April 6, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[4:06] thank you [Music] and welcome to the April 6 2023 meeting of the Boulder City Council I'm going to gavel us into session here good to have you all here we are going to start with a call to order thank you so much mayor good evening everyone we will start tonight's roll call with council member Benjamin present mayor Brockett present council member folkerts present friend here Joseph here spear present mayor Pro tem Wallach virtually present weiner present and Yates right here mayor we have our quorum

[5:01] great thanks so much before we get to the business of the evening perhaps Matt you'd like to step in with a dad joke uh uh indeed um topically relevant for tonight so what's the difference between A well-dressed person on a unicycle and a poorly dressed person on a bicycle a tire oh okay that was that was even worse than usual I don't know all right so our official piece of business if I could get a motion to amend the agenda we got a few changes here to add item 3F which is consideration of a motion to provide the acting City attorney authority to appoint special counsel to investigate and if necessary prosecuted complaint filed related to an alleged code of conduct violation and filed pursuant to 2710c BRC 1981 also to add item 8B update on Council process for making a

[6:00] decision on SB 23213 State involvement in local land use matters and also eight item 8 C Library District Board of Trustees update and also to reorder items one and B 1B and 1C so that one B becomes the conference on world affairs declaration n1c becomes the space science month declaration so moved second oh great we got a motion a second all in favor of amending the agenda raise your hand okay that's unanimous the agenda is duly amended so we are now going to go into our first declaration Boulder Arts week presented by councilmember spirit Boulder Arts week is the city's only

[7:02] large-scale inclusive celebration of our communities artists and robust arts and culture offerings our City's 10th celebration of Boulder Arts week will feature digital and in-person experiences from our musicians dancers actors authors and artists of all media in events in every neighborhood of Boulder Boulder is one of the most vibrant Arts communities in the United States ranking in the top one percent in the concentration of artists Arts organizations and creative businesses our arts and the culture they create in Boulder make our community stronger our investments in our cities Arts Community strengthen us as individuals and as a collective art Bridges divides and connects people across differences art narrates the most critical issues of our times and helps us share our unique stories and perspectives with each other

[8:02] art challenges and inspires us it helps us find Joy navigate obstacles heal from trauma and build connection creativity and community and artists bring us all these benefits while managing the impacts of floods fires gun violence and pandemics on their own lives our Arts Community helps make our lives whole and full and too often we fail to recognize the essential value of the Arts during economic downturns when the Arts often suffer the first and deepest cuts not only jeopardizing the livelihoods of artists but minimizing their important work when our community most needs their support despite the robust role the Arts play in our City's economic Vitality by creating jobs attracting new businesses building an attractive environment for skilled and educated workers and generating sales tax revenue in our city the Arts have not recovered from the pandemic as

[9:00] quickly as the rest of our economy Boulder Arts week 2023 is an opportunity to celebrate and support our still recovering Arts community for a decade the Arts leaders who collaborate on Boulder Arts week have Amplified the visibility of the Arts within the local community and highlighted the breadth and depth of Boulder's Arts culture they will do so again this year and we encourage the community to join us in celebrating our artists by participating in some or all of the many Boulder Arts week 2023 events with gratitude to the artists who enrich and sustain our community we the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado declare April 7th to April 15 2023 as Boulder Arts week so much my name is Tiffany Crowder and I am here with some of my fellow artists at the crowd Collective on behalf of the

[10:00] boulder Arts Community we want to thank the city of Boulder and the city council for your continued support we are so looking for forward to Boulder Arts week it's one of our favorite events of the year and we've been participating since we opened our doors in about five years ago so we're kicking this year off with the nobo Art District first Friday tomorrow evening from six to nine PM we'll have 12 of our 14 artists there with their Studios open we also have a very special and fun show in the gallery that's opening by two of our artists Helen halbreeder and Eleanor Bostrom and we'll also have live music thanks to a sponsorship from the city of Boulder office of arts and culture so we want to encourage everyone to check out the calendar online it's at boulderartsweek.org there's over 150 events on there you can go and see performances classes exhibitions and Studio tours so even if you can only make it to one event we really want to encourage you to go out and support the local Arts community so thanks again

[11:01] your support is truly appreciated and we look forward to seeing everyone this next week thank you thanks [Applause] me too thank you very much we'll see you out there for our tweak count on it all right and next we have a declaration for the 75th anniversary of the CU conference on world affairs presented by Bob Yates hey Betsy come on up to I'm joined up here by uh by the

[12:01] chancellor of the University of Colorado Dr Phil DiStefano the assistant Vice Chancellor Lori call and Betsy block who is our community chair for the conference on world affairs this year I need glasses thanks Phil on April 12 1948 at three o'clock in the afternoon a 32 year old assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado named Howard Hickman opened a panel discussion in room 213 of the University's arts building with a scintillating title World Bank and international loans hence the conference on world affairs was born on April 12 2023 75 years to the day after that first panel the University of Colorado's conference on world affairs will celebrate the presentation of more

[13:01] than ten thousand panels over the course of three quarters of a century the thousands of topics presented each April during these 75 years covers a range of topics including politics religion art science media business climate housing War sex taxes race trade film government history finance and Technology the conference program is collaboratively developed features important and contentious issues invites different perspectives and supports Civic debate for 75 years college students professors and area residents have gathered on the CU campus to hear brilliant panelists from around the world debate the pressing issues and questions of the day long time CWA panelist and renowned film critic Roger Ebert dubbed it the conference on everything conceivable while CWA founder Howard Hickman who led the conference for more for almost 50

[14:01] years died in 1995. the conference has survived him and thrived through a unique collaboration of Cu students professors and Community leaders the conference draws thousands of people from across campus and around our broader Community to Hill hear Nobel laureates U.S senators corporate CEOs poets scientists and religious leaders grapple with the problems of our day panels through the years have included Eleanor Roosevelt Harry Belafonte Henry Kissinger Rachel Maddow yitzhat Rabin and Joe Biden before he was president the climate-oriented program this year will include topics such as democracy in hotter times greenwashing can I trust an organization's climate claims and the Colorado River crisis where do we go from here it will also include a keynote keynote addresses by renowned ice photographer Jim balog of the Chasing Ice Fame and

