March 9, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[5:01] [Music] foreign [Music] already Alicia we are recording and ready to go sir great thank you so much well good evening this is the March 9 2023 study session for the Boulder City Council uh my name is Bob Yates and we

[6:01] all thank you for joining us this evening we may have some folks who are watching the study session tonight that are not regular attendees at council meeting so I'll explain that our regular meetings which are the first and third Thursdays of the month are led by our mayor Aaron Brockett and our study sessions are in the second and third Thursdays of the month and for those that are facilitated by a revolving uh uh uh line of the rest of city council so it falls to me tonight to facilitate this particular meeting tonight we have two items on the agenda one is tribal relations and consultation update which we'll do first and our second and last item will be occupancy reform code changes and updates um before we get to those two items I do want to kind of outline for folks um who are watching how our study sessions are performed they're relatively informal and Casual we'll um have presentations by our city staff of each of these two items and then we'll have times for questions and and

[7:00] feedback on each of these two items the staff is actually um built in a kind of a mid presentation break and so for questions and so let's um Council colleagues let's give staff an opportunity to get through the first kind of half of their respective presentations I think they're going to take an opportunity for a break at the midterm we can jump in with any questions we have at that point in time then they'll finish their presentations we'll take another opportunity for questions and then we'll provide some input feedback direction as Council colleagues would like um and I'll try to Summarize each one at the end of their presentations and with that we'll turn over to to our city manager um Muriel Rivera vandermind who's going to present or introduce the staff for the first presentation area thank you Bob and um I'll keep my introductions on both items pretty sure but really just wanted to lift up and say how proud I am uh of a city that really leans into conversations with our tribal Nation Partners in the way that it does the

[8:01] staff that you're about to hear from in our uh wonderful guests uh in Mr Ernest house Jr um really I think worked so hard and I'm I'm so awed by the thoughtfulness by which um staff does this work with our tribal Nation Partners um and acknowledges the fact that we are on land frankly that was not ours to begin with and so with that I will send this over to assistant city manager Pam Davis who has been leading this effort from the city manager's office Sam good evening Council and thank you for having me my name is Pam Davis I serve as assistant city manager and I use she her pronouns tonight we are really thrilled as Maria mentioned to provide you an update on our upcoming consultation with tribal Nations as well as additional engagement opportunities that we have with them and ongoing projects throughout the year so I would ask our slideshow be pulled up and we will get started

[9:01] um join with me tonight in order of appearance you will hear from our consultant uh Ernest house Jr from the Keystone policies Center Dan Burke our director of open space and Mountain parks along with his teammate Katie Knapp we also have Phil Yates from our Communications and engagement Department I'd also be remiss if I did not mention that this team is incredibly supported by members of our Equity office our city attorney's office housing and Human Services and additional administrative staff from the city manager's office it really does take elements of the entire city to support the relationships that we have um next slide please given our topic tonight we felt it was absolutely appropriate to begin this presentation with our staff developed land acknowledgment and so I'm going to take some time to read what you see on the screen before we begin with our content

[10:00] the city of Boulder acknowledges the city is on the ancestral homelands and unseated territory of indigenous peoples who have traversed lived in and stewarded lands in the Boulder Valley since time and Memorial those indigenous Nations include the Apache Arapahoe Cheyenne Comanche Kiowa Pawnee Shoshone Sue and ute we honor and respect the people of these nations and their ancestors we also recognize that indigenous knowledge oral histories and languages handed down through generations have shaped profound cultural and spiritual connections with Boulder area lands and ecosystems connections that are sustained and celebrated to this day the city of Boulder recognizes that those now living and working on these ancestral lands have a responsibility to acknowledge and address the past we must not only acknowledge our past but work

[11:00] to build a more just future we are committed to taking action Beyond these words we pledge to use this land acknowledgment to help Inspire education and reflection and initiate meaningful action to help support indigenous Nations communities and organizations and the PowerPoint you see does have a link on it you can read more about our Boulder staff land acknowledgment by searching that on our website next slide please tonight um up first we're going to welcome Ernest house Jr who is with the Keystone policy Center to provide with you a general overview about the practice of tribal consultation and some history and and connection with the Boulder Valley um by way of a very brief introduction and we'll get more into detail about Boulder's practices following ernest's presentation um we just want to share our eagerness to um in in the post-covered pandemic World

[12:01] welcome back tribal nations in person to visit the city of Boulder next week over the course of two days for government to government consultation listening and working together on ongoing agreements um we will welcome council members to be a part of that and can address questions related to those Logistics as the presentation proceeds um but with that I'd first like to hand over the mic to Ernest to again provide this important overview for all of you about the practice broadly and in Boulder Ernest Thank you Pam um again Mike deguvan de hoyak that means hello my friends in Ute again my name is Ernest house Jr I'm a member of the Ute Mountain Youth tribe from Southwestern Colorado and I serve as a senior policy director and director for tribal and Indigenous engagement with the Keystone policy Center I also would like to Echo my

[13:00] appreciation to um to you council members to the city staff for everybody involved at my work and my involvement has gone back since 2019 but actually been involved with conversations with community of of Boulder in the city going back to 2005 with uh Valmont Butte and between that time and this time I've just been as an indigenous person as a member of the u-tribe just very honored to see the not just the the progress but the commitment that it has taken by a local government to not only be open to this conversation about tribal consultation and the importance but the commitment that it takes to develop the long-standing relationships with tribal Nations not everybody does that in terms of even local government levels and I just again wanted to express my appreciation and extend that to the staff as well please

[14:00] next slide so I'm going to talk a little bit about this and and you know it's going to be I apologize for some of the redundancy for some of the council members who've seen this before um and um but really for the new folks to be able to introduce you to tribal consultation and how it's being utilized and how it's being done we also have a link at the bottom where you'll find a little bit more information about the work that I do at the Keystone policy Center and then also information about some of the slides that you'll see regarding tribal consultation next slide please so we usually always start off with kind of a bit of some demographics um really that I want you to know that Colorado's American Indian population is about two percent of the total state population those that identify as American Indian Alaska native and of that two percent it's actually about 80 000 American Indians Statewide in all 64

[15:01] counties but of that population over 80 percent live in the Denver metro area I think there's a lot of misconception that because we have two federally recognized tribes with tribal land within the exterior boundaries of the state of Colorado in Southwestern Colorado that's where the largest population is but in fact it's in the urban area and that's because of a a fast-growing Urban American Indian population Colorado and Denver is not unique you find that similar movement in Salt Lake Phoenix and and Albuquerque and other urban areas around the west and around the United States but other that America 80 80 000 American Indian Alaska native uh population that actually represents over 150 tribes uh a part of that community and of that group the Sioux Nations Lakota Dakota and no Dakota uh are the most represented and Navajo nations are some

[16:01] of the fastest growing now the reason for some of that is because the close proximity and how large these tribes are Navajo Nation um over 250 000 members and land mass larger than New England so um we're very close in these generally in these areas and especially with the Dakotas next slide please okay so oftentimes you'll hear the state refer to tribes with the legacy of occupation in Colorado that um list is the one right before you these are 48 historic tribes that can tie and who continue to call what we call Colorado home um these are tribes that have have provided a preponderance of evidence that have always been in what we call Colorado since time immemorial and so this list actually was um was put together in 2007 when Colorado became the first state to create agreements with state with tribes

[17:00] that one's called Colorado home that were forcibly removed over the last 150 years to other states on this list you have 19 Pueblos in New Mexico some of these tribes are in Oklahoma as far as the way the Dakotas Montana so there's States surrounding Colorado but treaties forcibly removed these and so somebody meant made a mention of it a little bit ago about how the land that we stand on this is what is so important with collaboration co-management conversation around land back all that includes communication with these tribal Nations next slide please so who are the Utes I mean I talked about this 48 this 48 historic tribes of Colorado but I also mentioned that we have two federally recognized tribes of the Ute Mountain Youth tribe and Southern tribe the Utes are what Colorado continues to call the oldest continuous residence of the state of Colorado um if you ask archaeologists and anthropologists we'll tell you that we've been in what we call Colorado for

[18:00] the last 10 to 12 000 years if you ask my elders well they'll tell you we've been here since time in Memorial but really the seven there were barely seven bands of youths historically that have Consolidated to make up three tribes today and those seven bands are the names you see at the top here you may recognize them as Forest Management areas or um sometimes there might be signage of women which Wilderness um they're actually they derived from Ute names which have Consolidated to make up the true the three tribes today the Ute Mountain tribe which is my tribe that I'm a member of is in toyot Colorado south of Cortez it's the way manuch band The Southern Indian tribe is located in Ignacio Colorado near Durango Colorado the Milwaukee Capote band and then the Indian tribe which is located in Fort Utah make up the other four bands next slide please so it's important to talk about just with the Utes I mean you can have this

[19:00] same conversation with 48 historic of the 40 historic tribes but we're just looking at the U tribes here and Utes were known for our um where where we always moved with the game very nomadic and a lot of our Trail systems are now highways across the state of Colorado um Colorado Trail and so it's really important that you know we still have hunting blinds still standing in Rocky Mountain National Park Garden of the Gods had its last Butte um celebration or youth ceremony in the early 1900s but these bands would consistently live in these areas so there's these questions about place names now or what would you call what would the Utes do in in traditional ecological knowledge in the Steamboat Springs area or maybe it's in the Roaring Fork Valley those are a lot of the questions that land managers are having right now and it's actually Thai to the conversation that Parks and Rec has been doing and through this

[20:00] collaboration that's why it's important to know who you're talking to because if you automatically talk to the wee manuch band they may have said well we actually weren't in that area you need to be talking to the Yampa or the Grand River Band and that kind of conversation unfortunately is not easily available or readily available in history books um and that's part of the process of trying to build that collaboration next slide please so here we have just the state of Colorado the green dots are just highlighting some areas that that we may know as Place markers next slide and as we look at this progression this was the first Ute reservation established in 1868 on the Western Slope next slide please then you can start to see portions of that land removed this is the San Juans the San Juan portion was the treaty was changed to make way for mining in the San Juans that represents over 400 miles

[21:00] of tunnels in areas like Silverton Ouray Telluride and so on next slide please by the 1880s this is the youth strip the northern Utes were forcibly removed to then what is now the state of Utah and the other three remaining bands were forcibly removed to the southwestern part of the state and then the next slide please currently the makeup of both the Ute Mountain Youth tribe and Southern youth tribe land base in Southwestern Colorado there's actually an extension of the umanu tribe is in three states Colorado Utah and New Mexico and the Southern Union tribe is slowly located within the state of Colorado what I want to um portray here is it is the importance of just looking at one of the tribes of of the 48 with with historical connection and land into Colorado

[22:02] for tribes we've been here since time immemorial and let's just say for timeline's sake let's starting let's just look at a 10 000 year timeline or twelve thousand year timeline that's how long we've been hiking through these areas we've been um holding ceremonies in all parts of the state of Colorado but it took just this 40 years to completely be removed from those locations and so I think when we talk about tribal consultation the opportunity to bridge that and to return back to these places we have not been that's why it's so important because 150 years is just a very it's a new set time that's a very short amount of time when you're talking about ten thousand twelve thousand time Memorial timeline next site please so what is consultation well tribal consultation is the open and mutual exchange of information integral to

[23:00] effective collaboration participation informed decision making what the ultimate goal of reaching consensus on issues is going to be redundant in some of these sites so I'll make sure and jump over that but really it entails that development of relationship based on trust where trust doesn't exist right we have to start building that up and to understand and consider any effects that undertaking may have on both parties um it's usually a convention originating from the trust responsibility the United States has to tribal Nations tribal consultation is a process that enables tribal communities and other entities and systems to advance that well-being of tribal communities and then the last element is essential uh essentially really to have meaningful consultation includes consensus-based decision making mutual respect understanding between parties and an iterative process that sustains progress towards group goals now this is all this process and thing that

[24:01] we can put in here as as would be you know what we'd be doing in a training like this or another setting but what what's so important what I usually often start out with any group that I'm talking to is that I'm a big believer in collaboration happening at the speed of trust and that's what we want to do right that's what we want to do with our communities with our citizens with with our members of our tribal Nations and when we talk about building that trust that's why we have to go back and learn that history be educated on the history and move forward a lot of people say well Ernest why can't you just you know yes I feel bad but you know we we got to move forward we can't just dwell on the past this is where it's important to not only bring that understanding of why these lands are so important and this culture is so important and the language is so important but inviting tribes to come

[25:01] and share our thoughts um that's an important and and major Endeavor in this whole consultation process next slide please so the need for local tribal consultation that tribal consultation is a framework that's mostly has been adopted and utilized at the federal level again federal agencies they have to conduct consultation they're required to do that state agencies are required to do that in Colorado um I was part of when I was part of the state we we created that agreement in 2012 to require the state agencies to do that and and start building this process but local tribal consultation is something that is a bit newer it's not as required or or leaned upon like at state and federal levels primarily there's funding issues probably there's there's others coordinating there's a lot of things that weren't there but

[26:00] what I have seen the city of Boulder do since 2019 and the tough conversations even back in wall Mountain Butte in 2005 was this effective process of opening your drives listening opening your ears and listening to tribal concerns and then creating agreements mous moas igas to start to address some of these concerns I don't know of other uh I know of other local governments in the state that have had this kind of conversation but not as on a rotating on an annual basis like the city of Boulder has had and especially with the agreement with 14 over 14 tribes that you'll see next week that'll be coming to Denver but these are some of the points and the need for local tribal consultation that we've seen is the benefit is a mutual benefit to the community so when people just look out and going hiking around a creek or a trail system and they see a new sign and that sign has maybe a QR code

[27:01] that you could scan and it talks about the tribes that utilize that area that Creek that same Creek that you're walking or you're sharing a meal or you're sitting down to take a break and watch the wildlife you can learn about that history that's that's the connection that we're also looking so it that's the mutual benefit to continue moving this forward along with these other points that that I put here that um you can follow along with next slide please so tribal sovereignty is very important and so when a government like at the city or or County or state reaches out to request for a tribal consultation it automatically triggers this government to government relationship something that has been recognized in in the United States Constitution it's been confirmed through treaties statutes executive orders and so forth and so that's why recognizing that tribal sovereignty is so important and continuing that consultation effort and

[28:00] format to ensure that the tribal voices at the table next slide please and there's also a big thing that you're probably going to hear around meaningful consultation well if you just bring people to the table it's a really meaningful are you really actually getting down to addressing the concerns that's really creating that framework and that's by Design why there are many different interpretations of consultation these are a couple of those of of open Mutual exchange of information I think sometimes off people ask me well is an effective consultation how many memorandums of agreement or memorams of understanding or intergovernmental agreements that you can create does that should that dictate should that be the litmus test on an effective consultation not necessarily and not oftentimes not everybody's going to walk away from a consultation um getting what receiving everything that they want

[29:01] it's it's the type of process that you bring people to the table to start working through those scenarios these moas these igas these agreements I personally believe there's still an extension of a treaty that was maybe signed years ago they're updated with current and our conversations that we have right now next slide please and the last two slides I just want to make sure and say that here are some of the pictures that we've shared previously of the in-person consultations we've had now again when I give kudos to the staff and the team for for leaning in and commit committing to this since 2019 we've also seen a pandemic the flexibility by the staff and the team to be able to continue to hold these consultations moving forward a lot of folks have been well you know what let's go ahead and put a pause let's make sure let's it's the commitment that does it that land

