with the East Boulder Rec Center also some significant repairs at the South Boulder Rec Center so these are our large construction projects that we were working on obviously in close partnership with many others and then our last one is really centralization as norea mentioned around internal services so trying to figure out how we can be more efficient around facilities in Fleet that's it questions for Joanna yep oh so many questions oh wow sexy stuff we'll start with Aaron I didn't even read my notes I thought I did really well thanks for all that say all kinds of exciting stuff but I wanted to drilling on the uh Fleet electrification things

[54:02] really excited that y'all are working on that so as we all know there are these huge flows of federal money coming down from the bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation reduction act and I was just in DC meeting with our representatives and they were touting all of these and some of them are a lot friendlier to local governments than previous Grant programs were right so just I'm sure you are but just want to make sure that that you all are on that and applying for every source of grant funding and tax credit applications that you can yeah um I'm sure we can always do better so I don't want to suggest that um we are perfect at that but we certainly are trying um I know we work in close partnership with climate initiatives also with uh Finance staff to do our best to try and capitalize on that we have been challenged as you mentioned in the past some of the uh the way they were written and some of the kind of requirements around that were harder to achieve we've still been working to do that however to

[55:00] be honest we've also found that um it hasn't gotten us quite the way the direction we want to be and honestly in some ways it's great that we've been so far ahead in other ways that's been challenging too so we've learned a lot with actually some of the grants that we've had in place already with some of our charging instructor the maintenance isn't there to support the the um unfortunately some of the contracts that have been followed following that had been difficult to work within so a lot of learning and also frankly probably some uh were probably at a point where we might need to actually approach it without grants to get some of the fast charging infrastructure because to be honest we have some Vehicles now that folks are having to come in at 3am to charge over at Whole Foods at 29th Street so yes grants are wonderful it also is a

[56:00] very long lengthy process and we've already been challenged by that uh just for where we are today so it's about a bit of both okay thanks for that thorough answer I'll just mention I think our Representatives would be happy to assist so I think we should consider Congressman de Goosen and our Senators offices as resources because they're eager to get this money out the door yeah no that's a great idea I appreciate that Matt thanks for the uh presentation and you got a lot on your hands and we certainly acknowledge that and so question I have is certainly around the intrinsic connection between maintenance and electrification and how certainly with fossil fuel vehicles maintenance is higher maintenance is lower with EV typically and so I'm wondering does this is there a chance is there a moment where we can do you think accelerate our investment in the EV to take some of the pressure off the maintenance demands on maybe the rest of the fleet and and you know how do we sort of tip the scale the other direction and so I'm just sort of curious if your thoughts on what our current pace is versus can we accelerate

[57:01] that pace to then again take pressure off the maintenance side with the rest of the fleet yeah no that's a great question and and actually it's something we've been thinking about and talking about um but gosh probably over the last year much more so a couple of things with that when we look at and I'm not going to get the terminology perfect but when we measure our vehicles and then with the maintenance needs around those there's calculations to say okay a certain heavy vehicle versus a light vehicle requires this many hours therefore how many staff do you need essentially what you're getting to um you're right there's going to be a change over time as we have more electrification at this point are heavy Vehicles aren't quite there most of the time in terms of electric options so those are still going to be something that we have to maintain for at least quite a bit longer on some of the smaller lighter Vehicles if you will correct we will get to that

[58:03] point however backing up from that today just looking at our data looking at the vehicles we have in the maintenance we are actually not staffed quite where we should be in all reality world was perfect we'd have 11 maintenance technicians basically mechanics today we have eight positions three of those are vacant so we have five so we're already kind of behind which means we try and Outsource uh to make up for that which is more costly so to answer your question I do think that at some point we will not need as many staff math it's not there next year or the next year probably not for the next several years they'll be you're right there'll be more calculations to come as we get more of those type of vehicles absolutely Lauren thank you

[59:00] um as we look at expanding infrastructure for charging for municipal vehicles are we also looking at any possibility for making sure that or any overlaps for that might be more cost effective to also try and provide some public charging yeah no absolutely um and we actually I shouldn't I probably should have elaborated we have been having lots of conversations with Partners like Excel to try and figure out how can we not only address the city fleet privacy infrastructure but the public infrastructure because frankly there's actually not that many Chargers in the city of Boulder at all so we've been having lots of conversations honestly with Excel around that issue um we're not quite there yet more to come the whole line so we'll go Bob and then Rachel and I don't know what this what's it you're going to get a chance you're

[60:00] gonna have something that all you want to talk about okay go ahead not an EV question okay um with the deconstruction of Alpine Balsam becoming more apparent to people that drive up and on Broadway or live in the neighborhood do we have an update coming from you and Kurtz sometime soon I thought I saw that in the look forward agenda on on what where we're at and where we're heading yes yes with alpine balsamic yeah April 27th we have a study session and we would be talking not only the financial component but Alpine Balsam the whole site it always amazes me when staff could just pull out the dates like that yeah that'll be April 27th we're fourth on your agenda that was amazing go ahead Rachel right you should test us like who even knows what today is I feel a little silly like looking right at you with his microphones between us but um but my question is on the staff shortages and trades and I didn't know how you define trades but wanted to know if like is that a position like with policing where Maris has created you

[61:00] know is looking to create an academy like a path to filling those jobs are you looking is that necessary do people need already the certifications to work in the trades or can we provide that are we are we and that might be also for Nuria like are we doing that just city-wide yeah no that's great and actually um folks in David's uh on David's team we've been chatting about what is the pipeline how do we set that up um are we out frankly talking to high schools about what their options are um after at high school what's the path that they could take um to be honest I think some of what has complicated those conversations were already starting to percolate with covid it's what's fascinating to me in the literature I've read is then there's a lot of folks that don't even they don't want um to have to be in person and so all of a sudden you're layering in another component of folks feeling that well

[62:00] maybe my option is to take some other type of job where I don't have to be in all the time and and frankly the jobs we're talking about you very much have to be there with your hands doing the work so there's not that same option but we are trying to figure out how do we set up The Path so that we can train folks we are actually shifting some of the requirements to try and get folks in the door just with are you excited to be here great we will train you um we will get you certified we will so we're trying to figure out whether that package looked like and then hopefully to keep folks and retain them perfect thanks yeah anything else for Joanna right thank you so much Sandra alrighty good evening everybody Sandra Janice Deputy City attorney so as you can imagine the legal work crosses all of these departments and we

[63:01] literally touch almost every piece of work it's really staggering to me to think about because we are an office of 22 people there's 15 attorneys and seven support folks and it's just incredible to me how we can do all the work you know there's so much day-to-day work I think that needs to be recognized we have litigation we have hundreds and hundreds of contracts and we help create policies and then of course there's all the ad hoc work that just comes up you know randomly that wasn't planned on and um you know I think we do an incredible job responding to those requests and and are happy to support all of our departments in in various ways I've been asked to lift up a couple of items that we've been working on or that we will be working on the first I'll talk about is the library district so there's been a

[64:02] lot of work already done in that area which is really wonderful the selection committee is moving forward with creating applications for the library trustee positions the goal I believe is to post it by March 3rd receive responses by the 24th and hopefully conduct interviews by the end of April so um Council on the county will have the opportunity to ratify by two-thirds vote the selected candidates for the Library District Board of Trustees and then once the board is seated um the board the county and the city can begin the work of negotiating the IGA and creating the bylaws and that's another area where our office will be heavily involved and we look forward to that work next I'd like to talk about some of the land use matters that we'll be working on and I don't want to steal Brad's thunder so I'm not going to go into

[65:00] detail no yeah it is quite remarkable um how much work has evolved in in this area we have one land use attorney and she's incredible and many of you know her hella piano wig but we've had to hire another attorney because there is so much work and um so um as I mentioned um there's there's a huge list but I'll just highlight a couple of them the accessory dwelling unit updates so we'll be considering or you'll be considering an ordinance to remove saturation limits for adus within a certain radius to allow for attached or detached adus Zoning for affordable housing so considering an ordinance to increase affordable housing by revising density

[66:01] calculations reducing parking restrictions and looking at other zoning ordinance amendments that could better incentivize smaller more affordable housing um there's the occupancy approach and forming a comparative analysis from other communities develop developing a model occupancy approach and soliciting Community input for ordinance revisions there's also the work related to Boulder Junction phase two um so there's quite a bit of work related to that plan Amendment adoption preparing the Boulder Valley comp plan land use plan amendments regulatory updates um just a whole slew of things including some District work as well we'll be looking at the current Boulder Junction District formation and seeing if there can be some improvements made on that

[67:01] and then the East Boulder sub-community plan so implementation plays of the plan including regulatory changes and potentially changes to the zoning map and preparation of a form-based code for some areas of change lastly I'll mention the energy conservation code so considering updates to the city of Boulder energy conservation code it's not on the council work plan but it is on planning and development services work plan the City generally adopts International Code Council codes for its building codes with local amendments about every six years the um the most recent ICC codes get adopted the energy conservation code is part of these codes and addresses the Energy Efficiency requirements of new buildings remodels and additions the city typically updates the energy

[68:00] conservation code more frequently and increases the Energy Efficiency requirements including lowering the threshold for Net Zero requirements with this update we also anticipate exploring a new requirement that new buildings have electric appliances or our electric appliance ready another area that I'd like to like to lift up has to do with inclusionary housing updates and so you will be considering an ordinance to revise the existing inclusionary housing program to focus on increasing middle income units another area of work has to do with downtown streets as public spaces so we'll be analyzing downtown streets and consideration of full closure of certain streets and there's definitely potential for ordinance work there we are always involved in ballot initiatives and Charter amendments we take a lead with the city clerk's office

[69:01] on that and um you know I'm only aware of one potential initiative being brought forward but it's in a very initial phase I'm sure there will be more it's really early in the process and so we'll be doing a lot of that work in the third quarter and then as Nuri has mentioned we're working uh related to changes for the police oversight panel ordinance and making improvements to that to transparency and um let's see I think that is it yes I love what you said I think that's it that was like is that all in my mind cancel any questions for Sandra yeah Aaron go ahead thanks so much for all that Sandra and just one quick note that while we are hoping to get the application out for the library district trustees by March 3rd we're hoping to appoint sooner than the end of April

[70:01] just to get them on the record thank you any other questions or comments all right Sandra thank you very much Pam can I come to you next to kick us off as the administrator of the courts and then you can hand it off to the judge when you're ready absolutely yes so I get to wear two hats right now um Pam Davis assistant city manager but also serving as interim Municipal Court Administrator uh we had a little leadership transition toward the end of last year and seeking this to be an opportunity to really take a look holistically at the way that our our court is currently delivering Services there's been a lot of change in both kind of the mission culture and Technology around running a court in the last several years and so we're trying to be really thoughtful about stepping into new leadership of that and as you know the court has sort of a combo structure where we have our municipal judge Linda who really um drives a lot of those cultural improvements I think over the years as

[71:00] as serving as that judge and then we have an administrator who reports sort of through the city management structure um that really supports the management of all other staff at the court as well as kind of all of those technology improvements um and and professional development and things like that so we have identified four things in addition to you know the court is certainly a day in and day out business and we have folks from the community coming through daily and a great team to support that it's an amazing operation to be a part of right now um so our first priority really is around this department structure leadership transition and filling vacancies so in addition to identifying um the role in in hiring a new court administrator we also are grateful that you all authorize in the budget an additional position for the municipal court to support our community Court program long term and so we will be be hoping to fill both of those positions in the first two quarters of this year

[72:02] we with that are doing some internal assessment of the overall structure of the Court we sort of have a bifurcated departmental structure um kind of the Violations Bureau and the probation office now we'll sort of have a three-prong system that includes Community Court as kind of a standout division of of the court so we're working through those changes and Human Resources has been a great partner in that our second main priority is of course continuing to enhance that Community Court program that has been successful we have a current Grant from the Department of Justice that really helped with the startup of that program and learning from colleagues around the country who have been engaged in this sort of work with that this year is kind of the home stretch of that Grant cycle and then transitioning that program to be a full-fledged in-house program moving forward and so we'll have have some great work there with that you know certainly the city attorney's office and

[73:01] housing and Human Services and other partners in the community have played a significant role in really supporting the development of that and alternative Pathways to get folks where they need to be in our community our third priority um this is I think somewhat overdue um but as as the programs have begun to be enhanced within the Municipal Court we really want to partner with our Communications Department and and um Sarah's team has dedicated some resources to us this year to really reimagine how the court interacts with our community proactively certainly with the community Court program and other recent events we've started to get a lot more kind of one-off requests for information and how do things work and so we are putting some thought around a full-fledged strategic Communications plan for the court so how do we go out proactively and and have kind of that road show to educate interested parties on not just Community Court but all the different facets of our Municipal Court the difference between Municipal

[74:01] violations and other levels of the Criminal Justice System you know we've had thoughts about demystifying what it's like to appear in the municipal court so that when you want to contest a ticket or engage with a judge or the city attorney's office like understanding what that's like so it's not this big scary mysterious thing that that has a punitive kind of connotation to it and then finally as has recently come up on a couple topics with you all enhancing the data capabilities of the court is really important so we have actually three in-flight technology Improvement projects going on right now one is around a records management system for our community Court clients so that we have kind of a One-Stop shop where we can share data and information with Partners about folks that we regularly interact with and then we have both our systems around it's the marketing parking ticketing system right and then the there's an interface with

[75:01] PD the PD ticketing system as well bringing those up to speed with that outside of those projects you know we've heard loud and clear requests for better demographic breakdown of information as it relates to folks going through the court process and so we're we're currently kind of looking at Band-Aids and toothpicks to try to figure out how to get some more information but we hope to evolve Beyond on that with our I.T partners and our housing and Human Services Partners so that we have better on-demand information for you all she did such a great job I don't need to add anything but I'm here for questions excellent any questions for Pam or Linda all right thank you very much oh oh sorry sorry I called in to you go ahead I'm just curious to hear um Linda just since we didn't get to hear from you what are you most excited about