[15:01] former Patagonia CEO and climate activist Rose Macario therefore we the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado recognize and celebrate the 75th anniversary of the conference on world affairs and we invite the community to attend the 75th conference on April 13 and 14 this year to engage with robust content and make inspiring Connections in this evocative community with that I want to turn over to Chancellor de Stefano thank you council member Yates it's a pleasure to be here and I want to thank you for taking the time during this evening this meeting to acknowledge the 75th anniversary of the conference on world affairs we appreciate the longtime support of you city council City staff and the broader Bolder Community I know many of you have served as panelists facilitators and volunteers over the years we have community members who have opened their homes for visiting speakers

[16:00] and thousands of Boulder residents have filled The Glenn Miller Ballroom at Mackey Auditorium to hear the diverse Insight of scientists politicians environmentalists and film critics over the past seven decades I believe it's the partnership between the university and the broader community that has ensured cwa's ability to generate New Perspectives and Foster creative discussions since 1948 we are thrilled to host this year's conference on world affairs on April 12th through the 14th we are building on the success of the right here right now global climate Summit that we hosted with the United Nations human rights in December so all CWA will be focused on issues on climate environment and human rights we start Wednesday afternoon with a keynote by CU alumnus James baylog who is an incredible environmental

[17:01] photographer and Mountaineer thank you I'm also excited as you mentioned Bob to host a discussion on Thursday evening with rose Macario the former CEO at Patagonia I know that they will have some interesting insights to share and that's exactly what we hope to achieve with these events for the sixth consecutive year most of the sessions will be live streamed but as locals you have the privilege of joining in person it remains free and open to all due to their generosity of cwa's donors and loyal volunteers as well as the speakers themselves registration is recommended so you can stay up to date with a conference schedule and you can do so at colorado.edu CWA I want to conclude by reiterating my gratitude to the Boulder City Council and our entire Community for supporting

[18:02] this long-standing conference you have shown up personally and served as ambassadors for CWA as you do for so many CU Boulder programs and initiatives thank you so much for your support of the conference and your acknowledgment of the Rich and enduring Legacy that CWA holds for the Boulder Community foreign [Applause] thanks so much for joining us Chancellor this afternoon and Lori Cole and Betsy black really appreciate the partnership with the university on this and so many other things and we will see you out there at CWA all right our last Declaration of the evening is space science month declaration presented by council member Benjamin

[19:01] thanks Aaron in continuing the partnership with the University of Colorado sort of fitting to stay stick with that theme in December 1968 the astronauts of Apollo 8 were attempting to be the first humans to ever leave low earth orbit encircle the moon roughly a quarter of a Million Miles Away it was on the fourth lunar orbit that astronaut William Anders took a picture of the Earth rising as seen from The Far Side of the Moon this is arguably one of the most famous pictures ever taken most many historians attribute the galvanizing force of attributing of establishing Earth Day on April 22nd to this famous earthrise photo it is truly the first time we saw our planet surrounded by The Emptiness of space and perhaps more importantly we saw the fragility of our home as the atmosphere appeared as nothing more than the skin of an apple the environment environmental movement as we know it today was in large part created by Humanity's pursuit of the cosmos for over 60 years our home of Boulder Colorado has carried on this

[20:01] Legacy of Space Science and helped Forge countless new discoveries Technologies and industries the University of Colorado CU often carries the distinction as being the number one nasa-funded Public University in the country CU Boulder has also prepared and graduated generations of students that go on to make lasting contributions to the combined fields of Space Science around the world ball Aerospace is Boulder's number one employer while building many of the instruments and Technologies for the most well-known and consequential spacecraft and orbiting telescopes ever assembled like the Hubble Space Telescope the Kepler space telescope worldview one and two spacecraft the Mars reconnaissance Orbiter and the James Webb Space Telescope just to name a few accompanying ball are numerous other Aerospace and defense contractors that make huge contributions to our national security Boulder hosts more than half of Colorado's 30 plus federally funded research Labs including NOAA the National Oceanic Atmos and Atmospheric

[21:00] Administration lasp the laboratory for atmospheric space physics ncar the national Center for atmospheric research and nist the National Institute of Space technology and so many more it is estimated that Boulder space science Community generates over a billion dollars to our state's economy spanning unimaginable scales of space and time from that of quantum physics to the origins of our universe and everything in between Boulder is home to world-renowned scientists researchers administrators and staff that continue to expand the knowledge of New Frontiers as such Boulder stands out as one of but a few cities around the world that lay host to so many of these industries and researchers as is often joked one can throw a rock in town and likelihood a scientist as is a testament to the reputation of Boulder we the city of Boulder of the we the city council the city of Boulder Colorado declare April 2023 as space science month and celebrate the people institutions and

[22:00] industries that have informed inspired and Unleashed generations of imaginations to seek understanding of our place in the cosmos thank you strongest connections to space there which is as the residents of space immigrant Mork from work okay I like it and and with that um so our last item in in One D in our call to order is a municipal court and Boulder Police Department quarterly update and I believe uh judge cook will be starting us off with that yes thank you um with me tonight I have um Jim wise he's one of our probation officers um I've been at the court for almost 22 years and he's been there longer so he's a tremendous wealth of knowledge um also in the audience is Devon kiss at Kelly who's our Deputy court administrator

[23:02] um you can go to the next slide just want to remind I just have this at the beginning to remind everybody about the underlying principles guiding the municipal court in next slide please so um you've probably heard um in just generally speaking that courts had a big backlog as a result of covid and if you'll go to the next slide it's not just our court it's courts all over the country but uh for us the backlog was created by the fact that we didn't have court sessions for uh and a relatively short period of time actually that we were closed but um we also had jail standards that were put into place that time that limited the capacity at the jail so that excluded pretty much all Municipal defendants for a period of time and sensitivity to financial hardship so some of the sanctions that we might have used like default judgments against people didn't appear for Traffic Court those were delayed and held in an abeyance anyway so those are the kinds