[30:00] acknowledgment that that Pam red is just worthless words unless you lean in and you commit to this process and that's what I've seen personally that's what you'll hear in the tribal consultation next week and don't take my word for it you'll ask the tribal representatives and the folks that you talk to next week that come what would you like to see from them you're going to hear that that they look at this at the city of Boulder and this process as a as an example for other governments to to take and and to look into next slide please thank you that means thank you and you thank you for this opportunity thank you for your time I know how busy you are and the multitude of things that you have on your plate this evening and for the rest of the week and the days and just really appreciate this opportunity to ask you know have have any and answer any

[31:00] questions that you may have Ernest uh doyak to you as well thank you so much for for that outstanding orientation and presentation every time we hear it we learn more and thank you so much for for being our guide as we as we go down through this journey Council colleagues we're going to take a break here and after that comprehensive presentation about Earnest give council members an opportunity to ask Ernest or our our staff any questions they have there's a second half to the presentation which we'll get to in a second we'll get we'll drill into the specifics of the consultation that we'll have next week but any questions for Ernest or our staff about that background that Ernest so um eloquently just provided Aaron so Ernest thanks so much for that Liz as Bob mentioned we I learned more every time uh we have a visit from you so I'm just so appreciative of your uh help in your partnership with these

[32:00] consultations so so my question is kind of a practical one during it is if you could give us advice on the respectful way to address the representatives who'll be meeting with us like in terms of uh titles and uh how we might speak and then also dress uh to be because I'd love to be the appropriate level of respectful dressing without overdressing so if you could give us some practical tips I really appreciate that that's a great question thank you for that um I think for uh addressing the representatives we're going to make sure that you'll see their names and titles and their tribal Nations that are around the table um they'll they'll be able to and you can ask them you know what they would prefer um and some will be tribal leaders I know my tribal chairman um is uh chairman Manuel Hart of the Ute Mountain View tribe he's addressed as chairman heart um and he will let you know if he

[33:01] prefers you know manual or or another or something else that's other the other thing to keep in mind is that we'll also make sure to have those name tags and be specific because we have council members that are elected chairman who are seen as like Governors with presidents of tribal Nations govern uh government mentioned Governors presidents chairman and and so forth so it can get a little confusing so that's why we want to make sure and have those type of name tags so that you know who you'll be talking to and which tribal Nation um that that they'll be representing um and so oftentimes you may think well I remember they're you but now that you know there's three you tribes it's good to make sure you know or even take note is it Ute mountain is it southern New is it Northern New and also as we follow up we will have a list of everybody there so that you can see and and track that for yourself as well

[34:01] the other thing around around the dress code um is is be relaxed uh these individuals are coming also relaxed I usually um folks that go down back to the Southwest I usually say it's Southwest business casual winter boots and jeans and you know it's nothing formal and I think that it's uh you know that's what we're also requesting for them to come in real you know being relaxed as well and so we'll make sure um to do that the other thing too that that's important is you know we always start out uh traditionally and asking Elders to provide some type of opening comment or tribal blessing that's important and a lot of times they'll say it in their language um and and so they will often share what they are saying that they may share you know who in their own language and then in English what they talked about but um

[35:00] just in case you do hear that native language that's important to do that and it's also important to do that um but for like a break or any food is is taken or things like that um those are so important because that language it it's it truly does it's a blessing not only for everybody and all of us there but it's a blessing of the land we're standing on and it's important that that those elements hear that that voice and they they hear those words I truly believe like those words carry so much weight they go back into these places and they provide protection and so I think that's that's really the the the uniqueness and I'm glad that we're going to be able to be in person and actually see these sites but hopefully that answers um your question yeah that was very helpful thanks so much for that thanks Ernest Ernest we've got questions from Tara and then Nicole Tara is this a time to comment or not yet

[36:01] um I think that's fine this is an informational session so I think you can provide either questions or comments Tara okay Ernest I'm unfortunately out of town next week and I feel so terrible that I will be missing this but I just wanted to give you my love and um just how wonderful this presentation is and the great work that you're doing thank you very much I do appreciate that and I and I hope that there'll be an opportunity that we can follow up with you around um with the discussion obviously and and um kind of what the next steps are from next week thanks Tara Nicole um what do you have for Ernest thank you um I I just have a question I was wondering if you could just expand a little bit more on um uh the relationship between the land and the First Peoples of this land I think the more that I learn about um kind of my white culture and indigenous cultures white culture has a very extractive relationship with the

[37:01] land whereas indigenous cultures it really is this very interconnected spiritual uh kind of connection as I'm starting to understand it and and you know for me that that relationship and understanding the relationship as well as the pain of having taken people from this land that is so interconnected is really starting to inform some of my thinking about this and just the way to enter into relationships and you know if if this feels like an appropriate place for it an appropriate question um I would I would appreciate some of your thoughts there to help us understand more thank you very much for the question um it's it's a very important one and it's one that I hope that next week you can also um ask the tribal representatives to to also elaborate on and provide their comments because I can only speak obviously off on my own behalf and

[38:01] what I've in in even talking with our tribal Elders um the connection with land is just so important and I think right now we're seeing the conversation around place names around Colorado mountain peaks valleys things like that and oftentimes folks will just kind of push us aside we'll say well you know that's really not important and the whole scheme of things that's really not important what's really in a name what's really in a place and it's almost it for at least for you also I know that for many indigenous tribes and I can only think about comparing it to our youth culture we don't we don't have a a name for it in you it's so strong and I almost relate it to that's why I feel like when you go to do a hike at Garden of the Gods that you're connected that you have a stronger feeling there if you're on Flagstaff mountain and you're overlooking the valley and it's

[39:01] mesmerizing to you or if you're going back into any of the hikes that people are drawn to this this is why I feel like it's it's we breathe better we feel better it's it's a human connection and and I think that that for for so many indigenous cultures that we've we've that's how we've relied on this and so the fact that we're dealing with major issues like like drought and climate change that's why it's so important to have the indigenous voice at the table even if they've been removed to Oklahoma or Montana or The Dakotas they're still their knowledge is still there they're still connected to that place and I feel like through these conversations around the Sand Creek Massacre through history through the connection of you know um for Chambers or Valmont Butte or the early establishment of Boulder whatever it might be or any other community on the Front Range it's important to make space for that history and that recognition and I think it's up to the

[40:02] tribes to feel like they're in a place if they want to share it the reason why I feel like consultations are also important is that it gives tribal Nations and representatives an opportunity to share with you what that means to them and oftentimes that's been something that people have taken and put it and put in books they've removed it from it's out of our control and I feel like that's that's been um a lot of times very very harmful and so I think now that we're talking around conservation Wildfire management all these areas have a place for indigenous knowledge that will be able to help address some of these concerns or if anything at all give you another lens to look at the issues that you face as decision makers in your position and I think hearing that from them they'll be able to share even more of of what I can just

[41:00] limited share with you this evening thank you so much Ernest I have a question for you um I was struck by your your observation that these relationships uh build at the speed of trust and you've been our guide for so many years and as we've had these tribal consultation consultations and these really as these relationships have built and developed and evolved can you maybe share with us from your Vantage Point what you have seen in these consultations between these preval nations in the city of Boulder over the last few years what evolution has has developed that's a great question and I think what I've seen is you know what could potentially be well what started as a as as the people's Crossing that conversation alone you know what should a name renaming of a park look like um and to hear the tribal Representatives talk about different ideas and collaborate with staff

[42:01] but then also take into consideration it's not about us as native people it's about us collectively it's about the baby being born and having the opportunity to go and visit these places and experience the same experience that we're doing so I think that's that's just an example of the tribe sharing well it actually shouldn't be maybe it should be you maybe it should be Comanche kyowa Cheyenne whatever it but instead of that we're going to call it the people because we're all included including you including the settlers people who moved here because they love this place they have a connection with this place and I think that type of openness that type of collaboration only starts coming when you build that trust when they feel like they can actually come into this process provide a comment and it's going to be taken seriously and what that other that also transcends

[43:01] into is stronger education and information to the General Public the hiking signs the information you know that history is also being able to be passed along many of these tribes have their own curriculum I mean we have many of our own languages and that also can be shared as well so I've seen the openness by the tribal Representatives because they felt comfortable in a place where they can share something and it's going to be taken seriously and it's not going to be okay a check the box process we did this let's move on because to be honest with you that's how we got into this process in the first place is that these agreements had lapsed and and not paid attention to and that requires that commitment now you the every step of this process in the tribes have been able to see that and they've they too have committed it you have to look at it on this their site as well oftentimes these cultural Affairs

[44:00] offices at tribes they're they're understaffed um they're being called in all directions I mean especially for tribes in in States surrounding Colorado they're they're they've often been surprised like wow you know Colorado's really wanting our engagement and guidance in this and we're we can see our fingerprint on this process well thank you so much Ernest um I don't see any other questions so maybe it'd be good time to turn it uh back to uh to staff for the second half of our presentation and I think we're going to see a bit of a preview of on what we're going to be engaged in next week with with these tribal Nations yeah great thank you councilmember Yates and um I will pick the presentation back up and then introduce some of our staff team as well um so next slide please um Earnest just provided that that fantastic overview and I share the sentiment that I learn more every time

[45:01] we um both review and then expand on this information um when we start to think about the city of Boulder's upcoming consultation you heard some of these themes already from Earnest so I won't read every single point um but I do want to call out a couple of things and I've had the privilege now of being a part of the consultation effort since um 2018 planning for 2019 and my own experience of the relationships developed particularly with those particular Representatives who return for each consultation it's been amazing to expand sort of beyond the formality of the meeting and also build those relationships that Ernest is talking about um it's the the process is unlike a city meeting that you might expect where folks have an agenda and a set outcome and a set time period and um gosh darn it we're gonna achieve it and one one of the great things about tribal consultation is while we arrive

[46:00] with an intention and we certainly have things that we hope to uphold in terms of our agreements in terms of making improvements to our relationships we also take times for things like when we're on a site visit and a tribal representative chooses to bathe in the the creek we make space for that we um we have opportunities to again bless each meal that we have together and really take the time to savor every piece of that experience and I think frankly it has informed quite a bit of how we think about our all of our work in the city organization why shouldn't we have that that strength of connection and commitment to all of the work that we do so I appreciate all of that learning both personally and I know team shares a lot of that um I think just a couple other pieces as we think about our upcoming consultation I want to highlight that second to last point you see on your screen regarding protected protecting sensitive information one aspect of consultation is it is a closed session it is a

[47:02] government-to-government formal negotiation and often we will be talking about culturally important information whether that's part of the the physical land or practices and so it's really important to us to protect that and ensure that our tribal partners are able to preserve that that piece of their culture and their history as it relates to working with Boulder um I think we can go to the next slide the other piece that I want to highlight is this that in addition to tribal consultation and this work being the right thing to do um it also is grounded in several City practices and so you see here on the slide um a a spectrum of where we see tribal consultation fitting into the overall work of the city um you will see uh pieces of what we have learned through past discussions recognized and supported in our racial

[48:02] Equity plan in various Department long-term plans as particularly open space and Mountain Parks as you'll hear in a little bit it's grounded in both federal and state laws and practices it's certainly grounded in policies in the way the city is operating more and more and so there's there's a constant seeking as well to to consider and and get more and more creative about how can we leverage these partners and relationships to do better in all of the city work whether that's specifically related to land use or how we go about our business next slide please so our final slide I want to share is while we are emphasizing certainly our formal consultation because it is happening next week we are engaged in our with our tribal Nation Partners throughout the year and not every piece of that is coming before Council um so we just wanted to highlight for

[49:00] you that in addition to our regular consultations which often can occur annually sometimes based on purpose and schedules and so on we may have a year where we don't have one but in general the intention is to maintain them regularly we also have working group meetings so these are subsets of tribal Representatives who are willing to engage on a deeper level on a particular effort so something like um you know the decision of renaming the people's Crossing occurred at the consultation level but the ongoing work on how do we reshape the the interpretive signs for example uh that is now happening at that working group level we then have specific projects one of which you will hear about this evening um where we have maybe a couple tribes in particular with a close tie to a project the city is working on and so we have a direct communication about that and then finally in some cases you know as City projects intersect with federal agencies and other projects we may have

[50:01] a delegated consultation in that regard um with that we're going to get into both some Boulder specific history and I'm going to invite Dan Burke our director of open space and Mountain parks uh good evening Council Thank you Pam um I just want to start off by first saying hello again to Ernest and I look forward to seeing you next week it's uh always a highlight in my particular year and I've been uh in a deep learning and um on uh the issue of not only consultation but relationship building with tribal Nations since uh 2018 when I uh assumed uh getting ready for the director role and assuming that role and it's just one of my uh deep honors to uh uh be a part of this effort I think the other uh side benefit before I uh continue the uh conversation we can go to the next slide is is it also brings this effort brings across uh together staff from across many different

[51:01] departments City attorney's office City manager's office open space HHS um is so it's just been great to form relationships amongst our staff uh uh around all of this uh all these efforts and these projects we can go to the next slide so when uh when did formal consultation between the city and tribal Nations began it will actually began in the late 1990s uh the federal government was Consulting uh around uh the nist um uh building up on on Broadway and South Boulder and uh the city of uh Boulder um participated in that uh Federal uh LED consultation and springing from that the city continued uh desired to continue that type of relationship with tribes so we began uh initiating our own consultations with tribal Nations and out of these uh early conversations in the late 90s and early 2000s spring a

[52:01] couple of the development of a couple of memorandums of understanding um uh their uh consultations then led to an additional and even in the mended uh memorandum of understanding uh back in 2002 and 2004 and all these existing memorandums of understanding is that that were a result of these early consultations mainly focused on open space and Mountain Parks managed property and it called for collaborations in these areas that you kind of see here collaborating on preserving open space and cultural resources on open space managed lands working together to sort of recognize and honor the open space Charter purposes that are that's in the charter providing opportunities for ceremonial practices on City open space how and when do we notify tribes if if we inadvertently discovered human remains or cultural resources that are discovered on open space lands and then

[53:01] it delayed the framework for uh trying to establish yearly consultations when financially feasible we can go to the next slide then so um we we had regular consultations and then there was a pause and um uh uh what gave rise to this new era of consultation is really the 2016 indigenous people's day resolution that was adopted by the city and there was a particular clause in that resolution uh that stated that uh we shall City staff shall seek uh tribal Nation input into the renaming of Settlers Park so we took advantage of that stipulation in the resolution to resurrect uh consultation and as Ernest alluded to and and Pam in 2019 we held a face-to-face consultation in in which uh uh I believe over a dozen tribal nations were represented and came to the city of Boulder for a few days and that sort of donned the new era if

[54:02] you will of consultations that have that have since ensued um so what happened then is we had a pause in 2020 due to covet but re resurrected consultation in 2021 and 2022 and uh although they were virtual so this will be our first in person coming up and what we're focusing on in this new era of consultation is several different sort of initiatives and one is to consolidate and update those memorandas of understanding that were entered into into the late 90s and early 2000s so we've been really at four years of work on on trying to determine what is the best best path forward for consolidating and bringing those up to dates um and obviously the renaming of Settlers Park was another major Focus but in and of itself I think the greatest uh goal was to build understanding was and to build uh relationships among City staff and