[76:00] what am I most excited about so two things I'm really excited about I am looking forward I I'm very excited about the fact that we're re-examining sort of the structure of our department and whether it makes sense given we haven't really looked at that for at least eight years when our our most recent court administrator came on board and so I think being able to do that with the assistance of somebody who's looking at it through the city manager's office lens which brings a different perspective I think has really been exciting what was the second the second so second is data and I know I'm I get excited about data and so having um being able to implement this new system which will be shared um uh into with certain internal Partners but more importantly with some of our external partners that also provide homeless services so that we'll be able to share information about the holistic work that's being done for

[77:00] individuals is really exciting anything else thanks for that question Nicole that's great thanks thanks Marie do we get to all the internal Services departments all right in that case other directors I will take volunteers to go next eeny meeny miny can I get a mo all right thank you very much good evening Council I'm Chris Jones the interim director of community Vitality you are very familiar with my face um uh uh in the in the midst of all of the the work that we pursued together last year and Community Vitality we were working internally a lot of strategic planning because we're folding in two new uh work groups arts and culture and the office of special events so arts and culture moved from the library the office of

[78:00] special events moved from the city manager's office and so with that strategic planning we wanted to identify what is the unique role that Community Vitality plays in the realm of the organization and in support of the sustainability equity and resilience framework and some of you may have heard me talk about our strategic pillars that we've identified before but I think it's an important context for the things that we're really excited about and what we're working on in 2023 so those pillars are cultural vibrancy which is largely the work of arts and culture and special events District Vitality that's our general improvement district support work downtown University Hill and Boulder Junction and last is access for all which is what ties it all together parking and access related functions also making sure that the people that want to get to the special places in the city or special events or participate in arts and culture are able to and so with those as the theme I'll talk about our priorities but really other things that

[79:01] we're excited about there's a lot more going on than the things that I'll mention but first a topic that you're familiar with access management and parking strategy implementation we are moving forward with our graduated or sorry our performance base pricing this April will be implementing higher parking rates on our highest demand block faces in the downtown so you'll be hearing more about that we're also working with neighborhoods that have applied to be part of a neighborhood permit parking program or the now we're we're calling it The residential access management program so you'll be hearing more about that um as the year goes on we'll be Consulting with the transportation Advisory Board here this spring to to pursue that process um I think that covers what we're planning right now for access management parking strategy oh one more thing we're working with Transportation Mobility on Camp evaluation which is part of ramp so that we'll need to update some ordinances to

[80:00] make sure that the camp program can continue into 2024 and Beyond sorry so Camp is Chautauqua access management program ramp is residential access management program [Music] [Laughter] maybe there's a fourth pillar there I love acronyms and alliterations so anyhow another priority area we're excited about is you've heard me probably say this before we're going gaitless in all of our downtown garages which when it happens it might not seem like that big of a deal October 1st is our Target date we have a contractor that is very well versed in going gaitless we're really excited the technology will allow you once you've registered your vehicle your license plate your credit card number and your cell phone number the moment you arrive in one of our city-owned garages you'll get a text message saying welcome to the garage your session has

[81:00] begun you don't have to think about your session again and when you leave you'll get a text message saying thanks for staying and we've charged your credit card for your stay so really making the for the folks who need to use our parking garages making that experience very smooth no more waiting behind somebody who's at the gate who can't figure out the credit card system that will be that will be those days will be behind us so I personally am very much looking forward to that as are many others um commercial area activations you might remember our conversation we we conversations we had around arpa funds we identified some dollars for commercial area activations so we've got the office of special events is working with some contractors on activations in Boulder Junction we've already had some events going on out there we're of course working with the cross-departmental effort for downtown streets as public space and so some of those resources are going to be activating the spaces that we identified through that process and also looking at the University Hill area and making sure knowing that there's a lot of impacts

[82:00] happening on the hill right now with all the construction from the conference center and the hill hotel we want to make sure that we're keeping that space active and vital we're working really closely with the university and I'm hopefully going to be capitalizing on the new energy with Coach Prime to maybe have some some football focused activations come next Fall um let's see next a topic again we've talked about a lot over the years affordable commercial program development we've engaged with Michael Kercheval at the CU real estate Center he has a group of grad students that have been focusing on this since last fall so we've been working with them regularly we're really excited they're going to be presenting their program recommendations to us in April we're hopeful that what they will discover through their research across the country I'm working with folks like Prosper Portland that has a it's a program that has a very aggressive affordable commercial component that we'll be able to learn some things and

[83:01] hopefully bring a good thought to you all for consideration either in an information item or at the right time a more thorough study session with Council some more to come on that um another area is renewed Universal University Hill commercial reinvestment strategy so tied to the challenges the Hill's going through right now but an appreciation of a couple years from now when we have the the hill hotel and the conference center open um we also have the 14th Street lot that the general improvement district owns that we're looking at how do we capitalize on that as the next opportunity for transformation and how does that relate to connections to downtown we've secured a grant from the Colorado Urban Land Institute for a technical advisory panel to occur actually I believe it's scheduled for late March and so you're going to be hearing more about that very soon we're going to get a lot of good advice from outside

[84:01] sources folks who are not necessarily really invested in what's happening in Boulder right now but they're going to be able to provide us some good advice on how to move forward specifically with 14th Street lot but in the context of connectivity challenges and other issues on the hill that will be Again part of an information item that we're planning to prepare for you all but again if there's if there's interest we can Elevate that to a study session to talk about other things that are going on on the hill last but certainly not least and I match the zanski's in the audience our arts and culture group of everything that they're working on they're they're very excited about their experiments in public art this is a program that's been around for a number of years and you see iterations of that program out and about but with new funding and arpa dollars that were identified they're looking to be able to be doing more of that so you're going to be hearing more about engagement with the community engagement with other Departments of the city to capitalize on on a lot more resources in that program

[85:02] and I think the first one is called Farm to spaceship so if you haven't heard about that already you're going to be hearing about it soon and so it's kind of a smorgasbord of excitement and Community Vitality but I'm really delighted to be able to share that all with you this evening y'all got questions for Chris Matt can I just say something before you get to questions um I know that uh Chris just touched on downtown as public spaces you'll note that at the end of our department list we've noted six additional topics we plan to touch on those specifically because they are multi-departmental so know that when those come up we'll we've got uh some updates to share on that end as well thanks Nuria Matt go ahead and then Tara oh here Chris can you describe in a little more detail about that study session you might be suggesting I suggested to the hills commercial the

[86:02] hill so thank you for the question um so there's a lot of work going on on the hill right now there is a priority of the University Hill commercial area management commission you can see to revitalize the commercial working group so there's been the neighborhood working group that realized a lot of those priorities that were discussed earlier of the noise ordinances on the hill the commercial interests are really interested in in pursuing some other priorities that they've been talking about for a while so we first want to go through this Uli tap process that will reveal probably some some expert recommendations of things that the city might want to consider for pursuing policy change or ordinance change that could affect the future of the hill we want to package those recommendations and and inform counsel of all the things that are going on the hill and we'll prepare them in an information item for sure but if there

[87:02] is interest in more more formal interaction we'd be happy to come to council there's interest [Laughter] Matt thank you for your gracious deferral your turn and then we'll go to Juni um so I don't know if this will be answered by either Matt maybe Brad or Chris so I'll pose the question but it's for us to do with public art and I know certainly I have a strong interest in seeing more of it and I know we've heard from the community that they do as well but there's also some barriers to entry with regards to how we get public art established and made um and some of those things so I'm just curious if there's um with investing in more public art is there are there some code or ordinance changes that are you've thought of or barriers that might want to come to us to help sort of make it easier and streamline that process for artists to get their art in public and kind of get our bureaucracy a little bit more out of the way for those sorts of things that we want to see in our community so I'm just curious any meanie I will I'll start and maybe Brad if you have uh additional context

[88:00] that you want to share um from the realm of arts and culture the office of of arts and culture um I'd say that we turn to the community cultural plan which would it's its Horizon is coming up at the end of this year and we're looking to update that so that's really our guide um in in how we envision what what aren't we doing that we could be doing to help solve some of those or not solve but maybe uh meet the appetite I'd say that maybe Open Spaces public spaces and public art are probably the the insatiable appetites in the city and of our community and so looking to that update process is probably where I would say is a great opportunity for Council to influence breaking down any of those barriers that are real or perceived moving forward anything on ad Brad yes um I would say that art comes in a lot to different shapes and sizes and so if it's a little sculpture in a playground or something we don't need to touch that from a

[89:01] regulatory standpoint if it's a giant fan-like structure might be important to look at wind load and and snow load for example if it's a mirror on a wall that happens to have Colonel Sanders face on it maybe we need to look at that as a sign and um and so so we really have to look at each one individually and I think the key there is a pre-application meetings and Matt and I have had preliminary conversations but none come up too much yet of how we want to just get early and often on those and and I think that really is the key uh Judy and then Lauren and then Rachel are you on that same one okay I'm gonna let Lauren jump ahead because she's on the same point if that's all right okay go ahead Lauren I think one of the things I've heard from the Arts community and this was prior to me being on Council was that there was an inter or that they were under the impression that the department was looking at a permitting pathway

[90:02] specifically for sculpture and I think that that might not have actually happened or gone forward through covid and things changing and so just want to raise that as something that we might want to look at again okay all right um I see uh Juni and then Rachel had a question for Matt question about the going gaitless in all CD owned is it through an app or it will not be through a smartphone app it will but it will be web based so so kind of you don't have to download an app to use the system but you do have to go to a website to register the first time and once you're registered with the system you never have to interact again unless your credit card expires or something changes you get a new license plate thank you that's great so what if

[91:02] you showed up and you're not registered can you still use the lot or is it more like how do you get paid you see what I mean like so yeah so part of the system and a great example if you have time if you're ever in downtown Denver um the parking garage at I think it's 17th and Blake across from the dairy block um I think I think that's what it's called anyhow it's Metropolis garage that is the the direction that we're going they have QR codes identify you know throughout the garage scan the QR code it brings up the website that's where you put in your information once you've done it the first time you never have to do it again thank you so much and I just wanted to note I welcome all the comments about the Arts as well thank you Rachel I didn't have a comment I just noticed that Matt moved down and so I didn't know if maybe he had something he wanted to offer in response to maybe Matt's question Mr tedanski uh Brad and Chris covered it very well

[92:00] so thanks all right thanks anyone else for Chris or team all right thank you for going first who next oh Brad Brad and Kirk I know right that was like that was fast on the draw well he's gonna do mine uh actually in the spirit of operational excellence uh David Bell is going to be doing my presentation this evening that did not turn out the way I expected okay I'm Brad Mueller I'm the director of planning and development services so uh before I talk about the highlighted priorities I do want to mention um which is true of all of my colleagues who I greatly respect and and enjoy working with immensely it's been wonderful joining this team um we have probably 80 percent of our work which is really daily operations so that's really the the tip that's the

[93:01] part of the iceberg that's underneath water and um that didn't come out right um but it's operating very well uh so David help me out here but the other parts uh are part of what we'll talk about we do actually have as a department about a hundred different work plan items uh true again of the other departments as well so just for some context um the first item that I wanted to highlight is one that's very much in partnership with Community Vitality transportation and mobility in Parks and Recreation and that's a growing appreciation that we've had for the convergence if you will of a number of different downtown projects some of which are on a schedule some of which are not but all of which have the potential of interacting with each other and frankly we should interact with each other so that we're not stepping on each other's Toes or having a misaligned goals and things like that so we are

[94:01] planning and proposing a downtown plan implementation framework there are at least 13 and I'm going to Rattle them off different initiatives that you'll be familiar with one is the Civic area Park designing construction the Arboretum design and construction the Pearl Street Mall refresh historic places plan that Park and Recreation is working on or planning to work on deconstruction of both the Park Central and New Britain buildings Downtown Vision plan implementation which through Community Vitality the downtown core arterial Network plan can downtown can curbside management guide book downtown Boulder Station improvements downtown streets as public spaces the CU connectivity plan or I'm sorry the hill and downtown connectivity study a Civic area historic district designation and finally the East bookend Redevelopment plan so you can see my by just rattling those off we

[95:00] have both an opportunity and probably an obligation to make sure that we're coordinating very closely on that we as a department are proposing to facilitate those not manage them not do those plans by any sense but provide some cohesiveness around that and we'll work to flesh that out throughout the year the next priorities that I'll speak to are ones that are very familiar with first the Adu regulation updates uh following the study session that we had on January 26th we will be bringing forward to you the um first reading on April 20th and the second reading on May 4th so very much on track to bring that forward in the time frame that we talked about in November the Boulder Junction phase two planning is in an inventory and assessment phase right now we will be bringing forward to you an IP April April 20th and with that will be various

[96:00] alternatives for a Boulder Junction plan you might recall from our discussion in November that we are not reopening the plan per se but rather seeing if there are things that should be tweaked given that it's been some 15 years or so since that was initially adopted so you'll have the opportunity between that IP and then the study session that's planned currently for May 8th to give us feedback on those types of implementation uh Strat I'm sorry those particular amendments that could be made as part of that we are then targeting to do the study session as I said on May 8th and then bring it forward for hearing in September so that that can be done and amended as part of a first effort yet this year after that is about another Year's worth of implementation and that are the rezonings and those types of things that would Implement what the plan contemplates the next priority again one that you're very familiar with occupancy code

[97:00] updates we've got a study session just coming up here on May 9th and then following that we'll do some boards uh visit to boards and additional engagement we've already been doing engagement we'll continue that and then are anticipating that um and this is um kind of on the far end that we would come forward on first reading in August and second reading on August 31st if Council decides to keep the scope even narrow then we talk about we could even do that one a little bit earlier than those dates the next one is zoning code updates for affordability we are planning a study session on March 23rd so very quickly for that one as well and uh first reading and second reading on September 14th and September 30th so really a common theme of all of those policy items is what we talked about in November and really committing to the plan that we laid out in front of you

[98:00] but also recognizing that that was with a very defined scope so if it is council's desire as we bring these forward in study session change the scope we'll also have a conversation about what's realistic in terms of how we could bring in an adoption or an ordinance forward as part of that and of course that's part of the iterative discussion that we would want to have with you in that regard the final priority area that also is a council priority is the initiation of urban Services study for area three you'll recall from our discussion in November the importance of having that done prior to the conference plan we still have a time frame that allows us to do that but has us starting that with our consultant starting with Consultants at the end of the year and we still feel very comfortable about that time frame in in terms of getting that done prior to the comprehensive Plan update and then the last priority area that I'll speak to is one that we've heard a