[24:01] of things that happened um that created a backlog next slide please so what we've been doing is we've been um addressing that trying to get that up to date we're now three years out from the onset of the shutdown and essentially we went back through the cases um over the last three years that had not been resolved we identified criminal cases that could be pursued and warrants were issued if we needed to issue those we also determined what we were going to do with the non-criminal cases there were cases that were probation cases that people just you know they came to court they did their initial Court interaction and then they just kind of fell off the map and so we figured out how we were going to do that and many of our standard processes like issuing warrants and default judgments and so forth have been held in advance those have all been reinstituted at this point um

[25:00] so I really appreciate the work that staff has done to support this because it's not just me that addressed the backlog this was a whole bunch of other people who were involved in that but were um we're back up to kind of pre-covet operations in all regards next slide please all right um a few administrative updates and if you'll go to the next slide I want to talk with you about our public defender so for decades we can't even figure out how far back but for decades we had the uh the CU law clinical program representing our defendants and municipal court and so the we had student lawyers under operating under the student Practice Act with oversight by a professor and they represented our Indigent defendants and they gave us notice in December of last year that they would not be continuing that any more and we're taking a different direction with those students but representation is mandated by the state and U.S Constitution so then we

[26:03] needed to figure out what we were going to do so we acted pretty quickly to get two new public defenders they are two women who are in a law firm together they are oadc approved attorneys so oadc is the office of the alternate defense Council that's like the parallel public defender's office for the state that represents people who are charged with crimes but where the public defender can't represent them because there's a conflict of interest so there's a group of attorneys that are approved to provide representation to Indigent defendants at different levels you know some are approved for like the most serious cases you know homicides and others felonies misdemeanors Etc so the beauty of having an oadc approved Law Firm working with us is that we don't have to pay extra to pay to have somebody come in and assess them and make sure they're providing accurate oversight which is what the state law would require if we didn't have people

[27:00] with that kind of stamp of approval um so it's great we were able with the help of the city attorney's office who moved this contract through very quickly to get them in place and approved but you will be seeing this come up as part of the budget process we had a screaming deal with the legal aid and Defender program because they had a lot of benefit in being able to educate their students in the ways of practicing law and that's in this situation we're paying more of the standard rate so I just wanted to alert you to that next slide please a couple of technology updates so you've probably heard this from BPD but they are starting um to migrate to A system that will allow them to write electronic tickets in some cases what that means though is there needs to be an interface with the court that's the system that they're using is the same as cupd which is very

[28:01] beneficial for us what that will ultimately mean is that we can hopefully import the data that's generated by their citations directly into our court records management system rather than having to do manual entry which is what we do now so that would be a huge benefit for us and but it has required a lot of work on RN to make that those systems talk with each other and so we've had staff working very hard on that under the supervision of Devon who's been the main interface the other big technology piece and you heard me mention this really briefly at your um uh Retreat is that we are nearing the end of the RFP process for a client management system that will support the work that's being done collaboratively on behalf of unhoused or recently housed clients and collaboratively that means people within the city like us the homeless Outreach team the city attorney's office other folks as well as service providers

[29:02] outside of our system they will also be able to have access so people from the behavioral health assistance program people from Focus re-entry people um I'm trying to think there's one other big one there that I'm missing but anyway it will allow us to have a true by name list of people who are unhoused in the community be there's the other one I was thinking of um and uh I most communities say that their by name list is the one that's generated by people who are on the list for housing but as you know there are some people who aren't on that list so to the extent that we can capture all of those it'll be really great and you've got I have that inverted pyramid because people will have different levels of permissions to access the data because not everybody for instance will be able to see sensitive HIPAA protected information but if there's a release of information in place for that service provider then they can see that so really excited about that it's taken much longer than we thought to get through this process but we're hoping

[30:00] our fingers crossed that we'll get to the end there pretty soon next slide please so a couple of other administrative activities we've been updating our relief judge contracts um and uh most importantly we are on a trajectory to hopefully fairly soon recruit and hire a new court administrator I think most of you know that James Cho our court administrator retired effective November 4th our interim Court Administrator has been Pam Davis we love her she's been doing a great job but we can't keep her forever and but what we did was we took that opportunity to work as our leadership team so our Deputy Court Administrator Devon the two judges and Pam really on like do we have the right Department structure are there some things that we could do that would make things work better and so forth so that is still in

[31:02] process hopefully the organizational piece the structural piece will be ready to share pretty soon but once that's formalized we'll be then recruiting for that position so stay tuned um next slide please so um I wanna I know I've talked with you about this before but I want to highlight this again and get a little bit more into the Weeds on it for you because it does have um some impact on some of the things that you hear more day to day and if you go to the next slide this is sort of a summary of Criminal Justice reforms that it happened starting in 2014 in the state legislature that have impacted municipal courts and I'm not going to walk you through each of those if you have questions about any of those for me I'm happy to answer them but what I really want to do is focus on those green lines in the middle which have to do with Bond reform and if you'll go to the next slide this is where I'm going to walk you through that piece

[32:02] so the first restrictions on bonds came in 2019. up until that point the state law was silent on what types of bonds municipal courts could set when people were brought in on a warrant or on a probable cause arrest and and brought before a judge to set Bond um so at 2019 they the state required personal recognizance bond that means you get out on your own signature no money has to be posted for municipal fences unless they were substantially similar to a Class 1 or Class 2 misdemeanor in state court and that basically brought Municipal Court offenses in um in alignment with class 3 misdemeanors so that was the rule for state courts for class three misdemeanors in 2019 they made it applicable to the municipal courts 2021 they added the requirement that courts hold Bond hearings within 48 Hours of arrest going into effect in