[55:01] tribal Representatives so we can go to the next slide so uh coming up next week two days Wednesday and Thursday we're going to continue our conversation on memorandum of understanding and again trying to uh uh consolidate and update we're going to have new uh some new uh faces at the table uh these could be newly elected tribal leaders uh and representatives that maybe haven't had uh uh uh years of experience uh uh interacting with City staff so that will be a chance to bring everybody up to date again but we're actually going to also uh uh participate in several field trips this was a desire of tribal uh Representatives they would like to get to know more intimately uh especially City open space lands and so we have a few uh visits planned in which we'll actually get out on the land with our tribal Representatives so I'm really looking forward to that and then we're going to provide them updates on some of

[56:01] the updates we're providing you tonight on other uh other work that we're doing in collaboration with tribal Nations including our Land Management plan work on Fort Chambers Poor Farm project which we'll talk just a little bit about coming up in our ethnographic report so we can go to the next slide please so here's all the uh tribal Nations uh that uh uh uh that we reached out to uh these are uh uh some and then some added tribes uh that uh since early late 1990s that we've been working with I believe uh late 90s was about 12 or 13 tribes that has now expanded to 16. we're expecting representation from at least 13 of the 16 tribes so far and we may still hear from few others that um are are going to be uh joining us but so really looking forward to that and the next slide please um so while uh Pam alluded to the uh that consultation is just one aspect

[57:01] that we're working with the city so just want to use this opportunity for a few minutes to uh uh update you on uh some of the uh specific projects some that are going to be talked about at consultation but some that we work more informally with tribal Representatives over over the year and uh we're us we'd just like to take an opportunity to highlight just a few of them that were uh uh called out in your memo that you have for tonight's packet um so if we can go to the next slide please so I uh you've heard many times about the memorandum of understanding which has been uh a big focus of updating and consolidating and uh uh and and again uh the bullet points here is some of the goals of this uh mou is uh is to really I'll just call out the last bullet point here because we haven't talked about that is to really seek meaningful tribal input regarding OS P Land Management you can go to the next slide please some of the other goals of this

[58:01] Consolidated memorandum of understanding if we can go to the next slide please is um is a a bigger Focus for this updated mou from what we had 20 years ago was to really get collaboration on our cultural resource management we have a cultural resources management plan the first one that we'll be creating on with open space and Mountain parks and we are seeking tribal input on the development of that plan as we launch into it so and that's uh some terms and conditions and and goals are called out in the mou around cultural resource management uh you can see some other points here that this uh consolidated memorandum of understanding it hopes to achieve and one of them uh the last bullet point again I'll call attention to is that uh the city uh pledges to explore permanent ceremonial site on City lands uh we already have terms in the occurrent

[59:00] agreement and this new agreement about uh uh uh uh providing access to open space lands that may involve temporary structures and and fire but looking for that permanent ceremonial site is called for in the new plan next slide please so um continuing on this highlight the memorandum of understanding is one the next project we want to update you is on our fourth Chambers Poor Farm Land Management plan uh before I turn it over to our senior planner at open space Katie Knapp I just want to just a brief context this was a property 110 acre property that was purchased uh by the city for open space purposes in 2018. um it holds a lot of open space Charter purposes uh and was a property that the city has been uh uh looking at for a number of years and we did a choir in 2018. uh this property also has a very

[60:01] deep uh and meaningful significance to three tribal nations in particular and uh for every uh property that the uh open space Department uh purchases and then gets a signed management of we develop what we call a management plan it guides the future for how this plan would be managed in the future and so we wanted to reach out out to these three tribes and have them at the seat at the very beginning of the development of this plan to help us uh receive meaningful uh input into the development of the Land Management plan and so that's the goal of this project and uh I invite Katie Knapp to join us on the screen to kind of give you an update on where we're at with that project thanks Dan um uh as Dan mentioned my name is Katie Knapp I'm the project manager for the Fort Chambers poor farm management plan um and so just to provide a little bit of orientation here the property is

[61:00] located in the center of the map here it's outlined in red it's on 63rd Street just south of J Road and um just south of the property is Boulder Creek shown here with the the blue line um to the to the right of the property or to the the East is the saw Hill and one Walden Ponds and then to the West is the boulder Municipal Airport um next slide so the um we're very fortunate that we're working with the Arapahoe and Cheyenne Representatives on this project we're working specifically with these tribes because the property does have a direct connection with the Sand Creek Massacre the property is the presumed site of Fort Chambers and this is a location where Boulder area men had assembled and

[62:00] trained in 1864 prior to participating in the atrocities at Sand Creek company D had trained here they also had attacked a Cheyenne camp near Sterling Colorado we have assembled information about the property its resources its history and we just recently developed an inventory report to share this information and to have it help inform the site planning process the report is now available on the project website it's um it's kind of a graphic interactive platform so it's something that we hope you will take a look at click through and learn some more information about the the property it's a it's a nice resource next slide so the um the tribal Nation Representatives that we're working with are helping to provide input

[63:00] and this will help guide the long-term management of the property as part of the process we are also working with the tribes to understand their desired long-term relationship with the property and with their help we'd like to understand how best to interpret the property so the community members can learn about the history of Fort Chambers and Boulder's role in the Sand Creek Massacre this includes reinterpreting an existing historic marker that's on the site there's currently a stone marker that's near the road at 63rd Street there and we will also identify opportunities to develop appropriate interpretive materials and programs that'll integrate the broader indigenous history into Boulder's history coordinating with the planned ethnographic report efforts that Phil will be speaking with you about as well all right next slide so the overall planning process has four

[64:01] main phases with the first phase really studying the foundation for the process this includes developing the new inventory report I just mentioned as well as a Project Specific memorandum of understanding that outlines our coordination efforts with the tribes um phase two is where we'll explore opportunities for the site and develop some different site plan Alternatives so we're currently just starting this phase um in phase three we'll be evaluating the different Alternatives with the help from our tribal Representatives we'll then develop a preferred alternative and that's something that we'll be bringing to the open space Board of Trustees and the community to get some feedback then the final plan will be developed in phase four where we'll make some revisions based on community and board feedback this process includes an anticipated timeline but um just want to note that

[65:01] this is subject to change we have built-in time for coordination but we do recognize that tribal Partners have many different projects that they're working on and so we may need to make some adjustments I just wanted to highlight that as well next slide so our immediate next steps include working with tribal representatives to finalize that Project Specific memorandum of understanding to outline our collaboration efforts on the project and this is separate from the city-wide mou that you've been hearing quite a bit about now we're also starting to highlight opportunities and develop site management plan alternatives for tribal input we've heard from from the tribes that they're interested in having us develop some some different Alternatives that they can then look at and react to and give us some feedback on um we anticipate providing an update

[66:00] um later later on after we've been able to work with the tribes on on those efforts and we'll be continuing conversations with our tribal partners and we look forward to strengthening those relationships listening and learning more um and um we're integrating you know the knowledge that we're learning on this project we're coordinating with we'll be coordinating with the ethnographic report and the information we're going to learn from that as well so um Phil can tell you a little bit more about that effort all right next slide yeah excuse me so yeah good evening council members my name is uh Philip Yates I'm a senior Communications program manager with the Communications Department uh working with open space uh and I just want to just extend my deep appreciation to Earnest house over the last four years five years I've just had the opportunity to learn so much from him and I just want to extend my deep

[67:00] appreciation and so as a part of a lot of the work that has happened as a part of consultation is a direct result of the 2020 I'm sorry 2019 and 2021 consultation was the how do we take the people's cross and then go further with education and interpretation not only for that area but probably for the broader Boulder Valley and so as a part of the 2021 consultation we actually set the context for working group meetings and as a part of five working group meetings since uh October of 2021 we're able to work and develop and co-develop an ethnographic report that took time to learn about from tribal Representatives provide context and then actually come to an agreement that we have the opportunity to work together on such a project but what do we seek to do we want to develop educational information with the support of tribal Representatives describe was someone place that we do know and where we're operating from is that Boulder's history

[68:01] is dominated by American European perspectives and fails to adequately include indigenous perspectives a lot of large part of our history is based on some of the histories from 1880 that are just not pleasant to read and need to be considered in the context of where we are now and so working together with travel Representatives over several months we were able to come together on a ethnographic education report that we're seeking that will be informed by in-person interviews with travel representatives to communicate stories they want to share and to help them communicate their cultural spiritual and historical connections to the Boulder Valley and one key goal of this is to really set the context and framework for a collaboration on future education and interpretive materials but also to go a little deeper and learn what's meaningful engagement look like what are the types and places of areas that are important to tribal Representatives so

[69:00] we'll have a lot to learn through this process and what as a part of the steps that took to get to this place is that as a part of a meeting we had recently we did receive permission from tribal representatives to release a final report pending their approval in early 2026 people might ask well why is that taking so long well it's important we have to do a lot of preliminary research set the context with preliminary interviews conduct the interviews when it's appropriate and necessary with tribal Representatives there's review processes and so we want to make sure that we're going through this appropriately with the sensitive connection and thoughtfulness that such a project requires next slide and then as a part of this well how do we use this report and how do we think about what's actually currently out on the landscape right now um as a part of the working group that we we went regularly quarterly we've recently been able to work on what are

[70:01] some of that uh the signage we have on our system and so we've been getting to receive guidance on some of the signage we have to address dated signs that are on our system at the most recent working group meeting we had we did receive guidance to remove signs in the people's Crossing area and assign just south of the people's Crossing these signs are dated from the early 1990s and after presenting these it was very readily apparent of a need to think about where we're at now and how can we move forward so we're looking and we did receive guidance to remove these signs and that as a part of uh you know further uh discussions the tribal Representatives how can we think about a broader interpretive approach so how can we work step by step collaboratively and think how we can tell important stories that have not been communicated as part of Boulder's history before and we deeply appreciate the uh guidance and the commitment and the um

[71:00] the participation we've received as a part of this work so far next slide and as a part of the renaming in 2021 we did want to come back to the tribes tribal Nations and get guidance on the Settlers Park inscription that you see here this is a underpass that connects F G Fine park with the people's Crossing and so uh just recently we did receive guidance to remove it and to replace it with the people's Crossing name and that we've begun initial efforts to replace the inscription it will take time and it will require approval from CDOT but this is just another step in the process of just collaboration in regards to education interpretation and ongoing work collaboration with the tribal Nations next slide and that's it uh kind of a broad overview of all the projects and we certainly as staff want to take the time to thank you all to listen I want to thank Ernest house and now it's uh time

[72:02] for questions these are just some wonderful pictures actually that have come from the past the one on the left is from a virtual consultation like Dan and others have said that came during covid that we had to readjust and then the picture from on the right is from the 2019 consultation so uh looking forward to additional conversations coming up I definitely want to open the floor now for questions well thank you thank you Phillip and Katie and Dan and Pam for for that um preview of what we're going to engage in next week and for the next several months um Council colleagues that's the end of the presentation and so this is um another opportunity to ask questions or make comments about the preparation that we've been provided tonight in in anticipation of our activities the tribal Nations next week so if we've got any final questions this is the time to ask them

[73:02] looks like Nicole has a question well I heard you say comments in there too Bob so I've got absolutely please do if we want to do questions first I can hold on do comments or questions Let's do an easy doing okay uh then just just a comment no no questions I just wanted to say thank you to Ernest Pam Dan Katie and Phil um I really appreciate this work so much that we're continuing to build these relationships that we are learning the stories of this land and that we're starting the many generations of work that it's going to take to repair some of the harm that we've done and continue to do so just so appreciate that thank you to everyone um and I also just wanted to acknowledge and thank Nick Hill mankakar for all of his extra work in helping establish these consultations and the process over several years we saw him in one of the photos from ernest's presentation um so I just wanted to give him a shout out his personal commitment to helping us build these sustainable relationships and and really create this trust between staff and stakeholders than the tribal

[74:00] Representatives is a really big part of why we get to be an example for other cities and just wanted to call out what a valuable resource he is on that topic so thank you again to everybody who's been involved this is just such such a gift for the community thank you Nicole Juni thank you Bob I appreciate it and I feel I just wanted to Echo uh Nicole sentiment thank you for the great presentation and um humbled I participated before in the prior um consultations I hope that I'll be able to make it next week but nonetheless I just think it's great and I think again we have to forge these relationships because they are important and it's about looking to the Future as well we know the past but we have an opportunity to create a better future with these relationships so thank you for this presentation and thank you Bob

[75:00] for facilitating thank you Jenny any other questions or comments from from Council Judy said a word that I think was exactly right um Aaron and I had the privilege of being in person with these tribal leaders in 2019 and I will say that um come away from it very humbled it's a very touching and emotional experience is it's something that you really feel um and Aaron maybe you can comment on this as well but you walk away recognizing that this was was someone else's land and and we're the we're the we're the stewards right now of that and and um working together to collaborate together to figure out how we honor uh the various cultures that have um have been on this land hey Aaron do you have a reflection I know was many years ago that we we met face to face but I know that you were very actively involved as well yeah thanks for asking Bob uh you know

[76:01] the experiences is very powerful I mean I'm so glad that we've been uh doing the consultations over the last few years and well it's been good to do them virtual and we've accomplished some important work that way the meeting people in person and doing so on the lands that they have the ancestral and deep uh time and Memorial connections to is incredibly powerful and so um I learn a great deal every time and uh will continue to learn from from each each day and and each hour in each sentence that people speak about how we can you know do their early steps in repairing some of the enormous damage that has been done to these peoples over the years and centuries thanks Aaron any other final comments or questions before we get ready to to move into our consultations next week don't see any and I look forward to seeing many of you at the consultations

[77:00] and I think you'll you'll all be very much touched by the experiences as Aaron mentioned um our Council agenda committee is spot on because they scheduled this first session for 45 minutes and we were at minute 42. so great job CAC for uh scheduling and if there's no other comments or questions about this presentation I think we're ready to move on to the second of our two presentations on discussions for tonight this just to set people's expectations the council agenda committee scheduled this one for upper two hours we may be able to get done earlier which would be nice and be efficient with our Communications as with the um the first presentation staff will do some presentations um first of some of the work they've done uh and then we're gonna take a pause for questions just to make sure there's a lot of data pulled together as you all saw in the memo and we want to make sure that people have a good grasp and understanding of the information has already been gathered by staff and uh and and we'll ask questions at that

[78:02] break and then we'll roll into some Alternatives and options that staff has laid out for us and that's really at that second uh stage of the presentation is really an opportunity for us to provide some feedback some direction to uh to staff because they have a lot of work ahead of them and they very much want to hear from from us tonight so with that there I'll turn it back over to you for the introduction of this presentation sure thank you Bob I you know I I would say um this is not a new topic right I have I have yet to be in a city where uh the topic of occupancy is not um sorry my video just went off um where the topic of occupancy isn't uh discussed in one way shape or form um and staff even prior to my arrival has been have been and councils have been talking about occupancy for a while uh we were here last fall uh in November with the rpnds team and I'll be sending