[99:00] little bit about how it impacts other departments as well and that's simply the recruiting and retention of Staff it's no surprise that all departments have been working through that I can very much relate to the trades which directly feeds into our Building Trades and Building Inspections and those types of things as well I am interested not only in filling our vacancies but retaining the people we have and making sure that we've got good balance in doing that so I'm focusing and we are as a management team focusing on culture on Equity values on process improvements and policy scopes and I want to talk a little bit in particularly about those last two things since I've been able to have conversations with some of you about that and it was highlighted in the um in the email or earlier in the last couple of days um really I'd like just for simplification to kind of make a distinction between two sets of things

[100:01] one that have been ongoing business practices and others that are policy related the department actually has been engaged for about two and a half years so I was the beneficiary of walking into this into a re- imagination of its business practices of the business model designing the future in a way that allowed for all online services but also integrated that then as we've gotten out of covet into in-person and telephone and web um really what we talk about in larger terms as being operational excellence internally we've called that the big project and it's uh called the big project because it has many many sub-projects that are part of it and I was again lucky to step into something that was well underway my job is I've seen it now that I've been here a half year has been to push that forward um keeping most of most of it because

[101:00] most of it's very good questioning some of it and tweaking some of it I will share with you for example as part of that was a commitment to look at roles and responsibilities so that gets into looking at the workflow of permits workflow of land use cases workflows of contractor licenses workflow of code compliance issues and as part of that just last week we did reorganize part of the or of the department as well bringing a group that was responsible for intake and kind of siled off to itself and putting it into the two disciplines that it directly Services building permits and land use permits so bringing them closer to that action and that's one of just dozens of different steps that we're taking that are implementation of that no more no one more than me or the the staff wants to see the results of those Implement implementations happen quickly some of it does just take time and we're

[102:01] we're beginning to see that before I talk about the policy opportunities I want to talk a little bit about some setbacks and triage that we are now doing as part of that and I had a little bit of a chance to describe some of that um in different settings but to to speak about it a little more holistically my assessment is we were primed to continue to make good progress especially in building permits in the fall we had the pieces in place to be able to to move forward on some of our key performance indicators on that and then and and I hope uh Council this doesn't come across as as excuses but it's just the reality we lived with which was we had a failed search for two plans examiners when we we only have five positions total uh we had a failed search with the Chief Building official our lead in plans examiners became very ill and was out for about a month and then we also had the contract uh company

[103:01] that we worked with ramping up but not doing as much work as I later learned we probably could have been asking for them so we are now making uh inroads on all of those we have hired a plans examiner just yesterday I learned we have applicants for the other open position much like many of my colleagues we were getting none so that was a little scary but we are getting some well underway with the Chief Building official search leaning into our contract folks and then importantly communicating that out into the community as well so I've got meetings for example with the chamber Development Group next week other ones that I'll be following up and an open house too to get feedback from the community these are all what I would characterize as kind of the triage to make up for what in hindsight will look like a temporary setback in the fall bigger picture is something that I'm very excited about and it's what I would

[104:02] say is a door being open for us in a way that maybe hasn't been in the past and that's feedback from some of you and through the hotline too about are there policies or code things that could be changed that would in fact make processes more predictable or easier for would-be applicants whether we're talking about the bigger projects that are quasi-judicial or the more day-to-day ones that are building permits we have constantly as a department been looking for a change in process as I described to you what we maybe haven't always had the door open to us is to look at actual policy and and bring forward the pros and cons of looking at things like the use review process and whether that always has to be done in a quasi-judicial matter or whether parts of that can be pushed down to the administrative level with the opportunity for appeal or call up those

[105:01] types of things um I'm excited about the opportunity of being able to identify that I know staff is just because those have been comments I've heard since I started we don't have a list yet because we didn't we didn't know that that was a thing so now we do uh assuming there's consensus around that and we will work through that through the end of the year and and still be able to manage the other work program items that we've committed to that concludes my presentation by David Bell excellent presentation sir um Council this has the potential to run away with the rest of our evening so let's be mindful about staying focused on this presentation and additional topics we could take up tomorrow um Aaron and then Matt oh you're good okay okay usually ready just in case I was the one hit the button [Laughter] so I just have 17 questions for you Brad

[106:03] just kidding um thanks for all that and for all the hard work that your team is is doing and the phenomenal work and it's really great to hear about some of those dates associated with some of these initiatives it's the first time I've heard of some of those and that's exciting that we have some actual targets for that so good to hear about that and then just wanted to just give you a little bit of public feedback here because we've talked one-on-one about some of this stuff about that that last item just to elevate that publicly that just to invite that if there are places in in your processes that are slowing everything down and preventing people from getting work done that do come to us with those and say hey we're noticing a problem here and we can't restructure to fix it we actually need to change this bit of code over here in order to get around this problem and so just want to throw that door wide open and say look for those pain points and come to us with those uh please because we do want to make the processes more efficient as we do here as we all know

[107:02] constantly from members of the community about challenges with the you know the speed of Permitting and such so just make that public please do and of course we'd have a process to consider them yeah but do come to us with the ideas thank you sure I know um I know that was pointed towards Brad but I'd love to extend that to everybody um everybody like just and I don't want to put Nuri on the spot of now we're directing staff but these are things that I would love if there's any bottleneck that we're we're getting in our own way please I would just I I would love for that stuff to come to us proactively um because when you're doing the work you see the speed bumps you see the roadblocks so we'd love to sort of just have that come to us and at whatever pace is necessary I think that would be fantastic you're here don't mind at all and I think every department heads know that that when things are concerning this is the body that can fix it right and so how to come to that I want to acknowledge the fact that for Brad I hope what you hear between the

[108:01] line too is that they haven't had enough time as they've been working on things to really sit down because it takes time to rip that apart and see what needs to come and what I hear is that potentially by the end of the year they will have a package perhaps for you to take a look at and see what needs to be done and certainly if there's something that needs to be lifted up earlier I'm sure he'll do that but all four anyone coming to council if there's anything that we can do to make any of our processes better Nicole you want to jump on that too yes I do thank you and this was more just a note for you Heather to add to for tomorrow I would love to consider whether we can have a regular kind of check-in process maybe once a year twice a year or something like that where there's just time that folks could come and propose these process changes you made across all departments okay great other questions comments for Brad go ahead Rachel well I'm just I guess

[109:00] I'm wondering will we also revisit this tomorrow or is this sort of the conclusion of this part of the conversation Nuria this is on our list of potential additional topics that I thought we could spend some more time on tomorrow do you agree I think that would be great I think this is good questions and I'm hoping that you'll hear some of it today and if there's more that we want to expound upon Vara we can soon I didn't put a line through it on my list of additional topics I think it's still there cool all right Brad thank you very much um Council it's a a little bit before eight you want to hear one more and break it eight or you want to break now as indicated on the now okay thank you Tara yeah it very clearly is on the agenda and how exciting is it that we'd only be then three minutes off the agenda for break time um so what do you say we take um the 15 minutes that we have allocated ourselves on the agenda for a break and then come on back and I heard Kurt was really excited to go next cool all right thanks bunch

[123:41] and member of council did Tara go out for a beer okay if you see Tara in the kitchen bring her with you Bob's going the long way all right

[124:06] Tara wasn't back there okay did you did you pass on my judgy eyes good thank you okay fantastic hey Tara [Laughter] the countdown has begun oh God is that what I look like that's terrible oh how do people do this all the time look at yourselves on the TV that was alarming it looks like the Crypt Keeper on TV that's terrible alrighty Council if you are doing the countdown of directors there are eight lefts it's gonna be okay Maris Maris just got short of breath she was

[125:01] like eight it's gonna be okay they're all fabulous and they're gonna be so focused it's going to be great um so next on our fun list is Kurt hi Kurt Fern Hopper and I support the Department of Housing and Human Services um I was given um this is the information that my team gave me today that they would like me to cover um so as a result I'm pooling with the rest of the directors that haven't gone yet um Mike's giving you his time happily so I think one of the the great transitions that occurred in HHS over this past year is that um and as many of you knew a year ago we were having challenges with staff just to get to get the work done we're now fully staffed in our really excited about that in just amazing individuals um so the first thing I want to just

[126:01] touch on is there's five distinct new programs that we're launching this year just related to to arpa programs and with our increase in staff and capacity you're going to hear a number of of programs I was looking at our work plan this afternoon for our department we had 49 distinct um projects that we're working on this year I'm only going to cover 47 of them um but um the first one is the uh the building home uh program that's uh that's some supporting it's it's programs and services supporting those experiencing homelessness so the first one uh or the contract has been signed with Focus re-entry and Boulder shelter they'll be providing peer support Pro uh peer support to to individuals who have been housed and are going through the housing process as well as the housing retention team in in U.S Council have actually heard a lot from the community about the some of the concerns of people

[127:02] transitioning into housing and this is really meant to address that and help them be more successful in that process the guaranteed income program is moving forward very well we have a a committee that's been set up which is represented by the community who's helping guide the development of that that will be launching later this summer we're also in our arpa we're launching the Ponderosa second uh mortgage program as homes begin to be completed uh later this year we're also our funds are going to child care in the renovation of the salberg facility for child care expansion in 2024 under Behavioral Health we're helping with Workforce capacity within the community under older adult Older Adult Services recently the East Boulder

[128:02] the age well West or age well East Center was opened and so we've hired staff for that they're going through training to to run those programs and um they're also developing a a program on anti-agism in a workshop that will be offered to the the older adults in our community Family Services I'm excited is relaunching on the youth uh internship program within the city that was put on hold during during covet um so under there's one area that we will be watching and one that I'm uh somewhat concerned about as we track it so you'll you'll know that the eviction prevention program was launched by voter initiative last year that program really solidified and has been working

[129:00] extremely well um however it's uh recently it's been over subscribed and we've been using some arpa funds to help support additional rent support we've been partnering with Boulder County to use some of their funding as well and non-profits have also seen an increase in the need for rental support so far just this year that that team has supported 163 clients and and supported in with 158 thousand dollars and in the Years this begun so we'll be tracking that particularly as as resources begin to dwindle around that support um the date under uh homeless Services obviously uh the day Center is something that you're leaning into I'm actually

[130:00] feeling pretty confident um about moving that forward um and I think within the next couple months we'll have more to sort of reports on on the developments of that we are working with a local organization around the the over you know running of that of that service which will also include a host of other service providers in the community um we're uh We've also I'll get into this a little bit later maybe tomorrow but we so we've written a grant um for three-point Mark 3.1 million for our Respite Center that's I I've seen that as a real high Community where people come out of um the hospital need wound care um or you know just additional support and they don't have a place to be and this is a critical service that we've been trying to figure out how to get up and running for the last three years and hopefully this grant will be successful and we'll be able to do that

[131:02] um and um Chief Harold may also talk about this we've we've launched a high utilizer team um I think we've been meeting for four or five months now um it's it's a host of individuals uh you know judge cook uh you know you know the county jail um Michael Doherty some of our service providers and really diving into how do we solve some of the challenges and there's 48 individuals that we're focusing on right now and we've made various levels of success with 10 of them and a couple of them have been housed as well [Music] um so we we started an acquisition program last year with the boulder shelter trying to house individuals where you can't really find a landlord to house them um so last year we purchased six market rate Condominiums and so the shelter is

[132:00] both the landlord and providing intensive Supportive Services predominantly for individuals who have a long criminal history this year 2023 we're looking to add 17 additional units and we've been able to bring in some federal funding to support that as well and then you project recovery um we're hoping to close on a house in the next three weeks or so and um really excited about a place where individuals can go and receive really intensive substance use treatments um the search program has expanded this year and we have additional staff and that's going to be as you heard at the study session going to be partnered with the carts program and um uh Michael will be talking about that later as well it's a it's a strong

[133:00] partnership with fire and uh NPD um under Behavioral Health we continue to work hand in hand with Boulder County and um they will be presenting their road map around Behavioral Health about the middle of this year so just to remind you HHS invests will will be investing this year about seven million dollars in non-profit organizations in our community that do things like substance education um things under the Health Equity Fund a variety of things that really support our community um and lastly under housing we'll be partnering as we are on the Alpine Balsam development we're co-developers with uh with BHP on that it will be the largest affordable housing project in the city when it's developed it's roughly around you know 200 units

[134:03] and um so excited we're working you know really developing the plans and the types of units and that sort of thing and that development in 2022 127 units of affordable housing were added to the city we're now at 8.3 percent of all units in the city are permanently affordable um so we're we're uh more than halfway to our recently created 15 15 goal we currently have over a thousand uh units in the pipeline either going through entitlements or the land has been purchased uh in the planning stages so there's a lot of ongoing work with that as well the middle income down payment pilot will be coming you coming to you on April 20th um that actually started in the in the previous Council we're hoping it doesn't go to the next Council um and it's really an interesting um uh an interesting project because

[135:01] it's it's really looking at serving a level of the population that we haven't served before and um inclusion the inclusionary housing update that will be coming to you late summer early fall we had a study session on that a couple months ago and I'm excited to do this because um Michelle Allen who has been running the IH program for several years has worked for the city for over 20 years told me you know two and a half years ago she was going to retire I talked her out of it like three or four times and this is like her parting gift to help get this across the finish line and then she will be able to retire we've also brought someone else along who's mentoring in that position is going to take over um extraordinarily well um the manufactured housing facility we applied for the billing permits for that

[136:00] facility two weeks ago we hope to be breaking ground late summer and we're in the process now of selecting the the contractor to construct that facility um about three and a half years ago HHS was simply relying on the budget of the city of Boulder our our budget was about 21 million then um it's about 40 million now um and we weren't bringing in any outside resources last year um uh the HHS team successfully brought in 10 million dollars in in Grants and in the last six weeks has written grants totaling 13 million and we can go into some of those tomorrow if you would like as well and and finally I would close in saying that our mantra for our team this year is work with joy and um it's uh it's a joy to serve this