[33:02] April of 2022. in 2020 one they also added the requirement that personal recognizant Bonds were required where the maximum penalty for an offense was less than six months except in very limited circumstances so that added an additional sort of lens by which you had to make these Bond evaluations and then in 2021 and 2022 many state court misdemeanors were classified and the penalties were reduced for some of them so whereas there used to be class one two and three misdemeanors as well as Petty offenses which had no jail associated with them they completely got rid of Class III misdemeanors and all those class three misdemeanors either became Petty offenses and got downgraded or they became plus two misdemeanors and were upgraded and so um when they also at the same time reduce the maximum penalty for class two misdemeanors to 120 days in jail

[34:00] so the effect of that was that fewer Municipal fences are substantially similar to class 1 or Class 2 misdemeanors because some of those you know that basically left fewer in that category and so that meant fewer cases where we had some discretion based on that criteria and it also because they reduced the penalty for class two misdemeanors in the state courts basically PR Bonsall required for All State Court misdemeanors as well unless they're class one misdemeanors so a whole bunch of people who are charged with very low level offenses are required to have PR bonds whether they're in state court or the Municipal Court so I just wanted to kind of walk you through that to understand why we are where we are with our restrictions on holding people on a pre-trial basis for municipal offenses I know you may have some questions about

[35:01] that but we're gonna get to the community court stuff let you hear from Jim and then I'm happy to Circle back with that if that's where you're at um all right Community Court update um if you can go to the next slide please I just want to remind everybody that um Community Court IT addresses a very small group of unhoused status offenses Public Safety crimes are presumptively ineligible for Community Court so those crimes that you see in those two kind of purplish boxes none of those crimes our community Court eligible offenses and I want you to know that we do take Public Safety seriously and that when we're confronted with one of those violations and adjuting a case of one of those violations in our court the full range of sentencing options is on the table next slide please but the programmatic updates that I want to give you a couple of things that

[36:00] we're really excited about so you heard me I and I know you were really interested in this when we started it with Community Court we allocated quite a few of our funds for substance use and mental health treatment and for the first year plus of that programming and this is still funded by the state court Grant we had a contract with BTS also known for Center For Change and to be honest that didn't really work out so well because that the service provider we had did not was not really able to meet the unhoused people with where they are at that person was really looking for these people to be really ready to say I'm ready to make change and people are unhoused are usually not at that stage of the cycle and so what we did beginning at the beginning of this year and again thank you to Devon she approached several other providers but the naropa was like the the one that came out in the lead and so we now have a contract with

[37:00] naropa and there's a professor at naropa who teaches counseling who's overseeing counseling students who are now providing this service to our Municipal Court clients and they're coming out to our community Court sessions they're they're meeting with them there it's the feedback we're getting from the individuals that are working with these folks has been immediately positive they're willing to sit down and engage and and have these conversations and um the the student counselors are really doing a wonderful job of you know just meeting them wherever they're at whatever they're willing to talk about and helping them in any way that they can uh some people have come you know this has been in place for a very short amount of time but we've already had some people who've come like two weeks in a row and have met with people two weeks in a row so we're really happy about this this is something that you've funded going forward once the Grant's over so it will continue um second exciting piece of news is

[38:00] We're Going Mobile that's why I have a picture of a van here um we have what I think is the oldest band in the city fleet but um we're excited to have it um one of the places where we've been to doing community Court deacons closet at Grace Commons church is going to come to an end in the middle of May because they're doing a huge renovation and so this is going to be a way for us to be able to continue to deliver those services but besides being able to do it at a site near Deacon's closet it's going to allow us to start going to another site we're going to go to the Harvest of Hope food pantry beginning in late April which is I'm on East Pearl so that may help us reach a different population of folks and so we're really excited about this and this may be something that we can then expand on even further I don't know where the day Center will ultimately be cited but you know obviously there will be some synergies there so I'm really happy about that and then finally we're hoping

[39:02] to we have an RF it's not an RFP but something like that out we're hoping to contract with somebody to do an interim assessment of the Community Court will officially be three years at the end of September a lot of programs wait till they've been in place a lot longer to do an evaluation we're not going to do a formal program evaluation I want to make that clear but just to have that sort of lens from somebody who hopefully is an academic and has experience with problem solving courts and give us some early feedback on how we're doing we think would be really beneficial all right um next slide so I'm going to talk briefly about this and then I'm going to turn it over to Jim as uh as you know much of the work that is done by our homeless Navigators is done with the sort of the end goal of Housing and we know that that's for some people that's kind of a longer range goal but this is data that I compiled for pres presentation that I was part of at the boulder chamber in late January and I think I shared that with you in

[40:00] table form but I wanted to convert that to a graph to explain it maybe a little bit more quickly but if you or more easily the bar on the left that represents the total number of Boulder Municipal Court and state court cases for seven individuals so 978 cases among these seven individuals before they went into housing after housing six cases among these seven individuals so for people who are unhoused being housed basically stops the them committing crimes and the whether you are looking at the people who have between 100 and 264 cases or any smaller number of cases that people have been housed it's very very similar results and but that doesn't really tell you as much as we would like you to know and that's why I brought Jim with me I want him to tell you a few individual stories

[41:01] and I'm going to have him start with a person who's actually not in a house in Boulder but they are no longer on the streets either and this person is the one at the courthouse where I run into another judge from County court or whatever and they go what do we do about X and that's who Jim's going to talk about yes yes um I have known I've known this individual about 20 years he's lived in Boulder that entire time he's not new to our community by by any means I'm sure that officer Echo would be instantly he would recognize him instantly were he to see him um he is incredibly difficult to serve he commits crimes he lives on the street he commits crimes and any time that we get to the point that we can put him into a house he tries to slip away he self-sabotages he can't deal with it he's been demoralized before when

[42:01] someone has said hey we've got housing for you and then it turned out that we did not actually um it takes an incredible amount of people a whole long time to get someone like that who's been in our community he he is our community member he's not from somewhere else so this individual we have tried to get him housed before we were successful at one point getting him housed in Denver we took him down to his housing meeting he was getting his keys uh he never lived outside of Boulder he beat our housing coordinator back to Boulder because he simply couldn't live at the apartment that they were giving him in Denver over the years we have made many attempts to bring him indoors and it is it's almost a resignation on his part that he has decided like you guys I appreciate what you're doing for me but I'm going to die out here um I'd run into him at a coffee shop I'm like dude get in my truck right now let's go make this happen anyway uh