[79:00] it to Brad here shortly um to talk about what does this look like on the work plan this is one of your Council priorities if we have moved forward and the commitment to come back to really share out we're in that shared learning space of what are other cities doing and what could be the right model for us what what more do you want us to take a look at and so that's where staff is at the moment and with that I will pass it on to RPM NDS director Brad Mueller thank you neria and good evening council members after a scenario said of planning and development services Brad wheeler and just building on what Maria said we respect and acknowledge that this is of great interest to the community we are working hard to bring you thoughtful analysis on this Carl has done a wonderful job and I'm excited for the presentation he'll provide to you this is not an easy item I've worked in multiple generate jurisdictions and this is very much to

[80:03] the point a topic of great discussion and debate it is a tool in the toolbox for both um managing housing opportunities and other aspects of uh that zombie are designed to provide we do hope to get direction from you in the form of maybe two or three options that we can then move forward for and while we wanted to um give you a meaningful number of items to uh chew on this evening the reality is that there could be 20 or 30 iterations of things uh so we've simply tried to give what we think is a reasonable range of things for your debate and discussion uh we're happy to answer questions uh as we go along about other possible iterations of course but I would just note that at the end of the day something simpler than not is better uh

[81:02] we know that uh enforcement from practice not just in Boulder but in other examples around the country uh that enforcement is a challenging most people do want to follow laws um but it also means that they have to be able to understand them so to the degree that the regulations uh are somewhat intuitive to people that's always helpful in that report and with that I will turn it over to Carl geiler who has been the lead on this and um appreciate again his hard work thank you Brad and thank you Nuria good evening council members again I'm Carl geiler from planning and development services gonna pull up a presentation so we'll be talking about occupancy reform tonight as an area mentioned we talked about this uh in November so I'll give you a little bit more information tonight basically the format of tonight's

[82:02] discussion is I'll be providing a little bit of background on occupancy and Boulder some of the history a little bit about what the current requirements are in the land use code and then I'll move on to community engagement I'll talk about what we've heard thus far it's been an ongoing discussion uh for years but we've been able to get some engagement in the last few weeks so I want to share that with you all and then I'm going to move on to the sample communities that we've provided within the packet on how different uh cities and communities throughout the country handle occupancy and then of learning from that we've drawn some potential options for Council consideration like Brad said we're looking to maybe try to narrow that down and then really move into the options development stage and start to get some feedback from folks on a narrowed set of of options I'll conclude with next steps and then we'll move into the clarifying questions

[83:01] and deliberation so these are the questions that we're posing to council tonight uh does city council have any comments or questions related to the sample communities that were researched uh and then the second question is which potential options should be the focus of any further analysis Outreach and ultimately ordinance development so moving into background gonna quickly go over the history of occupancy uh regulations in Boulder um attachment B of the packet actually goes into a little bit more detail on this um so the first zoning code in the city of Boulder was adopted I think in the late 1920s in the early 1950s there was a limitation on units where it was limited to one family per unit in certain areas of the city uh in the 1950s that was changed to family or five unrelated persons

[84:02] in 1962 the code was changed to lower that five unrelated persons to three unrelated in the 1970s they updated the definition of family uh with the um occupancy regulations to allow two additional rumors with a family and that's still in the code today um and then in attachment B you'll notice there's a lot of detail about some rezonings that occurred um particularly around downtown University Hill um Goss Grove areas where uh the zones were changed from higher density zones to more lower density or medium density zones so that created some non-conforming occupancies in those areas that still exist today during the 1980s the city was sending inspectors out to properties to keep records on those non-conforming occupancies we still look at those records today as reference for any projects that come

[85:01] in uh and then moving into 1990s in 1993 the council at that time actually eliminated that status for many uh properties that had non-conforming occupancies it basically changed the code to say that all units have to meet the current level uh the current limitations on occupancy so obviously uh this did get a little bit of pushback from uh landlords that now had empty bedrooms uh rooms that they had had to rent out before or now empty they lost some Revenue it caused some landlords to actually increase rents to make up the difference so a lot of that resistance kind of pushed back to Council in 1998 where that was reversed so that section of the occupancy regs that relates to non-conformities re-established that those non-conforming occupancies are still valid uh in the land use code

[86:00] then there was a period of time where there weren't any changes to the occupancy regulations uh but this Council will probably remember that we adopted uh regulations on cooperatives several years ago in 2017 so an occupancy limitation for those co-ops uh was added to the code and then one year later uh there was un-updated occupancy rugs for adus which I'll talk about so this is the the current state of of the code um you'll notice that in our definition section of the code we have a definition of family this is very similar to other jurisdictions a lot of the definitions are very similar there's no limitation on the number of family members uh based on uh a 1970 Supreme Court ruling no limitation on number of family members when you go to section 985 in the code this is where it specifies occupancy throughout the city so there's like basically four different situations so

[87:01] it's either members of a family plus two additional persons um not in a separate unit unless you were to go to an Adu the second option is three unrelated persons and generally the lower intensity zones so public zones agricultural zones the rural residential the residential estate and the low density residential zones it's for unrelated persons in all other zoning districts so that's our mixed use zones our mixed density zones our high density zones business zones industrial zones downtown and then the next option is just two persons and any of their children by Blood marriage guardianship um children or adoption foster children there are um specifics for like I said adus co-ops and group living uses uh so the Adu definition basically says or on occupancy that the occupancy like should be the same as a single family house basically a family

[88:01] and up to two additional rumors but it specifies in that section only uh that those two additional uh occupants of of that Adu can have dependence in there so we we tried to write something in the code that was a little bit more family friendly uh for the adus the co-op regs are similar to this where it allows uh 12 persons in the lower intensity zones and up to 15 persons in the other zones uh the thing about co-ops though is that it does require A license they have to go through a licensing process and the city is only issuing 10 licenses per year on those co-ops just like other our communities the city of Boulder has group living uses like group homes institutional uses Residential Care Facilities congregate care facilities that allow higher occupancies this is very consistent with what we've seen in other communities throughout the country it's typically six to eight occupants sometimes more

[89:02] with some sort of special approval the city of Boulder regs are very consistent with that so this is a map that just kind of shows the general two occupancy limits that we have in the city of Boulder the areas in green are the areas where four unrelated persons are permitted and then you can see that there's a wide swap of areas that are lower density zoning districts that limited to three unrelated and that's what's shown in Orange so just some recent developments on occupancy the council in the community is well aware of the bedrooms are for people ballot measure that went before voters on in 2021 it did not pass but it was close so 48 percent said yes to it 52 said no as we noted in the memo there has been some statistical surveys done that indicated a lot of interest in occupancy reform

[90:01] maybe a different solution so that's why Council had requested at the the 2022 Retreat that we take a look at these things come up with some different options so we talked about this last year on November 10th uh alongside a number of other planning and development services projects at a study session so we heard at that study session that Council was um finding that occupancy was one of the highest priority items that we should be working on the timeline that we proposed to complete the project uh at least be by the beginning uh or middle part of quarter three was supported but there were some council members that asked for a quicker timeline if possible we talked about the level of public involvement being the consult level in our public engagement plan uh based on the amount of uh of feedback that we've been getting on this topic for years now some council members express some

[91:01] concern with that just given the referendum outcome and since the topic does cause stress for many in the community and feelings of not being heard so we were asked to at least reach out to stakeholders and neighborhood groups to make them aware of it and get their feedback as we move through this process and that's what we've done so this is the the problem statement for the project so housing in Boulder is increasingly more costly to run our own making it more challenging for some to afford to live or stay in Boulder occupancy limitations and and zoning regulations may make such challenge challenges more pronounced this is the direction we got from Council from The Retreat so it's basically to perform a comparative analysis uh from other communities develop a model occupancy approach and solicit Community input for ordinance revisions this has informed the goals of the project that we've prepared so review City occupancy standards from

[92:00] other communities based on best practices from other communities prepare options that would be appropriate to Boulder and consider simple land use code amendments that provide greater housing opportunities in the community while preserving neighborhood character in established neighborhoods and vet changes with the community so moving on to the community engagement we've heard uh thus far like I said occupancy has been a discussion topic in the city for many years um we've been keeping people apprised of this project through the pnds newsletter and the City website but because of the bedrooms are for people ballot initiative and prior city council discussions um on occupancy we have been getting feedback through the years that we've been still reviewing uh but and we've also been reaching out to stakeholders and interested groups and persons we've had conversations over the last few weeks to get feedback we also had an

[93:00] Outreach event that we held on February 22nd that basically won over all the different housing related code changes with housing advocacy groups and and and neighborhood representatives to get their feedback so I wanted to just summarize some of the things that we've been hearing uh so far so on one end we we've been hearing and I think you've been seeing in in some of the emails that have been coming through um the people that are in favor of increasing occupancy limits find that it would increase housing opportunities uh in the city for those that are struggling um to find housing or struggling to stay in Boulder we've heard that it's consistent with the city's housing and racial Equity goals uh potential impacts are not necessarily more than that of a large family if you had you know five or six people in a house is that different than a large family um we've heard that any impacts that might come from that should be directly uh done through enforcement and uh in a

[94:01] direct manner rather than indirectly through occupancy regulations we've heard concerns about students that have to uh live together due to the high rental costs many cases this is uh violate violations of The Code by changing the code it could out allow some more flexibility to bring some of those non-conformities or violations into compliance with the code and just again allowing more housing options that would address the increasing cost of housing in Boulder we've been hearing obviously from the governor that there's a housing crisis in Colorado and this is something that's been talked about quite frequently in recent weeks uh some of the folks that have been expressing opposition or caution about making changes um the thoughts are that increasing housing Supply alone will not make a difference or move the needle on affordable housing this is based on the demand in Boulder being so high that any

[95:01] added housing would just add more expensive housing to the city that the focus should really be more on deed restricted housing rather than just adding housing in general we've heard that Boulder should just instead of adding housing just significantly increase in Luffy's commercial linkage fees or look at ways to control rental prices to obtain more deed restricted affordable housing we've heard that not every neighborhood should be treated the same there's many University adjacent neighborhoods that are more impacted than other neighborhoods and perhaps increasing occupancy in those areas might not make a lot of sense and then increasing occupancy will increase enforcement burden on Neighbors in terms of noise trash parking and would only make more money for landlords so again these are quick points to summarize what we've been hearing so I'm going to now jump into the sample

[96:00] communities that we looked at obviously there's been a number of different um analyzes done over the last few years with peer communities we've looked at all those peer communities again since we're trying to find you know best practices we we wanted to broaden the Spectrum so we have added some cities that we wouldn't ordinarily be looking at some larger cities basically looking at cities that some cities that are of comparable size to the city of Boulder that have a large University and a large percentage of students but we've also looked at some of the larger cities that have big state schools things like that just to see what they do so we've looked at 60 communities throughout the country we've looked at their family definitions their occupancy limits in single-family zones and outside single-family zones we've come across a number of alternative ways of regulating regulating occupancy whether it's in the land use code or it's in definitions different variations of co-ops that we've seen some of them regulate through their

[97:01] family definition and some have specific occupancy limits uh we found that some communities don't have occupancy limits or have recently eliminated occupancy limits so some of those examples are really west coast states have state legislation that make it illegal to have zoning laws on occupancy so that's California Oregon and Washington so in looking at those communities they don't have limitations on occupancy Minneapolis in the last few years has eliminated its occupancy limits um obviously not a West Coast State I should point out that um in attachment C where we have a summary it's put in there as two as their occupancy limit it should actually say two or more that's if you look at attachment D you'll see the actual language in the code and it says two or more it's kind of an odd way of saying it but they don't have a limitation basically based on that how it's written some communities have reduced occupancy

[98:02] limits in areas around their University some examples are Austin Texas and College Station Texas Austin has some single-family zones that surround the um universities that had a higher occupancy limit in the past it was like six unrelated and based on some concerns particularly related to students living in what they called super duplexes or what they called Shadow dorms those were reduced to four unrelated in recent years um and then College Station is an example of a community where they actually have an overlay that limits um where they have a higher occupancy limo outside the overlay but lower within the overlay by the University there's some other communities that have increased occupancy around their universities so Charlottesville Virginia and Tuscaloosa Alabama you're probably already aware about

[99:00] Madison since I talked about this in the memo and it's been recent news but Madison had a two unrelated person occupancy limit in their single-family zones it's three unrelated throughout the city and if the way the code was written before is if you wanted to have three unrelated in the single family zones uh the unit had to be owner occupied so at the end of February Madison actually brought this to their through their planning board and their city council and rescinded that role they changed uh the requirements of five unrelated city-wide so five unrelated Citywide is what we've seen in a number of communities recently like Denver has made this change so this is just showing attachment D um the 60 communities uh one column shows the definitions of family which you'll see are probably very similar from Community to community and then the other the the right hand column is really getting into the occupancy regulation so I don't claim to be an expert on all 60 communities but I've

[100:01] tried to pull out a lot of the themes uh that that we're seeing and and try to summarize that uh in the memo and then just for ease of reference this is where the numeric limits of occupancy are summarized in attachment C uh some of the analysis that we've seen is looking at table one in the memo is really looking at specific occupancy limits per units in the single family zones in the in the communities um so in this case um 32 of of the communities had a limit of two um which is less than Boulder obviously and then roughly equal number of three and four at 23 and 18 and then uh 12 percent had limits of five and then we have a category called different limit which is 15 of the of the communities That's Where It's Like There's No Limit or it's an even large higher limit than

[101:00] five like six or potentially eight um it's also communities that have uh different definitions of like housekeeping units or they might have their um limitations based on floor area or by bedroom um so when you look at the communities that have different limits or a greater number than than Boulder it's it's roughly almost half of the communities allow a higher limit than Boulder so looking at the zones outside of the single family zones uh you can see a roughly quarter of the communities have four as their occupancy limit which matches uh the city of Boulder's current limit um and then a number of communities 15 allow five um and then two percent allow six and then we get into that different limit category so again it's roughly half of the communities uh end up having allowing um more than the city of Boulder does but some have different ways of going about it so it's difficult to determine

[102:01] if they all if it allows more but generally the the five and six are what we're pointing into look at I also want to point out um there's a number of other cities that Define uh functional families households and housekeeping units these are generally equivalent to like family that we have here that include unrelated folks that live together and share the cost and living in the unit that's pretty common throughout um the country um some of them allow it just the same as any like family limitation uh some actually have a a process just like the city of Boulder does for co-ops to get those approved um and then we also wanted to point out we pointed out some communities that allow increased occupancy for seniors um there's some local examples and other examples throughout the country um and just to point out we brought through an ordinance several years ago

[103:00] to allow increased occupancy for seniors up to 10 in some of the rural residential and Rural residential estate neighborhoods uh in the city this was not passed by the council at the time due to the opposition that had uh come out as part of that process so I'm just gonna stop here this is the part where we can clarify any questions about the sample community so does council have any comments or questions related to the sample communities research thanks Carl uh folks um if you've got questions about um the research that's been done we're obviously going to have questions and comments about the options that staff put in the Remo in in a bit in the second half of the presentation but this is a good place to pause and ask questions about the background data collection we're going to start with Tara And then go to Nicole thanks Carl my first question is uh Austin do you know uh how it's going over there now that they went from six

[104:00] to four do you have any updates yeah I actually talked to the to a planner who's worked there for many years um he said there were a lot of concerns and complaints when the limitation was six per unit uh like I said there was a number of duplexes in those neighborhoods that they call Super duplexes because it allowed up to 12 people per building um which you know caused a lot of complaints in their neighborhood so heat in the discussion we had with with him uh basically when they lowered the occupancy limits he said a lot of the number of complaints had gone down okay and now Madison I went to school there by the way I'm not going to say whether I did or didn't live over occupied yeah we we talked to Madison too uh we thought that was a interesting Community because I had that owner occupancy requirement when we talked to them they they