[137:01] community and really support each other in that so I'm looking forward to the conversations during this Retreat around that thank you all right Council questions Rachel go ahead Rachel Matt got it got it I'll hold most of my um more direct homelessness um questions that Matt and I hotlined until tomorrow um but one question I saw it mentioned in I think maybe three places in here about high utilizers and I don't I don't think we've gotten a detailed update on what that is involving and I don't think we need one tonight but I think it would be helpful for us to know like when when you and I first met in 2018 or 19 like we talked about a model where we were focusing on high utilizers you know from 2017-18 and like kind of you know getting them services and housing and that was expected to be a big part of the solution and and it feels like we're maybe

[138:00] um you know doing the same thing again a couple years later so I'm just wondering it might be helpful for us to get an update on on what's different or how we're looking at the model differently or you know approaching it not in the same way this time so in just a brief response I would say that um what what we're doing is is is far more collaboration with the individuals who can um both make and we also have an operations team as part of that so those are the team that that's the team of individuals that are actually doing the work every day and working with them on an individual basis and so it's a collaboration at that level but it is then it's also the collaboration at a level of individuals who can have influence on on suggesting policy changes or how do we work better together what are the obstacles in trying to get those hurdles um out of the way that

[139:00] pardon me um similar to Rachel I'll hold some some questions some of my stuff for tomorrow but I did have a um sort of point that um I'm glad that you can close someone who's looking to retire and keep them here so David you we've got our closer for all of our retention issues city-wide we can just stick Kurt on them and they won't go anywhere um no my question is centered around um we talked about the county and I think a couple times we've been sort of inquiring about the this this meeting of the minds more or less um between us and County Commissioners it could have been funny um but so I'm just wondering if there's an update on where that is because I think that's something we're all looking for so I don't know if there's an update on when that might be scheduled yeah and uh we are targeting April 13th uh that study session we've actually uh and we're gonna be meeting uh Kurt doesn't

[140:00] know this because I didn't include him in the email but clay and I are talking and we're going to invite you and Robin in um but that study session we hope to be completely devoted uh to homelessness on that day our County Commissioners have indicated that they will join us um and so uh we will have really robust conversation there about what we do with the county and I'm sure that there will be conversation from you all about what the city side of that that doesn't involve the county necessarily so really looking forward to that and then I'll just add for that High utilizers group because then I'll take that off of the six uh items that are at the end um I wanted to say that that included not only the folks that Kurt mentioned but I think in the in the broad scope of some of our Community Partners I just wanted to highlight Boulder Community health and mental health partners because they are at the table as well because it really is trying to look holistically at what are the needs so that we can really individually figure out what what will help an individual sort of get out of that chronic cycle

[141:03] I just forgot to say thank you to Kurt and his team before I uh dug into my high utiliters or question and also I'm appreciating your like stand-up comedy routine here today I didn't know you had that side it's been awesome laughs Kurt's a hoot all right Council anything else all right Kurt thank you very much all right oh yes I already had volunteers ahead of you I'm so sorry all right Ally good evening members of council I am Ali Rhodes and I have the honor to lead some incredible people who deliver Boulders Parks and Recreation system I think it's a sign of recovery that I can talk about how proud I am of the work they do every day without crying so that's that's good news we are moving through the pandemic right um our priorities are framed by two

[142:01] guideposts we have a new department plan that you all unanimously accepted last year it outlines our priorities for the next five to seven years and we take our responsibility to honor the community's input and your approval and implementing it really seriously we're also committed to achieving national accreditation it forces documentation of policies and practices increasing efficiency accountability and transparency and fostering a culture of continuous Improvement this is done by the commission for the accreditation of Parks and Recreation agencies you'll hear us call it Capra uh so five priorities number one Safety and Security Capper standards are organized into 10 chapters there is one each for security and safety and making sure that we provide the tools training and resources outlined in those chapters will make sure that we are doing everything we can to Foster uh safe workplace for our teammates and place to play for our community members

[143:01] Frontline Staffing Recruitment and Retention you heard several of my colleagues talk about this while yes the city is recovering we continue to be hampered and delivering on our mission in really critical areas like water safety Camp counselors and park maintenance and we're devoting a lot of resources to address this strategically and in partnership with our friends in human resources we are updating our capital investment strategy in line with that new department plan it means that we update all the millions of dollars we spend taking care of our Park system to make sure it reflects Equity the priorities reflected in the plan and 2023 costing uh layered in this is implementing some really exciting projects to take care of really aging infrastructure in our recreation centers and projects here in our downtown core that you've heard about a little bit uh bpr's fee policy so as a reminder access to recreation in Boulder is a

[144:00] social Enterprise that is 85 percent funded by user fees currently if we are trying to train a new teammate council member or Community member on our fee policy we will send you to seven prab memos written in 24th grade level and so documenting our fee policy will achieve a Capra standard and ensure our fee policy is transparent easily understood and we'll be bringing this to you for your input in April to make sure that you can ask questions and support it as well and then finally we're committed to pursuing funding for Community benefit Parks and Recreation as outlined in our 2022 plan funding for our community benefit places and spaces has not kept up with cost escalation and we in tune intend to do everything we can to address this funding Gap this will include advocating for additional tax dollars building capacity for philanthropy and developing public-private Partnerships I'll buy you a beer it wasn't two minutes y'all have any questions for Ellie Aaron

[145:03] go ahead so Ali what's the prognosis for wait for it uh pool availability this summer that's a really good question it's it's too soon to say I can tell you right now that we are um luckily with the 2023 budget we do have new management positions that are providing more capacity for recruitment including um folks in water safety and in in my office we had a job fair just yesterday at Fairview High School we are currently still very constrained we have one pool open Monday through Friday from 6 a.m to 4 30. and so uh I don't want to promise unicorns and rainbows I think we're doing better but it is definitely an issue that is impacting folks across the state we had a call with the governor's office last week and we're looking for some Statewide attention to what is really a Statewide issue foreign I'm having a great time Tara go ahead

[146:01] Ally what can you tell us about plans for our aging infrastructure wow uh in in the Parks what I can tell you is that there is a funding Gap as you all talked about we talked about in the 2022 Parks and Recreation plan in line with data that is echoed in the facilities master plan we know that and when you couple in inflation and cost escalation there's a gap and so we are doing our best that updating our capital investment strategy means that we've got some hard choices and we're going to be prioritizing investment based on the condition of an asset and its criticality to the system that means who benefits from that asset who's impacted if we don't take care of it and so when we talk about updating our capital investment strategy it means that we're not going to be able to take care of some things under current funding for the recreation centers it means that we are going to require a whole lot of money because built vertical infrastructure is very expensive and so Joanna mentioned the funding strategy is one of their key priorities we're working very closely on that effort

[147:00] I've been getting a lot of emails how the Louisville Rec Center is so much better than ours and it's just exhausting to write back so I'm hoping that you can do something about just yeah I would love to respond to that uh Lewisville was able to renovate their aging Recreation Center by passing a tax to fund uh I believe it was around 50 million dollars for the renovation at the same time they passed a dedicated sales tax that subsidizes heavily the operations of that facility so when I talked about pursuing fund of strategies and Joanna talks about funding strategies there's a lot of options and to build a capital stack to build we are talking many many millions of dollars to renovate our recreation centers and it's going to require um different thinking and what is exciting is there's lots of options I just forgot to thank you for the extraordinary work the department does in yourself thank you Ali Maris okay I'm sorry mayor's Herald police chief

[148:03] um one of the exciting things I get to do as police chief is give out ethics and integrity Awards and tonight I'm going to give one council member Laura Folkers gave me back my pen [Laughter] that she borrowed from me like over a year ago but it's important because it's a governor polis pen that you get to take when you sign legislation with the governor so I appreciate that a lot you should have kept it um anyway uh I'm gonna go quickly here um I've got six priorities for the year that I think speak to a few themes that I'm trying to accomplish during my 10 years police chief here in Boulder one we signed on when I first got here to become accredited by the commission on accreditation for law enforcement agencies this is the final year and if I

[149:02] do not finish it this year not only will nyria get mad at me but the accreditation folks will get mad at me and find me so I'm competitive in nature so this will get done and this is a big risk mitigation for the city and I'm hoping to wrap this up November of this year so this is a this is a big deal for police departments it's very hard a lot of resources go into it but it really is just risk mitigation for the police department in the city as a whole um the second I'm hoping to wrap up mid-year is the reimagining plan and that focuses on a few themes as well evidence science technology platforms that support data-driven strategies Community collaboration diversity and Recruitment and accountability measures all of that speaks to equity in different ways and I'm very proud of the progress that we're making there you should know all of the feedback that Council gave I

[150:00] think we met one-on-one or two two-on-ones and it was great feedback and with the assistance of the project manager Wendy Schwartz and Taylor here we're putting all of that in to the document as well as feedback from National civil rights people that are very interested in police reform and so a lot of good civil rights attorneys have looked at this and given feedback as well and I'm very happy to report that the state NAACP is also reviewing this as well thanks to council member friend and so hopefully this gets tightly packaged and it's a document that we can all be proud of in Native 2023. training this continues to be one of the most important things in policing that you can you can attack and I committed to a very aggressive three-year training program for all of the officers I'm just going to highlight a few but we are constantly in a state

[151:02] of training at the Boulder Police Department but some of the ones that are huge lifts for us that are also evidence-based and that have been evaluated for Effectiveness are what is called the able training and that is out of Georgetown law school it's evidence-based and really it seems very basic but if you look at the incidents across the country that cause so much conflict with Community officer bystander could have resulted in a much different outcome in these cases and so we're doing a robust training around the able program Crisis Intervention training that's a 40-hour block of training that we've committed through a grant that we received with the Bureau of Justice Administration that all of our operational people will be trained in Crisis Intervention training which is a Monumental lift in Colorado unlike other states this is part of a basic Academy training it is not in Colorado so imagine this is very hard lift for a mid-size City to accomplish it's a very time because you

[152:01] have to have actors and scenarios so it's very intense training we will get through this by the end of 2023. we're also tackling procedural Justice which is also an evidence-based training and this speaks to the heart of equity fairness and making people that the police come into contact feel like they have an opportunity to discuss why they're interacting with the police department but it really is about having the community see the police as legitimate the reason the interaction to begin is legitimate so we'll get that finished in 2023 and then one of the things that I think have worked so well in Boulder and also as evidence-based and we talked about it a lot is this concept of valuing all uh human life and really putting it the model of everything we do the sanctity of human life we've trained the icap model but now the

[153:00] important work is is to bring all of that and interwo that into all of our policies and procedures that are high risk so think traffic stops think any interactions with the community and so that is what we're working on now is to completely integrate those Concepts into the majority of our policies and procedures heavy lift but I'm very proud of the men and women who have taken this on because a lot of police departments do not they do not take this on this is very hard Concepts and I'm proud that we're doing this unfortunately another huge block of training that we need and it's sad in 2023 that we have to do this but we are reinforcing our active shooter training and so this is a big block of training that requires a lot of resources and very complex training to do it right and so that's a heavy lift as well we will finish that probably mid 2023 as well part of my passion and the reason I stay

[154:00] in policing is because I believe that you can most certainly reduce crime and disorder without using traditional criminal justice mechanisms and so I think you saw a little bit of the last time we presented deputy chief Redfern and I presented we are really working on a lot of place-based strategies and working with other City departments that most certainly can impact crime and disorder too and the city managers bear and very amenable to this kind of look at crime and disorder because it really does impact the majority of City departments and I'm proud of the work that we continue to do across departments and that work will continue recruiting and retention we have done an excellent job with recruiting we have hired our largest class the past year we soon will start 25 new officers and I'm proud of that because it's the biggest but it's the most diverse group of people we've ever hired here in Boulder so that's good and

[155:01] that's exciting that people want to come to Boulder and we also have to focus on retention because as I was saying a little bit earlier we're hiring these people I don't want to lose any of these people it takes a tremendous amount of resources to get a police officer up and trained it takes 18 months and so I don't want to lose the valuable talent that we have and so that has to be a big strategy as well and this all feeds into officer morale and something that we're focusing on a lot at the Boulder Police Department is family morale because as I do exit interviews and I do exit interviews with everybody that leaves the police department we find that family members really don't want their Partners to be in policing anymore and so how do we wrap our our arms around the families of these police officers that have been traumatized by recent events in Boulder and so that is a big part of our strategy moving forward as well I also just want to touch briefly on we

[156:01] received a 500 000 Grant from the bja to work and understand our homeless issues in Boulder and this work we actually have an international acclaimed researcher working with us and this group is also multi-disciplinary that we're working with a lot of departments but the data that we are collecting is really incredible and why that's important is because I think it clearly demonstrates gaps that we do have but really starts to understand data points that I don't think that we've ever had in Boulder around our own house population in the different segments within that population so I'm really happy about that work moving forward and that is also we only have about another year and a half to complete that research evaluation of our responses here in Boulder so with that I'll take any questions but I'm really proud of the the work that we're doing at the Boulder Police Department thanks virus questions

[157:00] Aaron and then Matt not a question but Mayors just want to thank you for all the work that your part department is doing but particularly for this last week Craig we had the active shooter at the Millennium and then the threat at the high school and the department was on site so quickly prevented any injuries in the first and just incredibly grateful to you and the department also for the fire department and their help it was First Responders I just wanted to offer my gratitude for all that work I I appreciate that mayor and it was a team effort we had a lot of response from across the county I do appreciate that a lot thank you Matt I will Echo um what Aaron had said so again thank you so much for for all that work my question uh centers on something you've been working a lot on which is the academy and so I was wondering if you have an update on where we're at because I know that that's also in line with some of that transformation transformative change that you're looking to implement not just here but creating a model for the state so I was just curious if you have an update on the academy yeah thanks for asking that um we ran kind of into a buzz saw a few months ago

[158:00] um yeah haha be quiet man um and it was I'm going to be really honest with you um our proposal was very Progressive and um some of the panel members that make the decision to move forward thought this was should be seen as a boulder initiative and not really helping the state which is unfortunate because this is the way policing should be done across the state and across the country um and I think that we would add a lot of value having said that I've met with the attorney general it's back on the table um and uh it would be is this heavy lift to start this but I am hopeful that we get it back on track and we move forward with it but it is it is an extremely heavy lift but I think the Attorney General is in line with my thinking on this