[43:02] recently at his latest stint at the Boulder County Jail a number of us partnered together um the mental health worker at the jail uh behap which is behavior um I'm sorry Behavioral Health and programming at the jail our city attorney's office um under Sandra Chris Reynolds is our lead prosecutor they were able to work with a district attorney on the case um to get an appropriate disposition on his state court case so that we could release him from custody into the custody of a different uh to Boulder PD Officers who drove him down to Fort Lyon which is a multi-year residential program down in southeast Colorado it's the first time that he's lived indoors 20 years maybe other than the jail excuse me um and I just want to add that with him um manage in a very

[44:00] one point of time where he was just a little bit more engaged than most to get him an ID we actually got him to go with us our navigator to the DMV to get his ID which made this placement possible he wouldn't have been able to go to Fort Lyon without that and for many of our folks that's our strategy is on those days or in those times when we do uh when we have won the conversation we try and get an appointment scheduled whether that's for social security card or to go get his Med record from the hospital you know one of the benefits of knowing for 20 years is he recognizes me he trusts me one of the terrible things knowing him for 20 years is to see his physical diminishment on the streets for that long it kills people way too young and by the way he's in one of those categories he has over 111 muni court cases and he has over 70 state court cases him not being on the streets besides it

[45:00] being super Humane means a lot less bikes are going to be stolen um I want to talk about another woman who also a long-term resident of our community and has been repeatedly victimized in our community has suffered brutal assaults she has been housed but it takes an army to keep this woman in housing she is a very social person and so we had attempted housing at one location but it was again it was too far out it was not in her community she was like why are you guys shipping me away she did not last long at that housing situation also though because of where it was we didn't have the support or resources available to be able to go and drop in on her how are you doing what do you need we did manage to find a separate housing location um also not the right one but now since

[46:02] December she's been in a new housing situation the difference now is even though she doesn't like it as much it's in Longmont uh we have a lot more people and resources able to check in on her we have had um Devon uh kiss it Kelly who's our Deputy Court Administrator um Devon has checked in on her numerous Boulder PD Officers including from the hot team have checked in our our homeless navigation has check owner um was it be there has checked in on her it takes an entire team and because of the frequent check-ins we noticed that her health was diminishing rapidly she was depressed she was drinking too much not eating it became a medical emergency to Boulder police officers were able to get to her in time called an ambulance they took her to the hospital the EMT told our officers that it was within a day or two that she was going to die so they really appreciated

[47:01] the call from them she's currently receiving Medical Care in the community and so we hope for a longer term uh more successful prognosis but just the amount of people that had to work for that woman to be housed again in our community we can't do it with a small team it takes a big team almost every single time um I I just want to highlight a couple of things uh the ways and the amounts of of situations that arise that get people into being unhoused are varied it is not a monolithic population however the way out is always the same with housing um there are some of the folks in this community that I've known for 20 years who might be in some of those categories one person in particular he has over 2 500 jail nights uh in 1997 when he got his first book in at

[48:02] that point if we had just bought him a condo uh just the cost of his jail nights over the years is about 588 thousand dollars just for him just his jail nights and also in that time 16 some odd years he did about half of those years at the Boulder County jail and it wasn't doing two and three years since it's 10 days at a time 15 days at a time 10 days at a time that number does not include uh detox check-ins emergency room check-ins it doesn't incr include any of the property crimes that he might have committed along the way uh any of the thefts at any of the stores it doesn't include any of that that's just the jail nights just for that one person if I if I gave you the number for the top five people in that time frame uh it's almost two million dollars one point nine six eight million dollars just in jail nights just from five people uh those people are housed

[49:01] and they do not have any tickets now they have zero tickets in fact three three of the top seven Go Fish they go fishing together uh they're fishing buddies and they're not getting crimes so I think it's pretty fantastic for those guys but but for all five of them in late 90s dollars had we bought them a condo uh we would have saved almost two million dollars I just wanted to share just a couple of uh small stories I'll keep my time brief but we have people in this community who age out of a foster system and as part of their plan they decide that they're going to join the military it's an appropriate plan for many kids uh one of my kids uh he did that exited the foster care system straight into the military he was loading pallets on a C-130 and he was crushed between two pallets he had a traumatic brain injury and he was again homeless in our community without support another one was a combat veteran and he was

[50:01] discharged from the VA in Aurora because his PTSD was too acute for the VA to deal with um we have people who went to high school here and are in the same yearbook with uh the BPD officer that's now uh trying to you know get him into a hotel uh these are long-term community members they're from here um and they all arrived unhoused uh in a variety of ways a gentleman who was riding his motorcycle got into an accident traumatic brain injury he's no longer able to care for himself he's homeless on the street these are the folks that we are talking about with these multitudes of crimes that we're trying to address with housing we are super good at getting people document ready we can get them their ID their social security their Med record what's super difficult is the off ramp into housing that's the resource and then the people that can keep them in

[51:01] housing the wraparound services that we have um Ms kiss it Kelly Devon Linda everybody at our court is super creative Devon reaches into her pocket way more often than she should um because we're trying to keep the people in the housing once we actually get them there and I think that's I think that's enough for me thank you and that's you can go to the next slide that's all we have for you tonight but we're open to your questions great well Linda thanks so much for that data and information and Jim for those powerful stories that that's really helps us understand the kind of the human scale and scope of some of the challenges people are experiencing so really appreciate that we have questions for either of them Nicole thanks for letting me go first I'm going to deck out in about 10 minutes just for a little bit one of the questions that I