[105:00] basically talk to us about the complications that they had in the enforcement of the owner occupancy requirement it was very difficult to know if a property was owner occupied or not and because of those enforcement problems that's what led them to rescind it and go to the five unrelated sorry anything else you're good okay let's we get a lot of hands up this great uh Nicole and Matt and Denmark Nicole thank you um I was just wondering when when looking at these policies when were they implemented so these policies that other cities have um the 60 or so were they implemented like in 2020 were they implemented in 1950 so we have a sense of how old they are how recent they are that I don't know um we basically went into their their zoning codes and and looked what they

[106:01] had on the books uh right now and then we we took interest in ones where we heard from them we reached out in emails to a number of communities and that's where we learned that some were in the process of recently making changes to their occupancy wrecks but I don't have a sense of when those were actually administered originally I I think a lot of these regulations I think came about I think around the same time that the city of Boulder adopted occupancy reg's probably the 1960s and 70s but I'm just guessing okay yep so around the time of the Civil Rights era and all that um and I'm with all these policies I just want to clarify their policies right they're not sort of best practices um they're just kind of the things that other communities are doing right now is that correct yeah like like I've said I I think best practices is is kind of an opinion of you know I think I've noticed that I think most communities deal with the issue very similarly so I

[107:01] would say there are common practices um they they I think communities learn from each other and adopt similar regulations over time thank you and just one last question about these um and you mentioned that there are some places that have just gotten rid of occupancy restrictions altogether in those communities though I'm are there still kind of building code and maybe this is something Lauren could help help us do like building codes or something that still protects safety so you can't have like 25 people crammed into 100 square foot yes all communities have a building and life safety codes uh there's it's important to know that you're not packing so many people in that it's difficult for them to escape if there's a fire you know things like that so most communities have those types of regs still thank you thanks Nicole we've got a mat up next followed by Mark and then Lauren thanks Bob um and thanks Carl and Brad and all team

[108:00] for just compiling all this this is I mean it's a good baseline from us to work from so so I thank you for for doing the Deep dive and reading everyone else's planning stuff and you can see other any helpful nuggets that Boulder could adopt outside of occupancy let us know if you see that many other cities um but uh my question centers around maybe Denver a little closer to home um if I recall they've done they did this about they moved to five about a year ago is that about right I think that's right and so I'm just wondering uh has there been any analysis as to those impacts I would imagine that similarly there were probably similar concerns as we're seeing here in our community about moving occupancy to five and were those concerns realized did they come true or or have we kind of just had occupancy move to five and people have kind of gone about their their merry way and so I'm just sort of curious about any analysis from our friends in Denver yeah I I had a discussion with the with the planner who who worked on that change um his thought that's where that they've not really necessarily seen an uptick

[109:01] in impacts um I think part of it is is that you know even though the number goes to five or six or whatever not every unit or owner decides to have that many people in their house I think in the Denver research they actually looked at a number of different cities and saw that you know most most units still are floating between two and three persons in them um so it's not like something that's just immediate impact but they've not seen any any uptick from what I uh gathered from the conversation with him well and I guess Carl your answer kind of led into what my next question would be which is sort of the idea I don't know if there's a more official term but sort of use useful occupancy in terms of like what's actually used up um there's like available occupancy when you say now it can be up to five but do you have any sense of just how much of that is actually being utilized I think you maybe answered a little bit that most are hanging out at two or three and maybe one question is maybe comparing

[110:00] like a place like Denver that has five to maybe a place like Vancouver who has no occupancy limits whatsoever or or another city and I'm just wondering is it does does it sort of produce this tsunami of occupancy like some are concerned with um and maybe your previous answer kind of addressed that but I wanted to more specifically ask that question about sort of useful occupancy no we we've not heard that and and yeah and their research that Denver did uh even Vancouver that has like some of the highest densities in North America uh had not seen a huge increase in occupancy their average is still around the same as Denver's um that said you know obviously areas around you know universities might be different you know if there is a area where it makes sense for a lot of students to cohabitate because of cost you know they they may take advantage of of an increase you know and we might see you know that in those particular areas but as an average across the cities their their research showed that

[111:00] it floats in the lower twos um of what a typical unit is thanks Carl I appreciate it that's all for me thanks Matt uh Mark then Lauren thank you Carl that was uh a great presentation and uh I really appreciate it um in your in the course of your research did you take a look at enforcement practices across the various cities to see how it has any impact or effect on you know the basic practices of uh of renting and I suspect you know a lot of The Flash points and friction if not in most of these certainly in this city is not necessarily whether you have three or four or five people uh it's when you have 10 in a three-bedroom um apartment and you know our enforcement has been relatively

[112:00] limp [Music] um and so I'm wondering whether other cities have engaged in enforcement practices that whatever they permit that's what they get as opposed to um you know simply getting uh you know a three-bedroom apartment that's authorized with five people and um and you have ten yeah I've had some conversations with other art other city planners about uh occupancy and enforcement um I think what I I got from the discussions was that their focus has been more on what are the impacts um is it detritus in the front yard is it a parking impact is it noise uh less so about looking into the number of persons um I think they've tried to shift the focus to addressing the impacts largely um not to say that that's the same across the board I just think in the

[113:00] ones that I talk to um that was generally the answers that I got okay thank you I'm good thanks Mark um Lauren and if no one else has a question I do yeah thank you um for that presentation um my question was all the first question was about enforcement as well because sort of on a different side than Mark took it though I used to live in Eugene and our occupancy that was maybe closer to double what apparently was allowed and um I had never heard of anyone experiencing any occupancy enforcement while I lived there like I don't think we were even aware that it was a rule and so I was just wondering um you know maybe these rules are on the books but do we know that these rules

[114:01] are actually enforced at all in these communities Carl do you want me to take that one uh sure sure I'll share my uh experience in other jurisdictions with occupancy and what I've come to understand too in Boulders first I think it's important to recognize that there's been a hold on a proactive enforcement relative to covet protocols and then segueing into this and Boulder but certainly as a response to complaints and most jurisdictions both through my understanding and talking to other uh you know working with other jurisdictions and in jurisdictions I've worked acknowledge that it is mostly complaint based um and ultimately um it is the externalities that folks there are often most concerned about trash weeds those kind of things and as Carl noted in his presentation those are

[115:00] things that are operational and to be managed through that uh where there is a complaint and the mechanics of that often involve uh voluntary disclosure and you can appreciate the um you know the importance of uh or the the challenges of giving accurate information in that case too but I do also like to point out that um again most people like to follow the rules uh most uh renters and landlords do and just like a law for jaywalking that maybe isn't actively or aggressively enforced it still has a role in in managing um uh the impacts for intensity of use which is ultimately the goal of uh many different zoning regulations and so that's why it has a place you know historically in Boulder's uh record of of code and um

[116:00] and and how that really does continue to be a tool as I indicated in the toolbox anything else Lawrence uh yeah I do have a couple well just because you were talking about why these occupancy rules exist I was wondering if you are aware of what the first occupancy and Rule enacted in our country was I want to say Berkeley but I'm not I'm not sure about that obviously Berkeley doesn't have one now but I feel like I did read somewhere that Berkeley was the first to do it in single-family homes but I could be wrong on that yeah well I don't know about single-family homes but the first one in the country was in San Francisco and one of its criticisms even at the time was that it was um pretty backed by pretty explicitly racist intentions right it was only acted upon

[117:03] against people in Chinatown basically they'd it was not enforced and even you know there's things in the paper about legislators own homes probably would not have held up to the standards that were required and so this this unequal enforcement thing I think is something that has always been an issue with occupancy um and just something to be for us to think of and be aware of as we look at these regulations my last question is about rental um rental agreements and Rental restrictions so please correct me if I'm wrong but there rental agreements can still limit the number of occupancy of the number of occupants allowed beyond what the city allows right or I mean reduce it from

[118:00] what the city allows of course I would think so I mean just like an HOA can enact additional restrictions beyond the city thank you thanks Lauren I don't see another hands up so Carl or Brad I'd like to ask you a couple questions this is not so much on the comparative study you guys did which I thought was fantastic by the way but really just about focusing on on our city um and this is probably as good a place to ask these questions as any I assume first first of all that we're primarily talking about rental properties here right we're not a situation where we have four or five like co-owners of a piece of real estate living together that's probably more of a owned Co-op um but I mean with um this this is primarily rentals we're talking about is that right Fair assumption I mean the current regulations apply to either rentals or or owned um I think the concerns arise from you know rentals

[119:01] and and the externalities from those not to say that there can't be or aren't any situations where other people opt to live together you know unrelated elsewhere but I think the focus has largely been on rentals yeah numerically oh I'm sorry uh council member I was gonna move the next question so go ahead yeah just to add to what Carl said um that almost certainly is going to be too just mathematically given the high percentage of rentals in Boulder I think somebody will know the number better but I think it's something like 65 percent of total right right that you that was a good segue into my second question Brad um so that six uh um we always talk about roughly 50 of the people that live in Boulder are are renters um the 65 is that that measure by by bedrooms or our properties

[120:06] so 65 of the units and roughly 50 of people is at a kind of fair assumption Carl I I think that sounds about right okay that's great and among those guys I know we license all those Russell units um have you guys done uh the current laws as you kind of summarized just a few minutes ago or or our law is generally for occupancy of four and the exception is in I think there was five zoning districts where that that number is three p and a and our rnre and RL do you guys know and I'm sorry if this was the memo I didn't see it but you guys know roughly of the let's say we have 23 25 000 rental properties in this town which is about half of our our dwelling units do you know roughly what percentage of of those rental properties are in those those five zoning districts where there's um only three occupied people as opposed to four

[121:00] I don't know that I have that number uh right now that's something I could certainly look up and and add to the the summary as an answer if that's helpful but I don't have that number um tonight if you were gonna guess because I'm trying to get a sense whether we're mostly fours or mostly threes um and you know some of these are like residential I mean you know rural rural residential and residential States and that kind of stuff kind of kind of places where there's bigger houses that I might imagine probably are not have a whole lot of rental um tenants in them if you were to guess would it would it be fair to assume that a majority of the rental properties in in Boulder are not in those exemption districts and therefore the numbers four is that kind of a fair assumption I I think that that makes sense to me based on the numbers I've seen yeah okay yeah if you could gather that information the next time you check in with us that'd be fine and then kind of a similar question um how hard how hard would it be and I

[122:00] think I asked this question of Brad a week or so Agony I think his answer was hard so I'm gonna see if I get a different answer from Carl how hard would it be to go through those um licensed rental properties that we have here in town and and give us a guesstimate of like bedroom size in other words let's say we had 25 000 rental properties in town roughly how many of them are two bedrooms three bedrooms four bedrooms five items because I think some of you made the comment before about like you don't want to cram 25 people in 100 square feet but so as we're talking about these numbers about four and five are we talking about putting four or five people in the you know in two bedroom houses or five bedroom houses because that probably makes a difference and is how hard would it be for you guys to get a rough estimate about the breakdown among rental properties of two three four five five plus bedrooms we talked to our licensing staff uh and other staff what we heard was that it would be a pretty substantial project to um go into those records I think the problem though is that a lot of the record keeping throughout the years

[123:00] hasn't been great um I think it was kind of uneven prior to like the 1990s of of writing down the number of bedrooms so because it was so uneven they just stopped keeping the record of number of bedrooms at some point so it's very difficult you know you can do a broader you know breakdown of of rentals and Licensing but actually figuring out the number of bedrooms it probably wouldn't give us an accurate answer despite the amount of time uh it would take so that that's the answer that I got from licensing yeah that we did explore a secondary way of doing that through the county data but for a variety of technical reasons not not even poor record keeping because because their records uh you know through assessor and such are consistent over the years but um the corollary between bedroom and unit is just not uh discerned in the data okay I thought I'd try but it would be

[124:00] helpful I mean if it's out of work obviously you wouldn't want to get another five but on that my earlier question would be helpful to have a general idea um you know how many roughly how many of those rental units in town are under the three regime versus the four regime I I take your estimate and I would tend to concur with you Carl that probably the vast majority of four would it be nice to know is that 80 20 90 10 you know what percentage of them if it's not too much work yeah I don't have any other questions any other questions about the data collection don't see other hands up if not uh folks I think we're ready to move into your your um options okay all right so following the analysis of the other communities can you see it

[125:01] you probably blow it up yeah we can see it but not in presentation though okay go full screen right so I'm going to move into the potential options we've identified for discussion tonight um just a overall summary um we have seven options that we wanted Council to take a look at give us some feedback on so we can narrow it down like Brad said maybe to one two or three options that we could then look at further and bring out to the community for feedback but what we've looked at and derived from the research is increasing the number of occupants in all zones by one so that's like you know moving the three to a four and then the four to a five that's that's the option a um B is just increasing occupancy to four or five unrelated city-wide

[126:00] um C is like the Madison example which obviously like I noted has been rescinded only allow increased occupancy in single family areas in owner occupied units um d and e is is kind of the college station and Austin example of only I'm sorry that's that's for uh F but d and e is just only increasing occupancy and non-single family dwelling zones or non-single family dwelling units I think the only example of that is uh Chapel Hill that we saw uh f is one uh that talks about restricting basically freezing the occupancy where it is now uh in certain University adjacent areas and then an increasing occupancy in other zones this could be done through some sort of mapping or overlay like I said that's similar to Austin Texas and College Station uh and then option G is no change so I'm just going to go through the slides of the different um

[127:00] options I'm not going to go into the detail of the pros and cons because you have that in the packet but if we wanted to to stop on any of these uh and discuss I certainly can do so so again option A option b this is all in your memo and we've listed the example cities that that match uh this option option C option D option e option f and then the new Change option so before I conclude I was just going to talk about uh next steps so obviously we're at a study session tonight we're hoping to get feedback on a narrow set of options or option tonight and then we're looking to do more Outreach following this meeting and more analysis on whatever options we can start

[128:02] developing further we're going to be giving an update to planning board tentatively scheduled for April 18th we're going to give an update to the housing Advisory Board tenant release scheduled for April 26th and then during the course of that we'll start developing ordinances uh and then I think at that point we'll probably need to get some more feedback on those options from the council so we're probably looking at a matters check-in with Council in the May and June time frame and then what we have tentatively scheduled at this point is bringing an ordinance uh to planning board in July and then bringing that ordinance to City Council in August of this year foreign so just to conclude on on the question which potential options should be the focus of any further analysis Outreach and ultimately ordinance development and I'll turn it back to the council

[129:01] thanks Carl that was that was very efficient um so folks let me suggest this one we I know people will want to weigh in on the various options and we all should weigh in on the options but before we get to the specific opinions let's um limit this next kind of round to just questions about the options anything about the options that anybody doesn't understand we'll start with Aaron Kim my question is actually about engagement rather than the options but um so I saw in the the memo Carl there was a uh an intention to reach out to the community connectors as part of the engagement can you just confirm that please yeah we've been working with the staff that are the Liaisons to that group we've already gone to them um on a number of other issues so we are planning to go to them after this meeting we thought it more efficient to find out what options actually are resonating with Council and then get their feedback but we will be going to them