[159:02] if that's helpful anyone else questions from Maris all right thank you all the super ladies Natalie Europe foreign good evening Council I'm Natalie Stiffler the interim director for transportation and Mobility um I'm gonna try not to have to lean over awkwardly um so I first just wanted to open with I'm super excited to get to present this information that our Department's been working on and a lot of these priorities I think will look familiar to you because the nature of our work is that it takes many years for us to accomplish and I'm just super proud of the team that's doing this work day in and day out so the first thing that I you'll see on the list for transportation is just maintaining core Services as Brad said I think about 80 percent of the work that his department does and same with transportation is really that just

[160:01] maintaining core server core services and ongoing operations and maintenance of our system that's snow nice potholes street sweeping medians Capital maintenance even the restoration of Pop service electrifying The Hop service that all really falls under core service and an interesting kind of fact I think just as we talk about employee retention and how important that is for all of the Departments that have mentioned that tonight is about 40 percent of the transportation department staff work on solely just core services that is all their the job that they're doing and we're missing about 50 percent of that capacity right now and so just the fact that we're keeping up with the level of service that we're doing every day is nothing short of a miracle um so the final thing I'll say about core Services is that the snow and ice response review is kicking off formally tomorrow that you'll be seeing you'll be

[161:01] seeing a press release around that and we're really excited about that work because I think we continue to kind of get slammed by the community on our snow and ice response um and we've been approaching our work in this way for many many years so there's clearly an opportunity to hear from the community on what the expectation is and I expect there will be some changes and it will require money um so the next Focus area uh is obviously a council priority um you have heard a lot about the core arterial Network we'll be continuing to implement that this year we are super excited we're going to be implementing the first phase of Baseline this summer we'll be repaving Baseline and also implementing protected bike lanes All Along Baseline um in that you know a more robust treatment than what's out there today so that's very exciting and then we are launching the iris engagement and planning this year as well we're really

[162:01] excited about just that process of Engagement to hear from the community about what their desires are for Iris we know that there's certainly kind of the vision for protected bike facilities along Iris but it'll be good to hear from the community in more in detail about what that really looks like and I'm really excited about that because I think we really haven't had trade-off conversations around our core arterial Network yet in the past or in the recent past and so I think there's going to be some really interesting and challenging conversations that will be fun to have with the community um and then the final thing on the can is that we are as Brad mentioned thinking about the downtown just initiatives as a whole and there may be an opportunity to move up the downtown Mobility study as part of the can into late the very later part of 2023 um and and that is definitely dependent

[163:01] on what happens with our tip application for for Folsom so more to come on that um the next Focus area is just you know the amount of work that we do around implementing the our capital projects from design and construction standpoint it's amazing I just think the amount of construction we kind of have in the pipeline and that we're currently doing um so the first kind of thing from a key Capital project standpoint is we are transitioning with the partnership of climate initiatives the Excel street light system and that's going to be an exciting project this year as we look at that transition I know we're in the midst of negotiations now so that we are planning to have some Community engagement coupled with that project here in the next few months I'll be kicking off soon and that's a ccrs funded project we'll be finishing 30th in Colorado that has been going on for

[164:00] what feels like years and also North Broadway which um yes we're finishing that and um I know in fact my team was joking this morning that it feels like that one has been a 10-year project so we're excited to get that one wrapped up and also be putting some of the finishing touches on North Broadway to make it meet some of the expectations that folks are looking for and then we'll be starting the 19th Street multimodal project that has also been in the pipeline for a number of years on the design side and then the 28th Street Improvement project will be finishing the bat Lanes the business access and Transit Lanes on 28th Street and building the rest of the Maltese path and the transit stops and that's really exciting because that cues us up for the big State Highway 119 brt project the bus Rapid Transit project that I'll speak to in just a minute and then we are updating our signal Network to really bring it into the 21st century um and this is super exciting we're adding CCTV all throughout the system and it'll just help us operate maintain

[165:01] the system so much better so that's an exciting one as well moving on to the pursuing state and federal grant opportunities there is as many of you are familiar with the infrastructure investment in jobs act that was part of the Biden Administration they passed that in 2021 we have enormous opportunities for funding along with this act there's competitive Grant programs and billions and billions of dollars available for road safety active Transportation Transit climate and equity and so and really These funds need to get spent in the next five years so we plan to be super aggressive we're really excited we've been finishing our vision zero action plan over the last 18 months or so and that's going to be coming to council here in the next couple months and that sets us up to be able to really go after these funding opportunities in a strategic way we the Safe Streets for all program is an enormous Grant opportunity and we're

[166:01] gonna I think go pretty big bigger than we've ever gone for and it'll probably be a camcorder so more to come on that and then we're also with the county submitting a raise Grant in fact that gets submitted I believe today or tomorrow and that's about a 30 million dollar grant for the State Highway 119 bus Rapid Transit Corridor so lots of exciting opportunities on the funding front there and then just finally we are as you all know we're working on expanding our shared micro Mobility across the city and you heard about that late last year and then we're really excited to share that we will be doing an ebike incentive program program pilot huge thanks to our team to make that happen this is again a miracle that we're going to pull this off um and hopefully it'll be late spring and this is with climate initiatives as well late spring early summer we're we're going to model the pilot off of the Denver program and then learn from there and look at a bigger program that's focused more broadly across the

[167:01] community and then finally as you all are aware of we're working on the airport Community conversation and to hear from the community on what the desired future is for the airport and that's going we've extended that project to after the feedback that we heard from you all that's going to be about a year-long process now so we can really have a meaningful engagement process and Communications engagement is helping us a lot with that project EXO that will not be another really fun conversation with the community thank you you actually got jazz hands that was very exciting Tara go ahead first I want to say considering how hard job how hard your job is the fact that you use the adjectives adverbs fun and exciting numerous times in your presentation was a really good sign for retention if you know what I mean any other questions comment I'm not done Oh I thought yeah exactly Kudos on the pre-treatment

[168:01] first of all I want you to know that Natalie taught me everything I could ever hope to learn about snow and ice treatment and I know you're all jealous so you can ask me later but I will say that the pre-treatment on the roads the last couple of storms has been awesome and I've noticed it so thank you I haven't had to take my hoe out lately so that's really good good everyone had thoughts there they didn't need to have go ahead Bob speaking of snow and ice and this is not as much a question for uh Natalie is just a a suggestion to my colleagues um Natalie mentioned that they're going to be launching this snow and ice um Community engagement here um I've had had the opportunity to have a preview of that on web page it is really really snazzy it's really cool and it's very interactive kudos to whoever put that together um and if you go through that webpage you'll learn everything you need to know

[169:00] about snow and ice and you'll be able to respond to our community members and you too can be an expert fantastic anything else for Natalie thank you oh okay no it was funny David was just like pointing to you and then he's like and then I'll go it's all good no I do feel a little bit bad for the right side of your neck so if you want to do a little of that that's okay yeah a little bit of balance we didn't plan this out so well yeah that's right um good evening Council um Jonathan Cohen I am honored to serve the Boulder Community as the Director of the climate initiatives department and arguably I have the best job on the planet I'm just going to say that right up front um so I I think a number of my colleagues have already talked a lot about our Department's work plan tonight but I'm going to give you a little bit of a snapshot of some other things that are in motion a lot of our work plan I just want to point out is really directed by and and

[170:00] um supported by my colleagues here at the table and of course the community they really help direct our work plan on an annual basis so as you know last November the climate tax passed and I think now we really have the opportunity to build upon a lot of our successful initiatives and also start to accelerate and bring new ideas online so 2023 is going to be really exciting like everybody else at the table I have way too much to cover so I'm just going to kind of bucket a little bit and talk about some themes so it's no surprise I don't think to anybody here that energy is still a huge piece of the work that we do both from the perspective of emissions from a Health Equity perspective and now from a really strong perspective on cost so I think we all know the impact that we're seeing from rising utility costs which means that energy burden is going to continue to be a predominant and really high priority for our department moving forward so the energy team is in the process of both expanding and launching a lot of new initiatives all with the purpose of bringing greater

[171:00] energy Equity to traditionally underserved residents and businesses and really with that drastic impact of energy expenses it's it's really high time that we really focus and kind of recalibrate our work in that direction so some examples of the way we're going to be doing that this year I'm going to give you some highlights I have to read them otherwise I'll forget them we're going to be bringing more than a thousand new zero cost solar garden subscriptions to low-income residents we're going to be working to repair and weatherize at least 200 manufactured homes in partnership with our colleagues in HHS and I see Elizabeth in in the audience also she has been such a terrific partner for our department in thinking about how we actually accelerate our impact there and how we use our dollars to have direct investments in in the most needed homes we'll be funding electrification feasibility studies for affordable multi-family properties and really looking at how we expand our heat pump programs for low-income and multi-family housing and Commercial businesses and increasing our Department's investments in electrification and renewable energy and

[172:01] biasing and rebate services so again you see a lot of theme there in terms of energy equity and that's really going to be I think accelerating this next year second we're updating our roadmap and strategies really tied to accelerating the transition of our buildings and our vehicles away from fossil fuels that's been something that's been a focus ours for a very long time but some new additions to that programming are really you heard a little bit I think uh Sandra touched on this and then also in our partnership with my a good colleague to my uh near left looking at our energy code and building performance ordinance so we'll be doing updates there this year expanding our community charging Solutions we heard a little bit of that earlier too and a whole number of Partnerships that are in that bucket of our partnership with Excel Energy and so I I will I will say that it's taken a couple of years maybe we were overly optimistic that we were going to hit the ground running but after a a long time of a strained relationship with our

[173:00] utility provider we're now getting to the point of having a very strong roadmap that really lays out responsibilities roles costs who's going to be doing what what are the policies that we need to be looking at so stay tuned you'll be able to see that road map very soon we're going to be rolling that out to the advisory panel in the next month or so and also I wanted to point out we'll be bringing forward options related to landscape equipment didn't want to miss mentioning that one Bob and Outreach efforts and opportunities related to the IRA of course there's quite a bit more in in there but those are some highlights that I think council is going to want to pay attention to over the next couple of months the third area I wanted to highlight is really shaping up our biodiversity and ecosystem resilience strategy and this is a such a great opportunity to partner with such amazing colleagues around this table open space Parks and Recreation utilities among others but really how we're enhancing the ability of our local Landscapes to absorb those climate change impacts things like higher heat more variable moisture invasive species among other

[174:00] factors so that's going to be looking at things like creating connected habitats for pollinators supporting our ongoing work in other departments related to climate resilient landscape features that support reducing fire risk obviously increasing shade and water efficiency and conservation and that all relates to the campaign that I think council's aware of are cool Boulder campaign and our natural cooling strategy which is really starting to take shape right now we're working to utilize our Urban heat data we've been gathering for over a year and developing an approach really designing and expanding our Urban forests and other land-based cooling strategies and our natural climate Solutions team is really running on this and creating a national model right now which is incredibly exciting bringing a lot of attention to Boulder in this in this area and we're actually leading a regional urban forestry expansion strategy and that includes an equity centered Workforce Development component last piece I wanted to highlight in the area of circularity and zero waste we plan to continue the conversation that

[175:00] we started with all of you last december-ish I think where we started talking about this idea of disposable bags but what is our long-term trajectory in terms of single-use plastics our circularity approach our zero waste approach so we'll be spending a lot of time over the coming months helping small bowl small stores implement the Disposable bag fee and restaurants and cafes with a Statewide ban on styrofoam which comes January 1st of next year and then we'll be doing a bunch of stakeholder process to develop options to think about that long-term plan for single-use Plastics finally I would um I didn't want to miss the opportunity to say that I think our Department's going to play a pretty Central role in thinking about how we expand and build upon the great Foundation that we've been thinking about in terms of overall Community resilience this year it's something that many departments are looking at to think about how that's going to shape up this year and I know that we'll continue to play our role in Statewide policy efforts at the legislature and Regulatory Agencies quite a bit more in motion but hopefully

[176:01] it gives you a snapshot of what's uh to come thanks thanks questions for Jonathan go ahead Lauren what bills are you excited about at the Statewide legislator that we might be supporting we know any legislators we need to talk to some legislators there okay if only you could find one anywhere uh thanks for the question you know uh what's really cool about our our legislative work is um oftentimes we've looked at it from the city perspective and now we have this great opportunity to use the coalitions the policy coalitions particularly cc4ca to really understand um how we broaden the impact that we have and I think there is a lot in motion right now particularly around connection around land use and transportation impacts and how that's all starting to take shape I know car Castillo has talked to a council about some of those emerging Concepts and how those are starting to take shape in

[177:00] terms of actual policy or actual bills is pretty exciting a lot in terms of really accelerating the work of the state's greenhouse gas roadmap starting to look at that and say where are we falling short and what do we need to do in terms of the state providing the opportunities for local jurisdictions to accelerate in those areas so a lot around electrification a lot around connection around our transportation and greenhouse gases in that realm and that there's actually a lot happening this year in terms of pollinators in terms of natural landscapes and in terms of how we think about our IPM integrated Pest Management and chemical use so that's another area that I think has been in the periphery or maybe not really thought about as a climate strategy and obviously as we've moved Rella Abernathy who is our our city IPM coordinator starting to look at how chemical use and the impact it has on our local ecosystems is really really a strong driver of climate we're starting to see that emerge at the

[178:01] Statewide level too so those are some things that I'm really keeping a close eye on anyone else Jonathan thank you David what's the haps with libraries thank you very much and good evening Council David farnan the library director and like Natalie ours has kind of been in the pipeline for some time so I don't think there'll be any surprises and like Jonathan I want to give a shout out to all the folks that helped us and continue to help us all along the way obviously the city managers office in the city attorney's office but also Cara Skinner with finance and Joanna for quite a heavy lift around most of our projects so thank you very much to them we're building a building and that's exciting it's a a milestone really that Community has been in desirous of the library for a long time in North Boulder and I'm proud to say that we're finally going to begin construction and we'll complete it within the next 12 12 13 months um what's and I know the community is going to be proud of it more importantly