[52:00] had was just around the client management system and also thank you for the wonderful presentation really appreciate it is that going to integrate with the systems the county is using and I know they're they're kind of seven other regions in the area that are also using some a different client management system I do those talk to each other or will they have the capacity to do that um thank you for that question and it's a really good one we uh we don't know for sure yet which system we'll be using one of the ones in contention is the same one that the seven County region is using um which would be very cool that would make it very easy to talk to each other we've talked with the county the county has indicated that they will not share out to us but that if we would like to have our system dump into theirs they would be happy to receive that information so the yes that may happen very significantly for us though the requirement of this RFP is that our

[53:00] court records management system can interface with this system so that we can just import that data and so all of the information that we have about people from their citations you know their demographic and all of that other stuff their history that stuff will automatically dump in there and then our our vision is that the different service providers will then be able to enter their client management notes in one unified Place rather than our Navigators having their notes somewhere and behalf having their notes somewhere and be there having their notes somewhere and having this all kind of collective information in one place with appropriate releases of information for sharing thank you that's going to be incredibly valuable um and one other question I was just wondering if you um you know have any stories about folks who kind of aren't chronically homeless who show up in our court I mean do we get that as well I think you know a lot of a lot of what we've heard about is

[54:01] sort of folks who are coming in over and over and over again are there really a good example from this Tuesday do you want to tell that story was telling me after um I I don't know I was I was doing a girl I was gonna say uh [Music] yes we service a lot of people that are not chronically homeless half of my case roles are actually CU students um so so there are a variety of people that we serve but we also occasionally get the one time just traveling through uh unhoused traveler um who shows up for Community Court in the service at that particular time raises for me though is a very poignant story that we had this week and it was somebody was there on a camping citation first case ever in our court and our Navigator met with him and this was somebody who'd been living in Douglas County with his fiance and two young children and he'd been asked to leave

[55:00] the apartment because the children were noisy and disruptive so fiance in Kansas City and kids go back to Kansas City to live with the grandma he makes his way to Boulder gets a job at McDonald's working the night shift because there's a additional salary for doing that but you can't stay at the shelter if you're working the night shift so he was he's been doing that for two months he's already been sending money back to Kansas City to help support he's almost saved up five thousand dollars to get his car fixed and he's almost saved up enough money to get an apartment on his own he didn't ever he didn't even know about things like rapid rehousing and some of those options that might have been available to him so what we did what our Navigator did with him on Tuesday was he helped him apply at one of the apartment complexes in town but he's practically doing this on his own he didn't need a lot of navigation but that's an example of somebody who was not too long ago housed fell on this

[56:00] particular circumstance and is now making his way back thank you so it sounds like it's not just the chronic chronically homeless folks that you all are seeing that's right there as well yeah thank you for that and I apologize colleagues I'm going to step out for a little bit to celebrate Monday Thursday but I will be back attack again soon Nicole Terry you've got a question I do I have a few questions actually first of all judge cook can you tell us what our class one two and three film can you tell us what those are the offenses class one two and three and which of those you are responsible for so I'm not responsible for any class one or two misdemeanors those are County Court charges and so the county court judges address those however the boulder Municipal Code has ordinance ordinance violations that are approximate equivalents of those charges and they typically fall into the category of crimes against persons like third degree assault and harassment

[57:02] weapons violations and things like I don't think there's any kind of a propane tank at the state level but there are fire violations that are the equivalent of class two misdemeanors and then finally resisting and obstructing those are kind of the big categories of Municipal ordinance violations that approximate those class one and Class 2 misdemeanors in the state court okay so you're responsible for those or you're not responsible I am if they're filed in our court I'm responsible for them okay do you feel like just walk let's just take propane tanks is that you or is that is that the state protein propane tanks is us okay so what walk us through what happens to somebody who you who's been arrested let's say with a propane tank well they usually aren't arrested they're given a summons um and most of I have no I have to be honest with you I've seen very few of those violations

[58:01] um but they would come to court and the prosecutor would evaluate them and make a recommendation about what hap would happen in that case and then we would act accordingly I don't have any one particular propane tank case that stands out for me um part of the thing that makes it I I actually because I knew you were interested in propane tanks especially I tried to go back and even look at our filings on that and because it's the same ordinance that prohibits tents and Nets I really can't even give you numbers on that because I would have to manually look at the ticket in each case to see whether the the citation was for tents or for propane tanks so um you know with a lot of um digging we could come up with more information for you about that and what particular outcomes happened in those cases but it's not easy to get at it's it requires looking up every single case okay so what about trespass that's under you or certain types of trespasses under

[59:01] you certain types of trespass are under us yes okay like what types so well so low-level trespasses that would not be felony trespasses like so going into um generally going into somebody's home is a felony trespass but a trespass where somebody is asked to leave a business and doesn't leave that would be in our court there's a form of trespass that's being on public lands when you're not supposed to be there like when the parks are closed those are our cases so somebody that doesn't leave a business how are we doing with that do we have a lot of those cases um so uh on and off um as a general rule of filings have been on a downward Trend over the last few years but um when we get those um we have different options but one of the options and it this hasn't been used a lot in recent history and I think it's um partly because we just haven't seen that many of these cases or because

[60:00] the businesses have already been proactive but one of the things that can be helpful in these cases is if individuals are issued no trespass orders or affidavits a trespass or at CU they call them exclusion orders so like a really good tool in those cases is for people to be told you can't come back here for a specified period of time and then if they're told that and they come back that'll be a trespass so um you know in my meetings with people like chip and John Taylor the chamber what um initially I don't think the business owners were super aware of this option but I think in in the last year so they become quite aware and so a lot of them are doing a much better job of issuing those affidavits of trespass which then allows the police when they're called in those situations to um to write the citation and have the case come into our court foreign what about menacing is that you

[61:00] misdemeanor menacing would be us so if somebody's menacing verbally without using a weapon that would it's in our court is called threatening bodily injury um but it's the same as misdemeanor menacing okay so if you had a dream judge cook as to how to make things better what would you like how's that do you want to narrow that question at all okay um I would I would like a house for all of these unhoused people because I don't think that these violations would be occurring if they were housed but I'm sure that's I think you're probably asking something narrower than that no actually that's a great answer and I here in your presentation I feel like we need to double down and find housing for people um so that is true but I was looking for you're right I was looking for something