[130:00] great yeah no makes sense to get through this stage first but that's very good to hear I think I'll be very interested in their feedback and then um the other one this is list about engagement but I didn't see anything about um using our racial Equity tool and a racial Equity analysis as we're moving forward with this have you planned for that already or do you need guidance from us to do that what what's your thinking there but we've already begun that process we've been going through the the toolkit on this particular project I think some of the feedback that we got on adus is also pertinent here just on housing needs and opening up opportunities so it's an ongoing analysis that we're doing but we felt that um there's some gaps that we've determined in the analysis so that's why we wanted to go to the community connectors in Residence to find out more on that but it's in process Equity tool for all of council's

[131:01] priorities this year so you know that that is built-in yeah and I was gonna add to that that I know we've written up a summary of How It's been used for this this initiative and others and we'd be happy to afford that that'd be fantastic anyway that's great news I think it's a particularly important that this initiative be run through that I look forward to seeing that analysis as well okay those are my were my questions thank you thanks Aaron um Nicole what questions do you have yeah I just have a question uh with I think it probably applies to all of these options um the same way but are there common data we have now that um we can track that we could follow for a year or two to kind of look at any potential positive negative no impacts of any changes that may arise then would that be different for any of the options uh we don't have any specific data like based on these particular options um I mean again if if Council wants to

[132:00] request us to look at something in more depth related to certain options we can do that okay thank you um and then Bob this was a question just for you as a facilitator is there a spot where I can ask questions about and offer comments on the engagement or do you want to just wrap that all into everything yeah yeah let me just make a suggestion that's a great question Nicole how about we um focus on questions now and then when we get to comments let's let's provide comments on both engagement and also our preferences that okay yep yeah so I can ask questions about engagement now as well yeah if you got any questions about anything let's just get them all yeah okay great um so you know as we're thinking about the engagement process um and the folks who are going to be impacted by our decisions on this issue are we including groups of renters who are living in homes with unrelated people so specifically looking at that group of renters who are living in these unrelated situations we've reached out to different groups I think they can maybe help us contact

[133:00] certain people to talk to I think that would make sense okay um and then how are we going to include the neighborhoods that haven't shown a strong interest in this topic but have a lot of renters um I think you know we work with our Communications folks on getting the word out on things so I think what we would do is Target those areas that we think have a lot of rentals and then uh use social media or next door as ways of making people um aware of of this process okay and as we're going through that process do we have a way of a landing whether within those neighborhoods we're getting a representative sample of the people who are in those neighborhoods and not just kind of the folks who have some time to participate in the feedback process is there a way that we could do that or you don't have to answer that right now maybe can be could be a comment later but maybe for the question is there a way

[134:00] that you have in mind right now to make sure we're getting representative samples from neighborhoods yeah obviously like working with our Communications folks that their their experience of trying to get the best way to get feedback from folks um so we'll work with them on that okay and then um in the process of working on these different options and exploring them will we also be spending some time thinking about intentionally our definition of family and specifically engaging with groups who maybe have a different perspective of what family means um and making sure that we're doing that in a really inclusive way we hadn't thought that the family definition needed to be updated but um I think as we go through this process and we talk to people and let them know about how the code Works we're certainly open to feedback that we might hear from the community that might beg a change to that definition we've not heard that as of yet but we could we could focus on

[135:00] that on Outreach to see okay thank you and then I think this is my last question it's not a comment when we get to the end of the engagement you come back to us will we be able to see a breakdown of who has engaged by their renter homeowner status as well as specifically those folks who have engaged who are living with unrelated people I mean it might be difficult to find that for everyone but we could certainly try to everyone we talk to we could ask them that question and show that and and the results are the best we can okay thanks Carl that's all for me thanks Nicole um Mark what questions do you have just one um with respect to the uh proposals to increase uh the number of uh approved residents especially going to five

[136:01] is that going to apply to efficiency units which could be 250 square feet well I mean what's the theory on that putting five people in a you know 15 by 20 space or um if it were just the the numeric number per unit um it would apply broadly to each unit but there are building code restrictions on on on the occupancy that I think would come into play in a smaller space where they wouldn't like the building code may not allow that many people in a small unit for safety reasons so we would be relying on that okay thank you let me ask you a quick question along those lines um again I don't know if it's a question of suggestion but perhaps Carl uh um in your next memo to us when you do that check-in with us in mayor June you or somebody in the planning department could lay it lay those out as part of the memo about what what other

[137:01] restrictions would come in place uh play uh in addition to the numerical ones so we can have an understanding sure wasn't really a question it was a suggestion any other questions um before we get into actual comments I don't see any hands up so who wants to kick us off on comments on either the options what their preferences are again keep in mind our in addition to providing guidance which I think we've already started to do on engagement which has been great um let's also um uh see if we can come up with two-ish or three-ish of these options that we want staff to pursue uh uh to the next level they're seven on the table including including the status quo I guess status quo is probably always always implied uh in anything but what what um what else do we want them to look at or above the status quo who wants to who wants to get us started we did get a hotline post from Rachel so

[138:00] I guess you got to start it um and uh but following following Rachel Holland post we'll get going with Nicole and then Matt bye seconds okay um okay so um you know I I just I want to thank staff really it seems like what we're doing here is exactly what we said we would do and what a lot of um the opponents actually of the bedroom's ballot measure said that they wanted a really thoughtful approach to occupancy reform that has really good Community engagement um I personally would like us to explore option Z of removing occupancy limits all together something that Rachel noted in her email but that just comes from kind of me recognizing that we aren't really concerned with the number of people in a home as much as we're concerned with the impacts of denser neighborhoods and what it means when we have more folks living together I think we have an average of around 17 actual occupancy violations each year for the

[139:01] past five years and many many thousands of rentals as Bob noted this means it's really just a fraction of a percent of standard rentals that have occupancy violations and it really suggests that we're limiting people's housing options with little benefit I think removing occupancy limits altogether would really let us focus our resources on the things that will have major benefits on mitigating some of the impacts of density like robust public transportation lower maintenance Landscaping more affordable housing and universities that have sufficient on-campus housing to support their students who need a little more time to develop the skills to be able to live on their own if that's not an option at this time I'd really like to see us focus on five unrelated folks and any dependents they may have especially given how hard families are being hit right now by increases in utility bills food and basic services and housing by now I really hope we've all seen the

[140:00] huge rise in evictions and the unprecedented use of eviction prevention funds and food banks like effa this week Boulder reporting lab pointed to rents this winter being up substantially over last winter I checked and they're up an average of 250 dollars a month for January and February of this year over 2022. I know you've heard me use the study before I'm going to bring it up again according to the United States government accountability office a 100 increase in median rent is associated with a nine percent increase in homelessness and I don't just mean unsheltered homelessness I mean the bigger category of homelessness so they're likely to be quite a few more households who are needing to live together to avoid hoteling or homelessness as we move through this year more than any magic fixes to housing affordability on what I see changes to occupancy limits doing is giving families an option to avoid homelessness well we hopefully are figuring out what we can do to help increase to help the increasing number of families that are in need

[141:02] um I really hear folks concerns about having a bunch of cars the noise in their neighborhood and the fears that that some people have in our community and one of the reasons that I hope we can find a simple solution and like just increasing the number to five is that it really then helps us have some space to work on addressing the root causes of some of these issues that folks are having in the community um like minimizing cars and neighborhoods advocating for supported off-campus housing or sufficient on-campus student housing um I mean I think these occupancy limits that we've had have been around for 50 years and they haven't really stopped the issues that we're having which seem to just be growing based on people's emails so I would love to focus on a simple solution that gets us to a place where we can focus on solutions that will help us see real improvements just some very specific comments a lot of them tied to engagement I'd really love to see us get rid of this definition of

[142:00] family I think it's outdated I think it's discriminatory and I think it's hurtful um we also seem to be thinking about this from the perspective of homeowners not renters and I hope that as we're moving through engagement we're really defining the the problem that we're trying to solve and potential solutions from a lot of diverse perspectives and I would really like to make sure that as we're doing the engagement we're hearing from some of the folks that we haven't heard from because we keep hearing from a lot of the same folks who are the people we haven't heard from yet and how can we reach them and oh and I'm hoping that in the in part of the stakeholder Outreach we can include student groups like see a student government especially some of the underrepresented groups of students uh like the BSA Yuma CMHA flows The Pride office as well as non-cu student groups that are representing renters workers and people who these types of laws were originally designed to exclude

[143:00] so this is folks like effa um out Boulder County the NAACP Amistad Boulder area labor Council together Colorado and then again you know as we're thinking about coming back to us with engagement I'd really love to know the breakdown of who has been engaged by their homeowner renter status specifically those who are living um in a household with unrelated folks thank you thank you Nicole uh and just so you guys know I'm I'm I have a scorecard here I'm keeping track of because I'm gonna so I could so like at the end we can kind of play it back so Nicole I have you down tell me if I got wrong for option Z which was actually not one of our options so we now have an eighth option which is remove all limits but as a fallback option b with with five um you do want to revisit family definition and I'll keep track of that in a separate column and then I'm not going to try to summarize people's great suggestions on engagement but you had some great suggestions on engagement I know staff's taking some good notes there so is that pretty accurate Nicole

[144:00] yes thank you great thanks Matt you're next in the scorecard what say you all right um it's like uh it's like taking your box score at a baseball game and watching the Rockies do their thing um well so uh I appreciate what Nicole said she she marked marched off on on on a lot of those pieces in kind of Rapid succession but I do want to start by just saying that this is not bedrooms are for people like at all um the only thing they have in common is that they address the issue of occupancy um outside of that they are a different prescription a different solution to a similar and ongoing problem which is regarding housing in our community and so we need to make sure to separate the bedrooms initiative from the work that we're doing here with occupancy um it's interesting I reflected back on testimony public testimony when bedrooms was on the ballot and here and looking at public testimony um that the council before us uh got and

[145:00] it was fascinating because many of those pieces of testimony LED with I'm all about occupancy reform but I just don't like the bedroom's measure all right well then let's hold people too if you're all about occupancy reform let's do it and let's do it with a robust process let's take the Lessons Learned in the commentary and discussion we've had for the last few years build on that and let's find a solution that works for the needs of our community and I think that's what we're doing here um and I hope the community provides a little bit of Grace for us to go through that process and people can provide their commentary when necessary but we do need to sort of maybe hold off on some of that hyperbole that has um perhaps uh run afoul a little bit in our emails it's important as a lesson learned that what part of why bedrooms didn't work is it didn't have some of the guard rails that we're looking to do and as as I think was mentioned earlier they might have been by Nicole why are we regulating people we should be regulating the impacts that those people have and we've already been doing that right we've we've updated our trash ordinance and weed ordinance we've updated our noise ordinance we have an

[146:01] ongoing process for chronic nuisance and so we're doing those things independent of occupancy so I I think that if we look at those issues you could have five people living next door and if they're not making a trashy mess not making a ton of noise and they only have a couple Vehicles would you even know they're there and so I think we can work on the symptoms and that's the more important issue for us at hand rather than regulating people and who they get to associate and live with um I will say that it's important for us to think about um Simplicity um you know at our mid-year Retreat that was a that was a that was a very important thing that we discussed in talking with Brad and the team that we want to find ways to simplify our process so why should occupancy go in the opposite direction and us over complicate things with overlays and this rule for this Zone and that rule for this Zone Simplicity has to be one of the measures in which we do everything we are for predictability but also for the sanity of our planning department and members of our community so I really

[147:01] encourage us to stick down that path um one thing I would ask us to sort of look at here is you know there's a there's a there's a question that really I don't even think we've studied which is what is our communities first what is the ratio of rental to ownership in our community I know that we know in terms of people we know about 53 of people in this community rent but in terms of properties perhaps maybe even in single family where maybe those impacts are most concerned what is that ratio of how many of these properties are rental versus ownership or owner rental rented and I think that's a helpful understanding because do we have an interest in wanting to know what that proper threshold is do we want to create levers to adjust that I don't have the answer but it's a worthwhile question to have as we think about those impacts in housing as a whole and occupancy kind of Spurs that a little bit in my head um and lastly I'll just sort of uh finish with um what my options are um and I would uh I I think

[148:01] um maybe that in the future we could just abolish our occupancy as a whole maybe that's something we could do I think right now we have to have a limit um and so I I would actually bifurcate option b and actually call it B4 and B5 so looking at a blanket four person and a blanket five person because they are different and I'm actually curious From staff's perspective and Analysis what are those differences pros and cons um but it gets to it stays in the realm of Simplicity but really just offers a four versus five and we can look at those impacts so I'd love for us to bifurcate B in that sense and if I were to pick another option I would probably pick a as another one to to evaluate and the reason for that even though it's not my preference is I don't think it's fair for us to do engagement if we give them one choice that's not really quality engagement hey what do you think of the one thing we've already decided yes or no so I think we do need to have some options and so um I think a bifurcation of B in that sense n a are are a good way to to start so those are my comments for now I reserve the right to comment

[149:00] later if need be um based on my colleagues but thanks Bob for the time you're never shy about that man yeah um and Matt um Nicole uh did kind of uh uh uh suggest that we look at Family definition is that something you'd like staff to do as well okay great thank you we have next for comments um Mark fellow by Lauren well thank you I I could not disagree more strongly with you Matt um the premise that the initiative defeated in 2021 was very specifically worded and therefore does not imply any obligation to honor what the voters decided then is uh comfortable to say that but it's simply not the case in 2021 the proposition was do we want to expand our occupancy limits to permit one resident per bedroom plus one it is Jessica analysis

[150:00] to suggest that because we're proposing uh what we're proposing tonight doesn't use the exact same words it must be okay to Simply ignore the vote of the community a mere 16 months earlier the principle is precisely the same and no mental contortions can obscure that fact to turn to the community and essentially say that we do not have to recognize anything resulting from the 2021 vote because we're using different language is intellectually unsupportable and frankly a betrayal of the community that voted against bedrooms today we're not only in in the likely uh choices that we're going to make here were not only eviscerating the bedroom vote we're pursuing changes that are in excess of what bedrooms proposed five residents in a house is in excess of what the bedroom Advocates campaigned on with respect to efficiencies one-bedroom units two bedroom units and three bedroom units they even they come

[151:02] out even on four bedroom units and the proposed reforms are only Superior in units of five bedrooms and up this is much more aggressive than the program that was defeated 16 months ago if you've read the many emails on this issue there's a Common Thread among those who oppose what we're doing a deep-seated anger verging on Fury these people feel betrayed and I am sympathetic to that view uh the promises that were made when we agreed to take this subject up were that we'd be respectful of what happened in 2021 and they are nowhere to be found we simply uh come to the conclusion that it's not applicable and we're free to do whatever we want and I I just disagree with that um however I'd like to make a suggestion that might help to defray a lot of the anger that's arising with respect to this issue let's develop an occupancy program based on the will of the majority whatever

[152:01] that is let's work out the Kinks let's get it right on the details and then let's put it in front of the voters to approve it if there's truly a new majority for the program they will vote in favor and the 2021 vote will have been superseded and the people will have spoken that ends the debate if the community opposes that too is the will of the people I hope we're gonna we can do this if we're unwilling to do it we're effectively saying that we govern from a position where we do not want the community to speak and where their votes don't count because we know better and must guide the little people to a just result that only we can Define and I think that's Unworthy of us um with a community so divided I I think it is the people who should render the final decision on that whatever we do and and let's make it good um should be subject to the same vote that we had in 2021. um and then nobody can complain about