[179:00] perhaps for us is really the program the idea of the public library is a fluid one and it has been fluid for over 100 years um and we are committed and excited to meet the community's expectations and to raise them to the extent that we can with what our services and what programs we provide there it's um with libraries we constantly remind ourselves of four basic tenets it's people place partners and platform uh this is an excellent example of all four of those kind of coming together in a nice way the people it is our our extreme our highest hope that we are able to maintain um the 100 bilingual staff that we currently have at nobo library and carry that on as we scale it up the place is one that has been desires of of of a public building alone but a public meeting space and also a library for over 35 years and we're so pleased to be able to be bringing that together it's also situated between um the one a city-owned manufactured home community and and built environment as

[180:01] well as the largest uh manufactured home community in the city of Boulder I'm so anxious about to see what the library can do not only for those communities but also to help out with the business Community I mean libraries mean driving traffic it will be interesting to see what the outcomes of having a Vibrant Community Center at the heart of that Community will be and how it'll impact that that overall Community our partners for the longest time Boulder housing partners and the manufactured on communities have been great partners for us and we look forward to really solidifying those even further and especially around our primary Mission which is around early literacy so focusing highly on early literacy and Outreach our adult literacy program the boulder reads we'll also be moving to North Boulder which is another exciting opportunity and the majority of their users currently are in North Boulder so it's going to shorten their distance to coming into visiting the library and finding a parking's place and the last one is creating a platform form and that's really imagining what the community what that building can be over the course of time ultimately it will be

[181:01] a place where they can learn and grow but we hope that it's a place where it's also extremely fun and I believe the architecture and the design of the building and the commitment of the staff is going to be one that makes it so um secondarily we have the library district transition obviously once the Board of Trustees is appointed we have a lot of work to do to extricate a 120 year old relationship we're it's a lot of work we're looking forward to I think we have a good outline of that plan from when we worked at the ldac the library district advisory committee more than a year ago so we have a good outline of that plan but it's yet to be implemented and a lot of time for myself and my staff my leadership team to be expected after the Board of Trustees is appointed then a couple of other things the main library bathroom remediation reopening I'm we I I hate to say it but I we are excited about this project it's it's one where I am we have beautiful bathrooms they are the nicest bathrooms in the city of Boulder and they're the busiest bathrooms in the city of Boulder and I

[182:01] look forward to crafting a plan to bring them back in a way that is safe for our entire community so that's something we're really looking forward to and then as always I mean libraries are are packed with tons of of data we get data on use of everything I can tell you with some level of certainty that consumption habits of the public have changed throughout the pandemic and we are evaluating all of our services with regularity but there have been some things that I think now three years in we're well aware of what those changes could mean for our service levels and we hope to be able to address those and bring back somewhat maybe a model service a new service model that will um both impress the public and raise their uh level of expectation for what the library can do so I'm happy to take any questions if you have any do you have any Darlings go ahead really bummed we had to reschedule the groundbreaking for the North Boulder Library so any sense on when that might come back or

[183:01] we're aiming for the first week of April um the construction you know the construction will begin in Earnest right around that time anyway and so I think that will match you know people kept telling me the weather was going to be bad and I was like it's Colorado like two inches of snow like what's it what's what's the worry but yeah then it turned out to be like 15 degrees so the first week of April I'm thinking like it's going to be 10 inches of snow and eight degrees and then we're just going to go ahead with it yeah counsel anything else David thank you little birdie whispered in my ear that he might want to go next Hey Joe take the mic I have a strained relationship with these microphones but I'm going to give it a try uh good evening Council uh Joe tadiucci I'm the director of utilities just a quick refresher on our department we have three separate utilities the water the

[184:01] Wastewater and then the third being the storm water and flood um we oversee several billion dollars worth of infrastructure and we have roughly 180 employees who are responsible for operating and maintaining and planning for those systems every day of the year and like was mentioned with a lot of the other departments that is a huge part of our work plan just everyday operations but that's not one of my five I snuck that in there keeping keeping up with aging infrastructure is really our biggest challenge in utilities and it's going to be a similar theme year after year and the same is true for 2023 um and so the the first thing I want to highlight is just a group of capital Improvement projects that are really important to us and and for our generation of utility staff

[185:01] um leaving our infrastructure better than we found it is is really one of our biggest charges so the Albion dam is in our Silver Lake Watershed and doing repairs to that it's a multi-year project had I stayed in the role that I started in in the city I probably would have been the project manager for that a little bummed about that but um really cool to see that getting done and then we have a couple of water treatment plant projects important ones Electric System up upgrades and pump upgrades at our Boulder Reservoir treatment plant and then disinfection and corrosion control at the batasso water treatment plant which is up in the mountains then a lot of a lot of our work is driven by regulatory upgrades and and new standards that come out from the state one of those is driving a phosphorus removal project at our wastewater

[186:00] treatment plant and then you could argue one of the maybe the top project in utilities or top three that's been on the books for years and in a lot of planning is our main sewer Improvement project all of the Wastewater collection pipes in the city eventually funnel down to one pipe that brings it into the Wastewater Plant and it's one of our most critical needs so it's good to see all those projects moving forward the next thing I want to highlight is also a capital Improvement pro project and it's our South Boulder Creek flood mitigation project it's been an ongoing Council priority and a project of significant Community interests which is probably an understatement the it has gone through a lot in the last few years but it's really on a track at the moment it kind of feels like the normal course of business for a

[187:01] major Capital Improvement project and so we're going through the design and permitting process we'll be looking to complete the 60 level of of design uh towards the end of quarter three that's an important milestone for us because there's a a critical uh landowner approval that we need from within the city and the open space uh is is part of the underlying land and so we'll be looking to have a start a disposal discussion once we get to that 60 percent level of design and that disposal process could start late this year and will likely go into next year yeah it's a significant project it involves uh partnership with the university a lot of community interests like I said and lots of partnership and internal coordination uh from my peers sitting at the table including the

[188:01] person here right on my right Dan and I have gotten to be really good friends in the last uh last few years which believe it or not is true um the the third thing that I'd like to highlight is our water efficiency plan which another name for water conservation plan it's a regulatory requirement for utilities that we submit a plan to the state every seven years it's an important plan for our community and for our climate goals and we'll be working closely with Jonathan and the climate initiatives team on that the fourth thing on my list is working on some process refinements for two important work group functions in utilities which is our Utility Billing work it's been a while since we've we've upgraded our processes and done an

[189:01] assessment of the program and so we're part way through that and we'll be continuing to work on it in 2023 um and then we have our in our water quality program we have a backflow process and on that there are 7 000 different devices in the city that prevent liquids from uh being pushed back into our water system and um it's one of I wasn't as familiar with it in Prior roles but I've learned a lot since becoming director and there's there's really a lot to um getting to that compliance it's like having everyone in the city on their on their own honor change their refrigerator filter which just just getting people to do that is tricky and then the the uh last thing I want to mention um we we still maintain the Public Works label for our two separate departments

[190:00] for utilities and transportation and Mobility but for efficiency we share a business services division for administrative support information resources a lot of our financial transactions are around purchasing cards and things like that and then special projects we have a project management function and the team Works behind the scenes but is really instrumental to the success of the of the two departments they help us develop and Implement tools like uh in the last few years we developed a water main break map and reporting tool that customers can go to on the on the city website and so various aspects of Business Services helped us develop that and they take calls from the community when when there is something like a water outage or or maybe a problem that

[191:00] the community sees on the road somewhere and so in 2022 the team prepared an operational strategic plan and so a big Focus for that division uh in supporting our two departments will be implementation of that plan in 2023. so um the one of the cross-departmental things is the public spaces which we'll be talking about later but that's that's kind of the report out on on utilities questions for Joe all right you want to pass it down to your good friend Dan all right and Joe and I actually grew up very close together Upper Peninsula of Michigan Northern Wisconsin so a lot of a lot of connection on that front too so I I knew I didn't want to go first and but I knew I didn't want to go last so thanks Mike [Laughter] um uh Dan Burke uh director of Open

[192:01] Space Mountain parks and proud to be representing uh the work of our department tonight uh before I dive into some of our top priorities just want to provide a little context that in 2020 we went through a pretty significant shift within the department in terms of where we're going we spend decades and decades building the system spending a lot of money on acquisition a lot of our CIP money the majority of it always went to acquisition the Master Plan called out that it's time for shift to perhaps provide more of that capacity over to land stewardship land maintenance and so over the past three years this is our fourth year going into that sort of new paradigm and so a lot of what I'll be speaking tonight is is sort of enhancements continued enhancements in that area and I'll start by uh talking about a new program area of ours that is consolidating current efforts but put in the under one umbrella and that right now we're standing up a new program area within

[193:00] the department that we're entitling science and climate resilience and that's really to help deepen the Department's work and collaboration in the area of science data collection data analysis research and climate resilience and underneath that umbrella is Wildfire resilience and that is a program area that reports directly to me but it's also a program area in which climate initiatives is involved in utilities fire rescue a number of different departments are are all sort of have their fingers in that area and so it's a great collaborative program we're putting together in that and we'll speak a little bit more about Wildfire resilience and in just a bit or yeah tonight still probably um the other area I'll point to is Trail maintenance and Trail enhancements so uh one of the big areas of increasing our capacity is on our Trail maintenance program we have 150 mile Trail Network throughout the system uh we've done a

[194:01] great work of analyzing the conditions of all those trails and now we're starting to hit our top priorities over the last couple of years I'm really proud to report that we've been able to reduce our Trail maintenance backlog by several million dollars over the last couple of years but in addition to continue to focus on that we still have capacity to put our attention towards completing commitments we've made in trail area plans and one of those big commitments that we're going to be completing or beginning construction on and maybe completing this year but certainly in 2024 is the north sky Trail which is a highly anticipated Trail Connection in the northern part of our system so we're breaking ground on that and 2023 this year so very exciting to be reaching that milestone own and also what would be coming forward to council late this year or 2024 in association with that trail that also calls for activating a habitat Conservation Area outside the trail uh Corridor there and so we'll be coming to council to do that as well when we are nearing completion

[195:00] of that important Trail connection third I just want to speak to our some of our Equity work and in specific uh the tribal relations work that we're helping to lead along with City manager's office for for the city you're going to hear a lot about this work coming up very shortly at a March 9th study session we have some time to talk about tribal relations time to prepare for upcoming consultation which is a formal sort of negotiation discussion with our American Indian nations and the city of Boulder we'll also provide some more updates on other tribal relations work including the current work that we have going on with the Northern Cheyenne Northern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes on helping us develop a Land Management plan for Fort Chambers Poor Farm property so we'll touch upon a little bit at the study session as well but really proud in honor of the relationship building that we're doing with our tribal partners

[196:02] um fourth I just want to call out habitat restoration projects uh in particular this year because we have a couple of very significant restoration projects a lot of our restoration projects are focused on on the riparian corridors on South Boulder Creek and Boulder Creek the city through our open space Department owns and manages a lot of uh Corridor floodplain areas on both those creeks and very excited that we're breaking ground this month on a few Hundred Acre restoration of formal gravel mines along Boulder Creek between 75th and 95th it's a continue of our restoration going all the way uh Downstream and this is probably one of our most ambitious restoration projects we've ever done as a department and then also another Restoration in partnership with utilities is our staff is very engaged in developing a mitigation plan for restoring the 119 Acres of open space other lands on the CU South property as as part of an

[197:00] overall litigation plan for the South Boulder Creek flood project so our staff is very involved in helping to Envision what that restoration project could could mean to the city uh fifth I just want to call out our continuing work on restoring and reducing impacts on irrigated agricultural fields from the presence of prairie dogs many of you may know that in 2020 we received directions to develop some new management approaches in order to help restore some of our degraded irrigated agricultural lands especially lands where there was severe impacts to our tenants some lands that we could no longer lease out due to the conditions I'm really proud to report that uh we're originally focusing on just under a thousand acres we have about well over 300 that have been restored now and uh bringing uh close to bringing back online and some that will are back online in terms of being

[198:01] productive we also are looking at this third year of full implementation of this new approach to actually step back and do an assessment this is you know a brand new area for us in some regards and in terms of incorporating soil health and restoration and prairie dog conservation and mixing all those and we want to look about how's it going where we are being effective where is some inefficiency so we're going through a complete assessment of that program as well we're going to be reporting that back out to the board and uh and depending on where we go with it we'll probably be updating this body as well sometime in 2023 on an assessment of our of that management approach and sixth and not least as many of you know that we are doing an assessment on eBay e-bike use on open space currently e-bikes are not allowed on open space Trails there's been a number of different changes from the state level and regionally and locally on e-bikes over the past four or five years so

[199:01] staff began about a year ago to look at uh weather and if and then where to possibly allow e-bikes on certain segments of open space and that started a year ago we had a pretty robust Community engagement over the summer we had four meetings with the open space Board of Trustees that concluded last month with several motions and a recommendation from the board and so those those motions and a recommendation as well as a staff recommendation will be packaged together and brought forward and right now on schedule is a second reading staff presentation and a public hearing on June 1st so but to give you paired with some background information because there's a lot of information with it will likely be putting together just an informational packet so we're you guys can digest some background basic information on the on on the issue and then the memo will concentrate a little bit more on on what we did this year and what we're recommending so

[200:01] that's our approach uh and that's what I have here for you tonight that you're going to give them homework I love it Council questions for Dan if I can have my mic back we'll go to Mike am I really last of the you of the department reports yes but there are still fear not there are still more topics okay well that wasn't the plan good evening Council Mike calderausa Fire Department um I thought it was supposed to go right after Maris because anyway um I've got four items to share with you um the the first two really are really Department focused and then the other two um some folks have already in different contexts already spoken about some of the programs that will be assisting or more lead on um the first one is around Advanced life support So Advanced Medical Response um this year I'm happy to say that in