[62:01] different although I did appreciate that answer is what can help um bring more order to the city so let's say that we have trespassing well you did something about that with the businesses because you know a lot of the people were scared that worked in the businesses so this is really helpful well what would help in misdemeanor menacing or in for instance paid tags which are dangerous because they can create fire what what would help um I I think a citation is always helpful to be honest because a citation gives us an opportunity to engage with somebody who maybe service resistant and need some incentive to engage and it also gives us the opportunity as appropriate to give them a consequence that's commensurate with the the crime that they committed

[63:01] so citations are helpful okay so citations are helpful okay that's good to know and I just wanted to thank you for answering all my questions I think it's helpful to the community to know what you're in charge of what you're not in charge of and um so thanks for that I appreciate it and all you do thank you thanks Tara Bob thanks judge cook it's always fascinating to hear what you do and what your team does so thanks so much for coming seeing us at once a quarter I I guess I want to follow up on the line of questions that Tara started um it sounds like um there are perhaps some people in the community who um if they get into our system you or The Navigators can help them get Services whether there's Mental Health Services or maybe substance abuse treatment or other services maybe even housing where you can help them get into um system that might help help them far beyond whatever the criminal matter happens to be is that a fair do I

[64:01] understand that right that's absolutely right okay you mentioned citations are down and maybe I'll ask the chief about that when she makes her presentation but um just with respect to the citations you you do get I guess I was a little um troubled and educated but also troubled by um by some of the the things you know one of your earlier slides about the personal recognizance Bond so I want to kind of understand how that works and so if someone's issued a citation but you don't they don't they're not gonna maybe appear in front of you because they're not arrested or or they're they're going to be out on a PR Bond or maybe the police don't even bother to arrest them I'm just wondering how they get into the system now if if they're not appearing in front of you either because they're not arrested or you have to immediately release them um I get the fact that may ultimately be a trial on their citation or maybe they won't be because they simply didn't show up I'm just trying to figure out how how how to help those people get into the system and connect it to your Navigators and and other other

[65:02] people that will address their broader issues um so I I let me see if I'm understanding your current your question correctly I'm thinking you're asking kind of about the the bonding uh and yeah I guess because I think you know um so for example a lot of these these um crimes that you just run through with um with Terra I think they're they're typically 90 days or less is that a fair that's correct okay in the the pr Bond cut off is at six months is that right if the theoretical penalty is less than six months then they're typically qualified for a PR Bond so some of these things had higher penalty not that you would necessarily oppose it but I'm just trying to deal with the state law if they had a higher penalty would that perhaps give you and The Navigators an opportunity to to bring them into the system because you'd have some interaction with them for a few days so so what that would permit is for any Municipal ordinance violation

[66:01] that is equivalent to a state one or cut or two misdemeanor so that does not include camping for instance but it would include those crimes against persons weapons offenses quite a few fire related offenses if our maximum penalty was say 185 days that gets you past the six month Mark then we would have broader discretion on our um on a pre-trial basis to hold them in custody at the jail rather than releasing them on a personal recognizance Bond we at that point we would have the option of imposing a cash surety bond anybody can get out if they can post the cash or surety bond right but um many of these people are not in a position to be able to do that financially is that beneficial I guess is kind of implicit in your question um we have seen a higher level of stabilization if you will when people are in custody for a slightly prolonged period of time say

[67:02] five or ten days as opposed to right now they have to see a judge within 48 hours so and if they're required to have a personal recognizance Bond then they're spending no more than 48 hours in custody before they're getting out on their PR Bond and then if they don't show up record at their next court date which happens pretty frequently for this group of people then you're issuing another warrant and the cycle happens again and eventually they probably get enough days in jail as Jim talked about it's more it's short periods of time that they're finally pleading guilty and they're getting credit for the time they've spent in there but those two days here and two days there and two days there doesn't give you the same degree of ability to intervene at in a more robust way do you think that the period of opportunity to intervene is measured in five or ten days or what do you think the right I think it's pretty variable for some people it is that small amount of time

[68:01] um you know for other people um it's probably longer the people who are incredibly mentally ill and arrive at the jail needing significant mental health intervention including being put back onto their medications and reaching therapeutic levels that's obviously a longer period of time sure but but that potentially is a benefit for that person without mental illness yes and presumably if they're in jail for a few days that they're going to be sober during that time or sober up one would presume so one would presume so okay thanks Sandra just a quick question for you and I know this is entirely a policy question for councils I'm not asking a way on that but I mean is it theoretically possible if it was the will of council to change the the penalty the maximum penalty for some of these crimes that that go to the municipal court to the 185 days or something slightly longer than six months so that that these folks can have

[69:01] access to to the services that judge cook is that that's that's a possible from a legal standpoint it is a possible I think it would need to be the will of counsel and we we currently have maximum 90 days and so obviously that would be a big shift but it could be an additional tool um available to us to try to help folks but we'd have to look into it more and and see it would be good to to do the research and see whether the the cost of doing so um you know reaps the right rewards yeah and I don't want to put you on the spot I know there's a lot of research I just wanted to ask the question just theoretically so that's something for different discussion but I wanted to at least heat up so that that's all I have thanks so much thank you thanks Bob I got Mark and then Tara again and just keep in mind folks we have another update from BPT coming after this so just a quick question the charts that you showed at the beginning of the

[70:00] presentation uh showing that the reduction in crimes committed by iutilizers when they're successfully housed it is very compelling and we've always had that view of you know housing first uh in this town um but we've also experienced um many instances where the people we're trying to house are not being good neighbors to the people they are living with in the affordable housing communities in which we place them and that has created a set of difficulties uh all its own how do you reconcile the two and there's nobody questioning the benefits of housing but not everybody can uh be successful in housing and we've found that out we've um you know I know it's been the case with some of the boulder housing Partners communities and they have residents who are who get up in arms because the the people they are now being placed