[153:01] the result thereafter in terms of specifics I am not in favor of doing nothing um but I would certainly want to create a program for Community approval based on perhaps four and if it's five I'd like to see guard rails with respect to where it applies I mean it's really time we gave some relief to goss Grove Martin acres and and uh and the hill I mean they they just bear the brunt of everything um you know having a little compassion is not inappropriate um and with those guard rails um I I think we might come up with a workable proposal that the community might support um but simply doing it by edict uh in an issue that is this divisive is not the way to go thank you Mark just so I could um I get your point on going to the voters and and maybe

[154:00] there'll be a majority of the supports that maybe not assuming for forsake a discussion that there's not and that Council would would uh prefer to pass this legislation on its own um do I understand you correctly that it sounds like it's option F would be your first choice if if it wasn't going to the voters which is which is kind of the four or five person but with an overlay for those neighborhoods near the university is that is that your your position I'm sorry um it would be option f with guardrails for those uh set upon communities giving them a break and let's look at other uh things that we can do that will you know minimize impact um I'm not as concerned with um definitions of family you know if we go to four let it be any four that that you want if we go to Five it should be any

[155:01] five that you want um and you know but but let's let's have a little compassion for for some of these neighborhoods um and and let's do something that's that's well thought out with the Kinks worked out before we we go to the voters and yes I think we ought not to just do it by ourselves this is about the most divisive issue we've seen since prairie dogs um and I I think we ought to be a little more respectful and and as I said if you do something and you put in front of the voters and it passes there can be no further complaint elections matter elections count uh if we just do it by edict um we're just going to leave more people angry at us than are already angry at us and people are angry at us for a myriad

[156:00] of reasons some are not well founded but there it is you know you know we're the city Eaters of Boulder and um it would be nice to to do something where we say to the people uh we recognize how divisive this has been uh we think this is a good program we have signed on to it we hope you will sign on to it too thanks Mark uh Lauren you're up thank you Bob um first I just want to touch on Mark's comment that voting might stop people from complaining I just wholeheartedly do not believe that to be true and I think we have evidence to support that um you're right you're right [Laughter] um and also you know that these past elections haven't been completely you know they they haven't explored this

[157:01] issue me and a number of other people who are on Council were not shy about our views and supporting the bedrooms are for people initiative and while it did not make it and it was denied by our electorate you know we were still elected so what are we supposed to take away from that um I'm happy to see this proposal being brought forward it is not bedrooms are for people and it is worse you had your time I apologize so I think you know I fully support the option B5 plus dependents would be my preference um I would be interested in staff also looking at for although ultimately I am of the belief

[158:00] that I would like to see us move towards complete elimination of occupancy limits but I don't want to do things too quickly we need State stability and I think that this is a good step for where our community is right now where we are at so yeah I I support the five plus um the history of occupancy standards follows prevailing social cultural economic and health rationales of particular eras and particular sectors of society they are products of socially constructed personal feelings and opinions and I just want to say that because there's sometimes we get this idea that this type of occupancy limit has scientific basis or you know some sort of that that it's been studied really thoroughly and we know how much air or space people need and that is ultimately not true even the Fair Housing

[159:01] Association has faced a lot of criticism around its standards and how they are not based on scientific backing there are other kinds of occupancy standards like those that we see in our fire codes things like that that are about how quickly people can exit spaces and things like that that do have strong scientific backing but that is not what we are talking about and so while I understand concerns about you know how many people might be able to potentially occupy a small space for one we have rental regulation you know like landlords tend not to want to allow those kinds of occupancies of their units we have fire code I look forward to seeing what else staff brings forwards in terms of those are just the two that I know of off the top of my head um and so I am comfortable moving forward

[160:00] with this I appreciated Nicole's concern or Nicole's comments around other groups that we might reach out to I would also like to see us reaching out to groups that represent people who are potentially being priced out of our community I think of things like the Restaurant Association you know we get lots of comments about people who um about businesses not being able to hire because they can't find places to live I think that we should make sure that our engagement is pretty well-rounded thank you oh and Mark or sorry Bob you're going to ask me about family definitions and yes I would like to see us look at those thanks Lauren Perfect um Aaron then Tara and then Juni great uh thanks Bob so um I just want to start out by saying that that this uh the options that we're looking at tonight are not what was in the bedrooms

[161:00] are for people initiative and so uh Mark with respect I will strongly disagree with your characterization um of that uh the that it while they both um well they all touch on changing our first documents in the community the bedrooms uh ball initiative had a particular structure and approach for that and I heard during that campaign a lot of specific criticisms of the specific approach that was taken by bedrooms so that people felt like the bedroom the formula of tying it to bedrooms was problematic in in ways that could have some some unintended consequences and so when I talk to people in the community that that were not supportive of that measure it was often about the specifics of how it was handled and and that that is not one of the proposals that we have in front of us none of the uh proposals that we have uh are tied to bedrooms uh whatsoever um so I just want to characterize this differently that we're looking at uh occupancy changes that are not the valid

[162:01] initiative and I think it's important um that we do so uh because I think there's there's a real need for a greater variety of housing options in our community and ways for people to share housing costs um you know I hear some we're getting some assertions that it doesn't matter how many people you have in a house they'll all be charged the exact same rent and I'd like to disagree with that that argument I'm I've seen that in my own family like um my my child lived in a it lives in a shared apartment and they added a third person uh still within legal limits folks to be clear and everybody's rent went down they they shared the cost um amongst one more person and everybody paid a little bit less now that's an anecdote we can't just trust anecdotes but but I think just by logically if just logically if you think about uh if you have a 1500 square foot house um and you you're sharing it with two people versus four I think it's unlikely that you will generally pay exactly the

[163:01] same amount uh to share uh less space so just want to make that point um and then I think it's really important that with this that we're allowing for different living arrangements um our how our definition of family is quite Broad in our city which I appreciate but it does not cover all the kinds of living arrangements that people enter into and I'll mention specifically I know a lot of lgbtq folks who live together in Arrangements that are not covered by our definitions of family but may well want to live with you know four or five people total in um uh you know as a as a healthy and positive and familial like relationship but we don't designate that as a family and so this would allow folks like that options to live together which I think would be very beneficial so as I'm coming through here I will also uh be interested in looking at Family definitions um but I think if we are increasing the number uh it makes it less pressing but

[164:00] it would also uh like to look at that and I think it's it's I'm really glad to hear that we're running this through the racial Equity tool and instrument um I'll be very interested in that outcome um I'm gonna guess we'll we'll have to go with exactly what the tool says but I'm going to guess that it will be um favorable to our racial Equity goals if we allow more people to live together but I will wait to see the the results uh and not predetermine that I think it's fairly likely um and uh mentioned that uh agree with uh Nicole about Outreach traditional groups um and such as the ones that she mentioned I think it's good uh will be important to get a variety of perspectives from the community throughout this process um and then I'll just reiterate a couple points that that Matt made about how um you know I think what's important is that we're regulating on impacts rather than people primarily and to reiterate that we have already adjusted ordinances

[165:01] recently about those impacts in our work talking on other ones right now so I think we're working on that steadily we do also have the neighborhood parking permit program to control for parking issues so I think that's the kind of way fundamentally to regulate um with all of that said um I do want to send multiple options out to the community um and so I would go with simple I Brad at the beginning said uh you know it's up to you all but we like simple it's a simple is easier to enforce it's easier to work with so I would go for um option b uh with uh I think Matt called it B4 and B5 um so those would be the those are both very simple and I think are worth sending out to the community to get people's feedback on what they think about those and that's that's a couple different Alternatives uh in terms of how big a move that we're making in terms of an occupancy update right now and I think um so yeah so those that's what I would

[166:00] like to see us take out to the community or those two options um Bob was that clear enough that was perfectly clear thank you and I'm going to feed this uh play this all back to everybody to make sure I got everyone's down so let's get through everybody and then I'll play it back and make sure that I'm recording this right so we're going to go to um next to Tara and then Juni and then I think it's my turn first I want to apologize because I have a headache that became a migraine and although it looks like I'm grouchy and making faces of people I'm just in a lot of pain so nobody texts me that you're offended by my faces because I'm in real pain moving on I worked very hard on this little speech and sometimes I write speeches um so I can keep my um thoughts you know well defined and when there's a lot of community pressure so forgive me if I'm not my usual cheery and self so we've been speaking about our housing crisis a lot here lately on Council but

[167:01] what does that really mean we do not have enough options for people of middle or moderate income to be able to live here or actually anywhere close to here and we're doing really well I think pretty well creating permanently affordable housing for those that qualify but for people in the category of middle and moderate income who do not qualify because they make a little bit too much money where should they live as you know not only have housing prices skyrocketed along the Front Range Beyond but so have rental prices and we now have a labor shortage as well and by labor shortage I mean we cannot find people who want to work here in Boulder we can't find enough of them and this affects our city on so many levels most people do not want to drive 30 to 45 minutes anymore to work in our coffee shops our restaurants our schools our planning department our maintenance departments or our police and fire departments which is so vital for our city to survive and provide and why

[168:02] don't they want to work here the following information has just been released from the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics that there are 10.8 million job openings in the United States there are 5.9 million unemployed people that means there are twice as many job openings as there are people to fill those jobs that means that there's a lot of competition to get those here in Boulder and one of the major reasons people don't want to work here in Boulder is the lack of housing that is even mildly affordable so I believe we'd have to come up with some out-of-the-box solutions and maybe stuff we didn't want to do in the past to consider doing that and I think there's not just one solution it would have to be a combination of many tools in the toolbox I know that's a popular metaphor to alleviate some of the pressure in this tight labor market so how can we create housing that is Affordable for families

[169:00] and also for single family working adults that are not Tech workers one of the ways we can try to move the new other popular metaphor just a little bit I am suggesting is to increase occupancy from three to four people and why do I want to do that well looking at the median house rental prices in Boulder in 2023 according to Zillow it was 2753 a month so simply put four people in a house would mean less of a percentage of persons wages are going to rent then three people in a house and that's better I think that's better for everyone should we do some sort of rent stabilization we should definitely look into that but that's a discussion for another time so I realized that some of the people that would benefit from a change in occupancy would be students but believe me a lot of people that want changes talking about small changes in occupancy are working adults many of them in their 30s and 40s who can seem to make enough to

[170:02] afford rentals and also seniors there's a fair amount of seniors that I've heard from that would like to share housing so and frankly I would like students to consider living here after they graduate and becoming a vibrant part of our community like my kids who were able to move here after they graduated because young people add vibrancy to a community I'm not done I have a little more to summarize this long-winded speech my original pick was F because I'm especially concerned about the blocks in the University neighbor that have smaller two to three bedroom houses and how they will be affected by an increase of four not to mention five but the problem with f is at a time when the city is struggling with workload due to lack of Staffing I don't know that it can be successfully implemented so I'm going to pick B increase the occupancy allow for zoning districts to four and I

[171:00] believe we should really honestly I agree with some of what Mark said that we should see how it works and we need to revisit it in a year I've noticed that Boulder has Revisited their occupancy when they've changed it throughout the history and I think we should do the same here I want to make sure we protect the neighborhoods near the university and I want to make sure that the student non-student ratio in neighborhoods like Martin Acres the hill and Gus Grove which are our most affordable neighborhoods that that doesn't change and these very affordable not very these most more affordable neighborhoods need to be available for families and our Workforce and so that's why I don't want to see the student non-student um ratio change so I'm going to end up by talking and I also learn I like your idea about limiting rental licenses in uni Hill and so I'd like to look into that further maybe that's another uh guardrail I'm going to end up talking about

[172:01] guardrails sorry about this long speech I promise one more minute what bothers people in these neighborhoods most is noise trash and parking now I love hanging out with students but I'm not sure how I would feel you know I love hanging out with students but I'm not sure how I would feel if there was student housing on my left and on my right of me just because I'm noise sensitive and I struggle with migraines which I have one as you know now and that's for real and what bothers people is the noise trash and parking and but we just passed a new trash and noise we passed those new ordinances and I'm hoping they'll make a difference and we'll see soon enough but let's Now uncouple parking from occupancy like we did noise and trash I would like to really focus on Parking Solutions we have the neighborhood parking pass program we should look into and I'm asking staff to do this is it too hard to implement are there too many signatures required does it work well enough are there any other options for

[173:01] Parking Solutions can we limit cars per house if we can come up with viable solutions to parking and our next discussion our occupancy then I think it'll make a big difference and then we need to enforce that and not a lover of enforcement for instance I accidentally parked in front of my neighbor's driveway a few weeks ago because it was dark and I was distracted thankfully she texted me to move my car in the morning and I didn't and she didn't call code enforcement so that was good but enforcement is going to be important because people need to be good neighbors for this to be successful for any occupancy increase to be successful we all have to be good neighbors and sometimes you have to enforce that because sometimes people need a little push so with an increase of four which would increase housing options for our Workforce and if we simultaneously make sure quality of life ordinance are are enforced it might just make the difference that we need is everybody still there are we all sleeping did I

[174:00] put everybody to bed raise your hand if you're sleeping I want more things to say that Lauren's laughing come on I worked so hard on that is when it comes to engagement when it comes to engagement I feel that yeah I agree with Lauren we have to include the small businesses they have a lot to say about this subject and we also need to include the neighborhoods that are adjacent to the university and by that I mean we should include the renters and the homeowners and the students and maybe we'll be surprised at what people say to be honest we shouldn't assume what people are going to say so I would like to see a lot of the engagement be around the neighborhoods most affected by this would be those that have the the most that are adjacent to the university and that is the end of my speech thank you um Juni and then I see Lauren your hand is back up for maybe a rebuttal or a

[175:00] clarification oh you're not it's not yet but okay well let's go to Junior and then we'll kind of sort out where you fit in Lauren then they'll share my comments Junior up thank you Bob thank you I am in support I just also wanted to see before I start it's not going to be a long speech I'm in support of increased occupancy um but I want to ensure as well as part of this conversation which we have done a lot of times which is a lot of community engagement we're gonna need that because of the fact that we did have bedrooms are for people on the ballot and it failed and even though this is a very very different policy people are still equating the same so I think we need to do that education again with community members um to get their buy-in as part of this process because ultimately we don't want them to feel that we are doing a bait and switch on them although

[176:00] I am in full support of an increase in occupancy um I looked at all the different options um and I have to say before hearing from all of you tonight I wanted to leave it to community uh as part of a bigger Community engagement that's where I was but I and and as the conversation progresses I I didn't want to take a cop out so I said okay then um based on the conversation tonight um and also you know the explanation from staff for sound more the likely route that we will be taking tonight but I just really hope that we were gonna have as much engagement as possible to bring Community along with us in this process um and then there was another question about family definition I'm not tied to that I leave it to staff to figure out of course I want an inclusive definition