[201:00] April we'll stand up our first two um Advanced life support units so that I actually adds to the system and we'll set them up here in the core of the city that it starts to allow us to analyze the reduction in response times which is a big goal for the Department um and the idea really is to build out from the core of the city and eventually the entire city will be covered with a lot of extra Advanced life support units so um that's an exciting um foray for us in 2023 the other one I'm going to sound like a broken record because um you've already heard about recruitment um multiple times now but it is a challenge in public safety of teams so um even in the fire service in general is struggling we do have a master plan goal around improving diversity with respect to gender in the workforce but but equity and diversity in the workforce in general is something we want for the long term and our existing recruit our existing recruitment processes and even testing processes for candidates is probably leaving large

[202:01] potential pools of candidates out there that we're missing and so one of the things we'll be doing this year with our Workforce recruitment development committee that works with HR is to come up with a different way of doing that going forward and I'd like to have at least the pilot version of what recruiting could look like going forward for us and testing to implement by the end of the year so probably fourth quarter in time for our first candidate class in the spring of 2024. so hopefully that will uh will change things for us and and we'll see bigger pools come to the table in more diverse pools um so that's kind of exciting for us too because it's a radical departure from what we've done in the past and the other two um have already been mentioned by different directors one is the alternative response vehicle in partnership with PD and HHS you got a four glimpse of that I believe was the December study session we heard you loud

[203:00] and clear about coming up with good outcome measures around that particular pilot for I can tell you from the fire department's perspective adding medical care to that team will have the impact of allowing us to divert more 9-1-1 calls calls out of the 911 system so saving our Advanced Care responders for different other calls more acute ones and so so that's one measure but it's not an outcome measure it's definitely one that we're looking to see if it does impact Us in that way and then the last item is really a big one and that's Wildfire resiliency it's been briefly mentioned there's a cross-departmental group including the city manager's office that's been working on a lot of things Wildfire resilience related um next week you'll get a a touch of what some of that group's been working on in the ATB conversation our focus on the fire department side for 2023 is definitely achieving our

[204:01] goal around detailed home assessments so we would like to do 60 or more of those that's that's a the way it's written in the mass plan right now is just a general curb assessment where we don't actually need permission but we certainly want more people to volunteer in and get more detailed home assessments and then we'd like to help them actually Implement those rather than hey here's what you got to do but go figure it out on your own um so that's part of what we'd like to be able to do this year don't have an actual measure for the detailed home assessments yet for you but that's definitely some an area where we want to really improve starting this year and then the other piece you'll see in the ATB is the community Wildfire protection plan which is a big deal for us to have um and and to be to use as a tool for planning going forward so those those are two big things fire department related we want to make sure happen but from generally in the cities overall work on this you'll be seeing an IP coming up that details all across the departmental work that's been going on

[205:01] so I mean almost every department has some role you certainly saw that with regard to the internal service services but definitely a lot of operational departments too are impacted by that and are working with us as part of that team so I will keep it high level there's a lot more detail coming in that IP and then there's some conversation pieces to be had on the ATB next week around Wildfire resilience so I'll just stop right there Mary this is one of our cross-cutting issues you want to jump in there it is and I just appreciate that uh Mike because you teed it up we it would have been so like we planned it that you would be last to do that um and just wanted to say since we're on that topic don't know if there was anything more you wanted to add but then I wanted to invite Dan and Jonathan if there was something additional they wanted to add on the Wildfire resilience piece sure I just just to give you a flavor for uh sort of the resilient Landscapes portion of the topic of wildfire resilience and that IP is was in your

[206:00] February 16th packet if you didn't scroll down far enough it's down there it's a lot of us uh had our hands in it as well as our staff so I think it's a good foundational document if you want to get a sense of you know everything under the sun um uh that that's a that's a great document but just to give you a little bit more flavor for 2023 cwpp open space will obviously be a big component of that uh we'll have uh bring our staff expertise to the table we'll provide osmp specific GIS data to the table on that and we're going to be dedicating a lot of Staff uh subject matter expert time in order to participate in the cwpp development which will also a big component of that will be Community engagement and you'll hear more about that as the year progresses we have over 250 Acres of Force thinning and Forest Health projects slated at six different project locations in 2023 we actually received 140 000 Grant to do a couple of those units that we're super excited

[207:01] about um uh one one area of fire mitigation that you might not think about and associated with but weed management invasives management is a is is a a big strategy of ours you probably are familiar with the tall oak grass project and the and the reintroduction of cattle back on the Shanahan Ridge area that is now up to 500 acres and four separate enclosures we're working on a fifth that I can't quite speak to yet but that would be a very exciting addition to that uh that project area and it's really having a positive effect on reducing the tall oak grass which is a monoculture and high uh tall statute grass so by reducing those fine fuels we're able to uh you know mitigate fire risks bring back biodiversity and and bring back cattle which had been up there for decades before our ownership ditch maintenance is another one that you may not associate for uh that traditionally with while fire mitigation

[208:02] but this year we're adding staff and budget to reduce fuel loads along uh key stretches of os P ditches uh primarily east of of the city limits itself but we're also funding a consultant to identify what the fire risks and mitigation opportunities are along ditches and this is sort of continual learning post-martial fire is Grant you know our grasslands are our vectors out there and so what do we need to learn and and ditch corridors is something that we want to learn more about from a fire risk standpoint prescribed fire we're going to be developing uh for more burn plans on more than 5 000 Acres a burn plan is sort of a pre-requirement for actually laying down a prescribed burn so we need to have these plans in place so the more areas of our system we can have these plans set we'll be be more set for prescribed Burns we're also participating on that cross-departmental team that City manager's office set up I believe

[209:00] there's six departments that are on that team as long as along along with city manager uh his office so that's a really cool team for us to brainstorm prioritize and really make sure we're doing the highest priority work we can do along Wildfire resilience because it's really all hands on deck Mike charge groups involved in that on that team as well so it's it's been a lot of fun and a lot of great thinking with that new team that's up and running finally I'll just mention the education and Outreach this is everybody's responsibility we sort of all need to have our fingers in this include including our community members Mike spoke to his work on doing home assessments but we actually from a ranger perspective from our Outreach and education there's a lot of opportunities to do education out on the ground so we've set up an education program around the end car fire site in fact we just had a fourth grade class up there uh just yesterday we're also going to be targeting homeowners in that area to bring them up in that site why the Land

[210:00] Management uh why you you might see tree thinning why you might see cattle grazing why you might see other stuff on the ground going on and it's all in conjunction with some success we saw with those with regards to the uh and car fire so we have a number of different educational opportunities and programs that we're setting up in 2023 and to increase the awareness around Wildfire resilience and Community responsibility on that so yeah yeah I mean that was incredibly comprehensive I just have two comments that I would offer um one I just want to amplify the point that I think Dan was making that that this model of of looking at Wildfire resilience from this kind of cross-cutting multi-departmental approach is really significant you missed your good friend to to your left there Joe is also on dad and I go way back we're the best of friends uh no I just I do think it's really important because we're looking at the comprehensive and holistic nature of wildfire resilience and and that is a

[211:01] model I think that we could start utilizing for some of these other big sticky issues that are so cross-cutting the other thing that I wanted to make sure Council understands obviously there's such great expertise uh both in in Dan's shop and and in the chief shop and others but I think it's also Our intention to co-create Solutions with the community because they are often the best to identify what their needs are and I think that ensures that we're really focusing on the right things and it also helps ensure that we're not developing strategies that don't end up deeping deepening existing inequities so there's a really important approach to not only knowing what we're doing but also going out and understanding from the community what they'd like to see us spending uh the dollars on so part of our our work together has been looking at how we utilize the dollars that we're part of that climate tax the 1.5 million dollars in an ongoing way to best serve our community's needs so I'm just really proud of the work of this of this cross-cutting interdepartmental group

[212:01] and really thinking about the model that we're creating together so Council questions um yep Nicole go ahead thank you all it's really exciting to hear about I just had a couple of questions one with regard to the home assessments that are going to be done around fire risk are those going to be available at a neighborhood level like could an entire neighborhood kind of go in to do that or is it really just one house at a time and I'm thinking especially of the denser neighborhoods where your your neighbor is maybe eight ten feet away and what they do actually matters for you as well sure great question um yes the idea really is um we've even partnered with HOAs to to make sure we get more folks in in a single setting to talk about obviously each home or piece of property is different but um generally you can share the same

[213:00] information with everyone and then go and then do detailed home assessments so yeah that's definitely the idea so that we're we can even use some Force multipliers in the community to get get the word out and and um and get help you know because it's it's better to have those folks um to to to work on their own properties and help their neighbors and so on so yes um I forgot that that was the IP was in the 216 packet so my my mistake I'm sorry I forgot that information is already out there but right um I had Aaron and then I had one more question oh one more yeah sorry two questions um I was just wondering about some of the work especially around fire mitigation as it relates to kind of soil ecosystem health does this also impact on flood mitigation I'm thinking especially of the extreme weather event we had in September 2013. um I was just wondering about whether that also impacts there or if it's just completely separate issue

[214:00] well I mean I think the issue that maybe Jonathan was speaking to was resilience is there's a lot of things that fall under the resilience bucket and there are threads of commonality between it uh when you speak specifically a flood when you look at what's in your toolbox for flood resilience it may look a little different than fire but certainly there's a uh a a very significant fire event followed by a significant rain I mean you do have causation an effect there that is troublesome especially in in catastrophic type of fire situation so we are in a habitat area where these ecosystems depend on fire fire is a natural part and so it's not necessarily we cannot look into a camera and say we will stop every fire and we don't want any fire on our system it's actually how can we have fires that we can manage and and can go through and produce an ecosystem benefit but in a way where it doesn't cause harm to our community and then doesn't result in such catastrophic

[215:01] Burns that then rains and flooding and all exasperate a problem so there is definitely a relationship between flood and fire I would say strictly just on the flood standpoint ecosystem Health tends to like floods our flood Plains are meant to flood soils are added in those areas so from an open space perspective having floods and having natural flood Plains and and all of that is sort of a good thing um we obviously know that there could be problems with catastrophic floods so I don't want to be naive in that but just from an ecosystem perspective both floods and fire are a natural part of our systems and that healthy system to depend on both those elements it's the catastrophic elements that you're really trying to mitigate and and through management you could you could lower the risks uh Aaron yeah all that Wildfire prevention information is really

[216:01] important so appreciate that look forward to talking about it um at the adjustment to base next week but Mike had a question for you it's really fantastic to hear about the advanced light support units coming online can you just describe what those units will look like and how they're staffed please thanks for that question actually I probably wasn't clear that what it does for us is it converts existing fire apparatus into advanced life support units so there won't be a visible change other than they will carry different equipment on those trucks they represent an extra unit in the system in addition to the contracted ambulances that we already have so that any unit can be called upon for an acute medical call including the fire trucks in a general area so we truly get closest unit response for a an acute emergency that would require them got it so two of our existing fire trucks will become Advanced life support units in addition to their existing firefighting capabilities yes fantastic thanks

[217:00] Matt you're up um well this is I mean Wildfire is sort of the critical issue it's at the Forefront of our minds and so um I appreciate all the work that has been going ongoing and looking to expand I think a question for us as policy makers is are you planning on bringing any ordinances to us um as part of this sort of new wave of things and so I'm curious if you envision it uh hope so and before I say that I would hope everything is on the table with regards to ideas and thoughts and concepts with regards to Wildfire mitigation I'm sure it is but it Bears repeating for those maybe listening that that everything needs to be on the table so nonetheless just curious about any ordinance or stuff that we need to sort of think about from a policy perspective I'll jump in and say everything is on the table uh I don't know of any particular ordinance recommendations at the moment I would say that the most direct um impact in terms of Wildland resiliency is already in our code the

[218:00] Wildland Urban interface code so there will probably be conversations about that the logical thing to talk about is what if what about retroactive or the size of the Wildland Urban interface Zone those are definitely conversations and conversations for Council to consider but we don't have any plans at this point to bring those up those are still internal conversations to figure out how we would even what impacts those potentially have and how we would even propose something like that great thank you I mean just one thing off the top of my head as I think about certain Landscaping whether we think about the built environment is there any more protections we can give from our like how we're building things so if that's in there awesome if we can get to that place it'd be great but those are things I'm sort of curious about on top of layered on top of the work already being done appreciate it thanks man Judy thank you I just had a question about you were talking about wildfire and Wildfire mitigation or prevention and I

[219:00] wanted to know what are some of the technologies that you're looking into or is this something that the department is struggling with and accessing so I wanted to know a little bit more about that thank you well in terms of some of the and I'll just speak for the uh resilient Landscapes a lot of it is people work um so enhancing the size next week well one of the thoughts for enhancing uh in the climate tax dollars is what about going to a year-round Forestry Crew instead of a nine-month Forestry Crew there's a lot of things we can accomplish in the winter that uh if we had expanded capacity to do that there's certain equipment that would allow us to access certain areas that we're not able to right now so there is equipment issues for doing more on the ground Land Management stuff uh we're we're really

[220:00] having great success with very targeted prescribed grazing that takes infrastructure temporary fencing move that along the Wildland interface that's time intensive people intensive uh so uh a lot of the Land Management stuff uh uh is is doesn't rely on a lot of new technology where technology may become come into play would be more on the early detection element and those aspects of Wildland fire resiliency that I probably am not the best person to speak to but I know that there is technologies that other communities are using that we could look at in terms of detection and and I know that's going to already conversations and future conversations for us yes so I'll just add that the county we've been working with the county as well and they have some Wildfire detection cameras already in play so this core Team part of the the work

[221:01] that's being done is what's the what's the role of the city as the large landowner is well around us in terms of prevention mitigation and response along with our County Partners and um just so folks know this generally the Marshall fire the n-car fire it was our team that actually started the management of those fires we are internally in the city we have the expertise to start getting things going getting the air Assets in in the air and on the way and and that's typically how the county has relied on this but being good partners um and and mutually beneficial Partners is in our best interest and that's what this cross-departmental team is working on in terms of the long term how do we play a role with the county it's grown up this way what does it look for the next 10 20 years as far as Boulder's role and the