[177:02] and but also I wonder uh if the definition has to follow it has to be a legal definition because again legal definitions tend to be very static and prescriptive as opposed to something that is more open uh so I think that's another aspect that's a question I could have asked before and I didn't but you know yes we can Define family but ultimately there is a definition of family and the law and what does that look like when it comes to looking at this policy thank you thanks Junior you cut out there just at the crucial moment of what your option was are you um was the subject of great engagement suggestions you made are you okay with um or a staffing for the option b did I understand that correctly yes Bob I think you know based on what I hear tonight and the conversation with Council I am comfortable with um staff moving with option b in doing

[178:01] that greater engagement with Community as well great thanks so much Judy Lauren your hand is up do you um um I'm gonna give everyone an opportunity to maybe just say whatever final comments they want at the end do you want is this a final comment or is this a clarification on what you already said this is um just one thing that I forgot to mention that I also wanted so I did want to just quickly touch on the problem statement um before we do community engagement one of the things that struck me as I was kind of like researching a lot about occupancy and this historic places that that comes from and everything was a quote that says what is crowded to some is exactly comfortable to others and what is comfortable to some is exactly what is lonely to others and so we talk a lot in our problems the problem statement focuses on cost you know and trying to make housing more

[179:00] affordable but I also would like to have it touch on making our housing more inclusive of cultural and personal um preferred living arrangements because I do think that that is an important piece here as well and you know we have been mostly focusing on cost and I think the cost is a big portion but I would like to see us thinking about both thanks for that clarification mark um I think everyone's weighed in and I'll play I'll save my piece and then I'll try to play it back to you all to make sure I get it right and that staff has got it right and then if anybody has any final comments we can we can then wrap up we're at one hour and 40 minutes we're doing pretty good against our two hour allotment so I think we're gonna make it um add or maybe even a little a little quicker um so um I may be in a little bit of a unique position and that I was actually um I work actually worked on the bedrooms are for people campaign on the

[180:00] on the no side of things so I know several of you supported it I was actually on the opposition side of things and so I saw that from the inside and and as a person who was opposed to that particular proposition I'm going to agree with some of the statements that were made here tonight that this is not that proposition um there was a proposition was on the table um it was bedrooms uh it was it had a whole lot of terms to it but 58 assisting me 48 to 52 vote the voters said no and we're not bringing that back Seth has not bring that back I haven't heard anybody tonight say let's do that particular proposition but I don't think that means and I'm saying this is a person who was opposed to that proposition I don't think that means that we can never ever look at occupancy as a matter of fact to the contrary 48 of the people in our town almost almost half said we'd like you to do something on occupancy and I think that's what we're struggling with tonight is what should we do on that so I I know there are people in community school feel strongly that this is a redo of bedrooms are for people I with all due respect um disagree with that um and that's from

[181:00] somebody who was opposed to veterans are for people um I think Simplicity is the key here I think Brad said it right I think we need to ask staff to look at something that's understandable by our community that's simple for staff to administer is simple for us to enforce um and right now we have a kind of a complicated law if you ask me I still don't understand exactly what the limit is I think the limit is generally for but it's three in some zones but we don't even know how many how many how many rental units are in those zones I'd appreciate staff coming back and letting us know but it sounds like it's kind of a pretty small minority uh but it would be great to have some actual numbers so we could work off of those um and so it seems to me that um if we were to go if we were to go down the path of just simplifying things and say that Hey listen folks the the limit across the board Citywide is for we're really not changing things much I mean it's pretty much for almost every word anyway um a change to five would be a pretty big change um but but four seems to me like that's

[182:01] kind of like the status quo with the exception of a few neighborhoods I'm going to guess there's probably not a whole lot of running units anyway so where I'm coming out is um I'm also at option b I have a slight preference report because it's not a big change but I'm also open-minded to five and I'd love to have staff um explain to us how that looks um I'm a little torn on on the option f as a kind of a backup I know a few people have said that it would be nice to hear impacts on those neighborhoods near the university I don't know if I'm all in on option f as the right answer um but but to the extent that we can hear from staff as the evaluate option b which does sound like a pretty strong majority supports it would be helpful to have some at least not only engagement as several of you have said about those affected neighborhoods but also a little bit of impact I guess on those neighborhoods and and maybe maybe as a result of that more of us will be supportive of option F or maybe we'll determine option f is not necessary um so I'm I'm I'm I'm supportive of a b

[183:02] preference with four but I'm willing to listen to five um and and I'd like to hear about impacts in neighborhoods which is kind of a kind of an optional thing um let's see what else I have I agree with some of the earlier statements I I you know a lot of you know I read all 500 emails we got this week um and responded to most of them uh it took a long time um and um what I was reading between the lines on many of the people other than folks feeling that this was a redo of um bedrooms are for people what I was hearing from people the concerns of those who did not want any changes to our current level of pretty much for everywhere was was primarily around noise and trash and parking and as has been observed by my colleagues already tonight we just we just like weeks ago um updated and and I think tightened our noise and trash ordinances I think we should give those a little while to see if they take into effect but I think we simplified them and I think we made them easier to enforce the parking rules are being evaluated as we speak

[184:01] um it's not to say that we've solved all those problems but it's it's it is to say that we're not ignoring those problems they are problems in some places and if if that's if those are people's biggest concerns noise trash and parking then let's take on noise parking and trash because I'm not sure that this is necessarily a direct correlation between how many people are in a place and whether they're related or not um so let's examine option b um and um uh uh and then I think all the great Community engagement suggests I don't have anything to add what you guys said you guys have some fantastic engagements hopefully staff was taking some really great notes on how to engage with folks and where we are um Aaron I see your hand is up I wanted to give everyone a chance to kind of wrap up I did want to play back on people's what I what I heard is people's preference did you want to clarify what you said or is this kind of a closing statement very quick I just want to say is this Bob you said option b and mentioned you had a preference before I realized I said B four or five but not

[185:00] my preference my preference is five that's the direction but I do want to hear from the community uh on both four and five so I just want to be clear about that great so let me play let me play back what what I think I heard um and then it's a little unfair to Rachel because she had to do this but online so she didn't have the advantage of of hearing all of us but she did Clearly say option b but she was also open to other other things um which I think we all are um Aaron thank you for clarification option b with a maybe a preference word five and looking at four also I'm Matt I heard you um be I don't know if you're four or five but it sounds like we're gonna look at four and five I don't know if the other preferences between five five with with but but you also wouldn't looking for is that right man um Nicole option Z I love your creativity Nicole up into you just get rid of it all I didn't hear a whole lot of people um going there on Nicole although I did hear Matt and um Lauren both um wistfully say that it'll be great someday in in our our better world not to have not to need occupancy limits at all so I I think you have some

[186:00] support there just maybe not at this very moment in in time and then I think your backup adoption Z was um option five it's got option b which I assumed with the preference of five Lauren also heard you had B with um five and four uh junior also heard you at option b um is that right yes I'm still at option b and I mean as far as it concerns four and five I think that's where the community engagement comes in sure sure that's great that's great I'm going to skip over Mark just for a second on my little list here I've got Tara at option b with a preference for four but you'd be able to look at five is that right Tara um I definitely like for I'm very worried about the smaller homes in Martin acres and the the blocks that are more with the smaller homes that are more dense so I'm definitely a four person I mean you know in the majority and all that so

[187:01] whatever it is it is but I look for that's great and I'm pretty much with where terrorists I'm I'm a B4 I'm not opposed to looking at five um and and seeing what um the engagement says and what the impacts might be but I do have a a preference done for so it sounds like most of us are are at b or willing to accept B um uh uh with some some people preferring five but only look at four and some people preferring four under the wind look at five but I think that gives a lot of Staff a lot of Direction and then Mark um you're I think you're in a very different place from from a lot of folks um which I think um you want to go to the voters first of all which is more of a pro it's a process difference um and and then the question is what do we take to the voters I think I heard you prefer option F which is really kind of B with with a neighborhood overlay is that a fair uh statement Mark that is fair okay okay good did I get that more does anybody have it does anybody feel like did not accurately represent their abuse and and lots and lots of enthusiasm

[188:00] around looking at Family definition that was seemed to be a pretty overwhelming majority on that Lauren did you have something out of that the way you say it said it made it sound like I was equal I'm definitely stronger in the five Camp I'm sorry I apologize yeah you're definitely strong on five yes yes I think I think there's a majority that was strong longer on five but willing to look at four I think there's a minority of us that that um were four but willing to look at five and then uh Mark had a kind of a maybe a separate view there is that good staff I'm gonna give her council members uh kind of a closing statement if it's productive and helpful um staff did are you getting what you need is there anything that you're missing that you need to ask us this is very helpful thank you yeah and I think we clearly understand that uh B is actually two options right B4 B5 so we'll treat them as such I would say I'm not sure if um if council is giving us direction to go ahead and explore F and and overlay or what I I only heard a couple people speak to that

[189:01] specifically so if you you could maybe clarify that for us sure well let's just do a show of hands how many people would like staff to to look at the option F overlay which is which is potentially a different uh different number in proximity to University how many people would like to look at that I'm a yes there's a yes um Mark said yes if you've got and I don't know where Rachel would have ended up um so you got three so I guess I'm not going to tell you what what the direction of council is if if three is enough for you guys to do the work then you can do the work if three is not enough then I guess you won't do the work how does that sound Brad um I I might I I might uh want to consult with Nuria and get back to you about that because it does probably represent a fairly different engagement process which probably has implications to the overall time frame okay there you need us now or do you want to talk to Brad about that offline no I'm happy to say that just in terms of fairness I appreciate it but I think three is not

[190:00] the majority and I think that we should just limit it the way we do for In fairness for all other things okay there you there you have it um so it sounds like B B4 and B5 or B5 and B4 uh B5 I had the majority before there was there was certainly some people as well and so Brad is that um does that scope okay good good uh Mark that doesn't mean we can't revisit going to the voters on whatever is the proposition um and it sounds like there was only a minority a minority of us on F so that's not going to be said he says it sounds like that's a lot of work any yeah give everyone a chance to kind of say any final comments um in our remaining 12 minutes but but everyone feel comfortable that that um staff is what staff heard is kind of reflected of the majority Willow Council okay good good now if you have something more to say um and please not let's get into arguments with each other because we kind of decided

[191:00] um we didn't decide anything but we kind of pull it by the stats and Direction but if you've got some other things that you wish you would have said that you'd like to say in closing uh this will be the time to do it and I see Nicole's hands up yeah thanks thanks Bob for on this chance I just wanted to respond to something that I heard in our discussion uh there was an implication in our discussion tonight that some of us aren't being compassionate to or respectful of people who are having real issues in their neighborhoods and would like us to find Solutions and I just really wanted to respond to that mischaracterization um at least for me when I show up as a council member I'm coming from compassion and empathy for everyone in our community whether or not you just agree with me and I'd like to think that's where we're all trying to come from when we show up in this space I really want people to be able to sleep peacefully and enjoy their time in their homes I want our streets to be lined with trees and not cars and I really want people and pets of all ages to be able to walk on clean and safe sidewalks without having to step over broken

[192:00] bottles and things like that as a body and and I think as a community too we don't really tend to disagree on the problems or the need for Solutions most of the time what we're disagreeing on are the solutions and I think that understanding and communicating that point is really key to making sure that our community can stay connected and that we can all stay connected and our shared Humanity even as we're disagreeing about these really complicated topics thank you thanks for saying that Nicole and I just I'll just agree with you I think that we need to remind each other and I'm as guilty as anybody we need to remind each other that while we may disagree on Solutions we should assume of each other that we are all coming to the table with good faith so thank you for reminding us of that Nicole Matt kind of on a similar theme just likewise Bob I didn't get to respond to everybody like you did but I responded to many but reading those emails and hearing some of the commentary was

[193:02] um sobering in the sense that there's a perceived of divisiveness that I is is toxic and we are not seeing people for trying to seek the best Solutions and some of the rhetoric is is alarming in the sense of these accusations are some ways no different than what we heard from the January 6th Insurrection and I and I think it's really dangerous to assume that we're just undermining and destroying democracy when it's not the case and I think we have to really step back from the brink of hyperbole um because it's not a safe environment look at what happens as a result of tempting people with the assumption that this body or members of this Council are taking away a sacred right like voting and and your participation in democracy so I think we have a lot to do to to

[194:02] um do better as a community to figure out that there's other ways to disagree then lighting the fires that we've witnessed firsthand over the last few years in this community of ours we love it too much to allow that to happen um and so I hope that we we can avoid doing that there will be more commentary there will be more engagement um but I hope that that was the Apex of that kind of narrative and we come back to a more civil um and more understanding um state of mind and play as we continue to work through this and other challenges in our community thanks man Tara I wanted to give a big shout out thank you to the many people that I called in the community randomly who who wrote emails and I said oh call me and they did and I got some of the best ideas thoughts perspective and it was a really wonderful experience you guys all

[195:00] know who you were that spoke to me this week there is um just a lot of care and I think sometimes people you know they feel passionately about their subjects and they feel passionately about this community and so we all do so I pre but I appreciate that for those that were able to calm down and give me their opinion and lots of good ideas I want to say thank you to every single one of you that took the time to do that and I got a lot of um I enjoyed reading the 500 or so emails I didn't get to everybody to write back that was a big job to do but it did give me so many New Perspectives and different ways of looking at things and and for me and this is the truth the most important thing is to just get outside of my box of how I view the world or Society or whatever and listen to other people I think that's uh what I like the best about the this week of what I call the week of 500 emails

[196:01] versus the week of 600 emails which was uh West Pearl so you know foreign my colleagues said I I think um I assume that when someone writes to us um with a lot of anger or emotion that are feeling helpless they're feeling some helplessness or some loss of control and so and that's on us right if we have a community that is frustrated that feels that we're not listening to them or they don't feel like they've got control of the situation or they don't have a say then that's on us to ensure that they're they feel less into they may not agree with the decisions of a majority of this Council and that's fine that's actually a healthy healthy outcome that we have diversity but when people are upset and feel not listened to and and um are emotional one sometimes attacking that means that we have not done we I'm including staff and Council on this we have not done a good job of of helping them feel empowered and listened to and so I think that this community

[197:00] engagement that the staff is going to have over the next few months is important in two regards number one we want to hear what people have to say because we want to come up with it with a solution that that most people in our community can live with but maybe more importantly so that people feel listened to so that whatever decision this Council comes up with later this year while not everyone in the community I'm sure will agree with it people will at least have peace with the fact that they had had an opportunity to speak they had some control they had some input and that we heard what they had to say so let's um let's all commit to each other and I include in saphenous to listen to our to our neighbors thanks Aaron yeah now just appreciate that but I'm gonna make I will absolutely make that commitment that we will be listening to to the feedback from the community in the upcoming months in a way that will shape uh what direction we end up pursuing this and that regardless of that direction that we will also work with the community to make sure that that behaviors that are really difficult to work with and are inappropriate for

[198:02] uh you know for your neighbors or is also a problem that we'll continue working on uh because as Nicole said you deserve Elvis deserve a quiet night's sleep uh when you need it so make that commitment as well and then just uh Bob wanted to thank you uh for an able facilitation tonight and doing a great job at assessing out the will of council here so appreciate a fine job this evening well thank you Aaron and once again CAC miraculously predicted a two-hour window and we were at one hour and 58 minutes great job CAC great job staff great job Council we are spot on schedule we're going to adjourn them in and a half early thank you everyone have a good night and have a good weekend thank you Bob thank you thank you bye-bye [Music]

[199:03] thank you