[222:00] the camera detection system is something we did collaborate with them on and talked with them about putting in place so the county has those I can't tell you where they are don't actually know um but I know that's part of our approach now to trying to get early detection and getting the teams rolling as fast as possible clarify did wasn't uh wasn't there an opportunity for a grant the last time I think you checked in with us where the county was I think within days of that check-in about to apply for a grant to get access to working with Scientists for the remote sensing and satellite detection did that did that work out and because I don't know if that's piggybacking kind of where you were referencing on I'll have to check in and get back to you on that one yeah anything else you turned it off mine cool all right um in that case moving on to our next cross-cutting cross-departmental um topic Sams um Joe you started that one I'm sorry use that one's okay great yep yep

[223:00] um and so Council we certainly will give it to Joe because a lot of his team those sort of cross-departmental efforts and what I hope you're seeing um through this evening is how much we've increased those cross-departmental efforts there is very little I think that city does that just really lives in one Silo department and we really are being intentional about what that looks like uh the work for safe and manage public spaces is no different and we have four directors uh and certainly myself as I come to those meetings but listen to their expertise as that moves forward so police and HHS Parks and Recreation and obviously utilities are our leadership team as that moves forward and frankly behind them are the people that do the work as we move forward I'll say on Sam's a couple things before I turn it over to Joe and I just want to appreciate this team recently convened all Frontline staff who work in the

[224:01] field and that was an amazing experience I was happy to be able to be present uh for some of that and some of our partners and it was extraordinary to hear some of the ideas that they came up with to make sure that our work is Flowing as we would like it and what I really took away from that is the sense of urgency and compassion that every single one of those team members brought to the work we have heard both from you and certainly from Community uh in not just recently although perhaps more recently of late but we have heard this along we've had some questions about the manner in which we do our work and I'll say that although we don't um we don't publicize some of the things that internally we're thinking about we are and have been investigating uh several different things and I know I have shared some of this with um some of you who have asked so want to be uh honest and upfront about some of the protocol changes that we are thinking of making um we have a protocol like many other cities we have an established protocol we have a prioritization document about

[225:02] where we do encampment cleanups and the manner in which we do that one of the things that has come up we know we've had conversations with you all publicly we've had conversations internally about what that looks like but uh bike paths and underpasses to me are very critical because of the speed and the velocity of which cyclists are coming and they may not see debris in time that is an area where it's appetite for risk question right and one that I think it is appropriate to think about our notification requirement it is it is not that um uh it is an extra place where we say no camping especially here because the camping is banned currently by policy all across the city but it is one where the current 72-hour notice provision is likely to get modified and before we do that we need to make sure that we understand the impacts of that it will likely mean that there will be more touch points with PD for folks it is

[226:01] easy to take materials and perhaps move a tent aside or pick up debris that is in the roadway but if there are folks that are more reticent to comply with that then we will have to take other measures as that moves forward and we want to make sure that we have the appropriate training the appropriate protocols in place um before we take that step but that is in the works there certainly have been conversations and I expect we'll have conversations uh tomorrow about other areas um areas around schools have come up about creating an exclusionary Zone certainly we have been thinking and I know uh legal has been researching that the difference I think in other communities that do have such zone is that camping is not completely banned across the city and so uh it is not a an effort in our city where that is the case by policy then it kind of doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say there

[227:01] is no camping and especially here right as that moves forward and so we'll be continuing to think about that we also as we think about children's safety and I know I certainly have received a lot of emails lately about it all of us I think care deeply not just about children's but about children's safety in a variety of areas children are not just at school but they are walking in Parks they are walking to libraries they are walking to and from school school so we want to be thoughtful about how we go about it but we certainly anticipate having that deeper conversation with you all on April 13th so with that I will send it over to Joe that was really good thank you um so for the the safe and managed public spaces work that when we the last time we talked about it in detail was during the budget process and certainly there was a lot of discussion about people and and how we're thinking about that and Nuria just mentioned the April 13th

[228:01] update we'll we'll get into some of that in April but tonight I'm going to speak primarily to the unsanctioned camping and the cleanup work that we do with our cross-departmental internal team and as was just mentioned there there are numerous departments who have a role in that work and just again a quick refresher up until 2021 We performed that work primarily relying on an outside vendor that was managed really independently you each department was was kind of doing its own thing and then in 2021 with support from Council we formed our internal public spaces crew have five people in utilities who have been doing doing the the cleanup work and a much more coordinated approach across departments like a lot of the things that you're hearing here tonight

[229:01] and then in the in last year's budget process the funds were provided for us to lift up a second crew a four-person crew so just some brief updates probably touching on some some of the things similar to Nuri is part of it but we in the budget update the four-person crew we've now hired three of those four people and those individuals will be starting on March 6th so we have one more to go and in the last couple of months I have been working really closely with Ali and and Kurt and Maris and initially we we got together on our own initiative there's just a Natural Evolution to uh to this work and it's still a relatively new program and doing our own assessment of what was working and not working and comparing notes on

[230:01] that and really trying to organize our thoughts so that we could have meetings with the team and hear their thoughts as well and I mentioned an evolution to the work and I feel like now we're at a place where we have a really strong understanding of how things are going and where the gaps are and what we want to work on had you had you asked us to identify that back in 2021 when we first formed the crew I don't think we would have been able to do that but we now have enough time under our belt and and I feel like we've had some success uh with the program to date we have a website that shows some of the metrics of of what's being done and maps that the community can use and see where they can report encampments and and see the progress on cleanups but as as the four of us got together

[231:00] and talked about uh some of the gaps that we have um as Nuria just mentioned we're working on refinements to our procedural documents and some really targeted areas working closely as well with the city manager and the City attorney we're carefully studying the ordinances that apply to this that are relevant to this work and thinking about how we might streamline their application to the different situations that we encounter and um that there's the general camping that that we see and and the tents that are in Parks but then there's a different circumstance when people are are uh camped on the multi-use path so creating an obstruction which is more of a safety concern so we're trying to look at those things make some distinctions there's so many departments involved in evaluating the work and then implementing it and

[232:00] just making sure that we're all on the same page uh I think we're positioned because of the evolution of the work to to have to show some significant Improvement uh this year and I know that the community is looking for that from us and so um we'll be going through that and again we'll be doing a deeper dive with the council in April when that study session comes up so those are just some highlights of uh what we've been working on here recently happy to take questions do you have questions we do have more time for this tomorrow as well go ahead Jenny conversation is coming on April 13th and um I think to to your point Maria and I heard some of your comments about the exclusionary zoning around schools and

[233:02] also some of the I don't know something you mentioned about how I guess Solutions and I hope as you're considering those solutions that I mean I don't think anywhere around the country it works to jail or we can't jail our way out of this situation so I think as you're considering what the solutions are I hope they are Humane and constructive I don't have the answer for you tonight but I just hope I know you're a person with a lot of empathy but whatever they are in on April 13th as part of that discussion it is something truly that that will help as opposed to a further marginalize those people who are living on the street and I just also wanted to make the comment that

[234:01] you have a lot of Partners and you know that you're working with them and the state is doing a lot of work as well when it comes to uh helping and figuring out how to provide housing and also yeah I just again as I mentioned hopefully there are Humane solutions to this problem I'll say I appreciate that and and I can guarantee that everyone on this team is really approaching it from a place of empathy and a place of compassion as we look at that and I think what you'll hear from us on the 13th and and I know that we're going to be helping to frame like all of what happens with homelessness right is that there are different approaches right how do we prevent people from get from being homeless and unsheltered in the first place how do we get folks into housing and provide some additional assistance for those that are suffering through mental health crises or substance abuse issues and then some of what we're talking about here in the Sam's work which is how do we deal with the immediate crisis of

[235:01] um and the impact of of homelessness that is happening in community that still means how do we actually address and get people help and do some harm reduction strategies as we move forward so please know that we are thinking about that and we really we're really open and wanting to have that policy conversation with you as well and so it is oh overdue for this Council body and it'll be exciting to hear your thoughts Council anything else on this topic at this time I'm mindful of the time and just want to visit with you about it for a moment we were scheduled until 10 and it is five minutes until 10 and Joe's phone is Buzzy people want you to be somewhere else man um I may be able to Breeze through these so we have four of these more cross-cutting uh projects left and Nuri was just saying she thinks that we can quote Breeze through them famous last words [Laughter]

[236:00] um and so my question for you is I want to there's a kindness that you can do for directors to get through as many things tonight as you can to limit another that the number have to come tomorrow but I also want you to be awake enough to hear the smart things they say um are you comfortable powering through these last four group I would say the hill revitalization and chronic nuisance work you all know we've been here we've just mentioned that to you she's just doing them now just going through it just work with me Heather I'm powering through we are um we are working on chronic nuisance issues we talked a little bit about that just last week um so we will be coming back to you and again happy to entertain any questions today or tomorrow but I think that is work that has been most recent um and you've been pretty well versed on and then um the one thing I want to mention and the one that might have more discussion is downtown streets as public spaces so I'm going to skip over that for a quick moment before uh I asked Natalie if she wants to do it or if we want to save that for tomorrow

[237:01] um but the multi-board working group is something that I'll say um you know since I arrived here that I've heard from different boards and commissions they want an opportunity to weigh in on other things that perhaps is not within their purview right and so as we've listened to that and I want to just thank Jonathan because he's been kind of a silent co-conspirator over there with me um and Brad who then took up the mantle and said you know what I'm happy to take this on and apologies to directors because frankly I'm the bottleneck and didn't send a message out early but we are are planning to do a little bit of an experiment we are planning to invite a representative from at least 11 boards and commissions to join us and talk about Boulder Junction phase two so we're going to have a bit of a pilot work group to see how that works to see if there's bringing in folks earlier who can then go back to their boards and commissions and talk about what's happening at a different phase how does that feel how does that work and so that's one of the things that we'll be doing this year and and really kind of

[238:01] excited about that so just one to highlight that and with that unless there's major questions on that we really only just have downtown streets as public spaces can also become more you got two minutes Natalie go okay um so you all are mostly familiar with this this is um some work that we started after we reinstated um vehicle traffic on West parole last year so since the fall we've been working on this we brought together a multi-departmental team pnds and transportation and Mobility have been in the lead on this with Community vitality and Community engagement and support so we did a really robust engagement effort over the last several months I think we hit some records on be heard Boulder like almost 2 000 people engaged on this and so we are working on bringing recommendations forward and we promised March and so we'll be back in

[239:00] March with those recommendations from the consultant and really responding to what we heard from the community and I'm gonna leave it at that and where it'll it'll be fun to talk about in March you keep using that word I do not think it means what you think it means all right um Council any follow-up questions on any of those items okay noria that was just leadership right there that I was like we're just doing it fantastic all right Council a couple of things tomorrow you see the items that we've already identified for the agenda in addition you saw several hotline emails related uh specifically to homeless and planning and development services uh there were a couple of additional suggested topics that came to me um uh Aaron you had a super fun one just about what happened what do we do when

[240:01] both the mayor and the mayor Pro 10 are are absent um that's pretty straightforward item and then uh Bob you had camping uh ban enforcement questions and you also had planning approvals at Hill Mobility um and then homelessness yeah and then Charter uh Charter committee check-in so I raise these to your attention mostly to check in on how many of these directors do we need to have join us tomorrow it is our kindness again that you could do to be very targeted and specific by my math and nurio correct me if I'm wrong um I think we definitely need Maris right you can thank me later and Sandra you're welcome and uh Brad and Kurt [Laughter] um and then uh Nuri I had a couple a bunch of others with question marks

[241:01] um did you want to nominate any of your other directors to join us questions on what millions that are anticipated tomorrow which I don't think there have been happening then we can we can Jonathan and Dan go Sarah it's up to you if you would like to join us in some of the conversations and then um Chris whether there's conversations about Hill and everything Council you also know the questions that you might have or the things you might want to hear about on these topics did you want to request the presence of any other directors to ensure that we have the expertise in the room that you may need Nuri I think you should come too okay yeah great all right um Chris will you join us please it's gonna be great Chris oh oh great and congratulations Ally and

[242:00] Joe lovely lovely lovely look at that Joy Maris is taking in that day go ahead Bob Natalie is it do you want to participate if we get into a hill discussion on Mobility yeah sure I know you wanted to you're waiting for somebody calling you okay all right Bob thank you for that several beers for that mayor council any other directors that you anticipate needing fantastic um so those of you who were named we look forward to spending some more time with you tomorrow those of you who are not thank you for your service this evening enjoy your Friday night have an extra beer or whatever for the rest of us all right mayor and Council before before we jump I have an assignment for you for tomorrow's Icebreaker before I jump into that Juni you wanted to say a quick thing yes thank you I really had a great time here today I learned a lot but tomorrow I may not be here with all of you so I'm still trying to figure it out but I've

[243:00] already mentioned it to the mayor and also to you and Heather as well but I wanted to share it with the rest of the room thank you thank you Jenny Council I would like for you between now and tomorrow evening to reflect a little bit on um a specific time when you have been on Council when your view was not the majority View and how the meeting proceeded when your view is not the majority of you and you left that Council conversation feeling comfortable and that you were heard what I'd like to know specifically from you tomorrow is what happened in that meeting that made you feel comfortable and made you feel heard was it the way the conversation was set up was it the materials was it something that another colleague on Council said or did that really made you feel heard

[244:00] hoping that we can draw from this perhaps some recommendations from you for each other for when my when I when when my ideas do not prevail this is how you can help me really be okay with that and walk away knowing that I've been respected and heard by my colleagues in Council so I'll just give you each a few minutes um to share a time and again your specifics will be welcome if you'll say remember that time we talked about the insert topic here I was in the minority and man I really saw this from you or I heard this so details welcome you know not four hour stories but details um to the best of your ability what um if you're still talking after five minutes I'll wonder if perhaps you're rambling how about that okay all right council do you understand your assignments okay fantastic looking forward to hearing those Mr Mayor I just have to say something since we won't have all of you tomorrow please these are like 30 of the most absolutely

[245:02] smart talented and creative people that I have ever known oh my goodness like you I'm so proud and honored to be part of this organization but what I learned tonight is that you're also a lot funnier than I realized right so right on it's been a great night it's been a great night all right see many of you tomorrow night mayor and Council thank you very much directors thank you for your perseverance as always observers Brave Choice appreciate you we'll see you tomorrow everybody good night