[71:01] with are running chop shops and and you know drug centers and making their life difficult so how do we reconcile those those two things the benefits of placing people I utilizers in housing and the difficulties of placing high utilizers in housing right so um I I appreciate you uh asking that because I can understand how that would appear to be a disconnect the kinds of people that um you're talking about and I know some of them by name are on not on this list because they didn't stay in housing long enough to make it onto this list but what the key is for people to be successful in housing is also not only placing people in housing but having housing retention strategies and supports and for a long time in this community we've not had that we do have um I know you know from HHS you have the um building home team coming on board really really soon and those are pure mentors that will help with that but

[72:02] we've also recognized that until that team is in place what we have done on an ad hoc basis is just put together those wraparound services so it's not uncommon for the individual that um Jim was talking about that um in in that was housed in Longmont we had um at least three days a week somebody was checking on on her and one day it was be Happ and one day it was the court Navigator and one day it might have been Focus or it might have been the hot team or whatever and so um we had we actually have a weekly team that's meeting and they're doing case planning not only for people who are on the path to housing and might be going into housing but also for the people who are now housed or people who are in transitional housing with our um with those dollars and trying to support them so that they're successful in those placements and that's not something we did out of the box with housing but it's something we're doing better now on on an ad hoc basis and I think if I can't

[73:02] say for sure what would have happened with those individuals that quickly did not succeed and whether or not that would have made a difference for them but I have to imagine that for some of them if they'd had that that would have been helpful not you know it's um it's hard to learn to live in community again with people that don't look like the community that you were living with you when you were unhoused and so there's some learning that has to happen there and we need to do a good job of helping them with that I'll just add two mayor if I may I'd hold on council member to that question at the risk of um incurring the ire of our HH HHS directors in the audience today um that's a really good question to be asking next week when we have a study session really devoted to homelessness Services because it is uh an interesting Nexus it is why we are geared towards housing first but housing Force first

[74:00] does I think to be truly successful requires some supports and those are some supports that we're adding to it so keep that question in mind thanks Mark Terry did you have something else real quick I know you want a real quick Aaron um bicycle theft can you tell me judge cook when let's say somebody steals an 800 bicycle is that your is that what you would take care of no we don't have a theft ordinance okay so you don't do thefts at all right that's correct guy was Aaron so quick it's so quick all right well seeing no other hands um unless Mark is that an old hand there I said sorry not old a previous hand sorry um then we can thank you so much Jim and Linda for your presentation and for your answers really appreciate it and we'll thank you and we'll ask our Boulder Police Department representatives to come on up I think I see Chief Harold and deputy chief Redford in the room

[75:21] we don't want to kill the city manager with the following monitor that would be that would be bad Steven will take a monitor for you thank you good evening good evening Council mayor mayor Pro tem

[76:01] Wallach it's good to be here this evening we are going to stick to the same framework that we had last time that we were in front of you if you go to the next slide please the agenda will be pretty much the same agenda that we had last time with just one new addition so we're going to be looking at problem locations across the city of Boulder review of some problem crime patterns we're going to be looking at some pretty serious significant incidents that we've had during the last quarter summarize that and we'll give you plenty of time for questions next slide please um I just want to reorient Council in the community on what we are trying to do with our crime reduction strategy um so as we're throughout the presentation tonight as we're reviewing what deputy chief Redfern will present tonight I want Council to understand in

[77:00] the community and understand that we'll be very focused on places and there's very good reason for that is because places crime concentrates at places but it's a very few number of places across the city the crime concentrates most importantly is that the majority of Boulder's geography has no crime or little calls for service so if we can keep that in mind tonight the Boulder Police Department has chose problem solving as its primary crime reduction strategy there's good reason for that too because it's evidence-based research supports using some type of problem-solving model person focused throughout this presentation as Steve goes through this and the reason this is so important is because we know just like judge cook indicated we have very few offenders committing the majority of crimes in Boulder so that's important from a police reform perspective as well to understand that we really do have very

[78:01] few people committing crime in Boulder but they are repetitive in nature and they really cause great havoc in the community and so we need to focus on those repeat offenders in our community we can't do any of this without the community and so as Steve goes through this presentation you will see Heavy Reliance on Partnerships collaborations collaborations with other City departments collaborations with businesses collaboration with community members and people that are affected by the criminal activity that we're speaking all of this is packaged up in a stratified policing model all of it's packaged up as an organizational so we can run problem solving in a day-to-day operation something that most police departments do not do because policing by Nature since the 911 systems came online in the 1960s is has become very reactive in nature and I am trying to get away from that reactive and get police officers to go into a more

[79:00] preventative stance next slide the one new thing that we'll be introducing is the methodology that we have chosen to look at crime so problem solving is the strategy it's evidence-based but what is the methodology that the police officers are using when they look at crime and so when we're looking at repeat crime we're going to choose the Sarah methodology and you'll see this throughout Steve's presentation when he's talking about problem-solving projects this is really important to maintain that the police are constantly in a problem-solving process most professions have some form of a problem-solving process criminology chooses the Sarah model and basically you'll see that when Steve's talking about these problem-solving projects we'll be in each we'll talk about what phase that we are in in each one of these projects that we're talking tonight but scanning is basically to identify a problem that's repeat in nature then you go into

[80:02] an analysis where we look at data we're very lucky in Boulder to have Dr Reinhardt who actually is constantly scanning and doing analysis for us you'll see that Steve will talk about the responses that we're doing this is important because all of the responses that we look at are ethical effective and Equitable and so Steve will talk a little bit about that and then finally the police department does a really good job on assessing what the police are our responses are they working and if they're not we go right back to the scanning and figure out what we're doing wrong so I want the community and Council to understand that this is the level of detail and problem solving that we're doing on a daily basis and I feel confident after approximately a year of doing this that we've institutionalized this in the police department and so I'm very proud of the work that we're doing I'm going to let Steve drive this for the next

[81:01] several minutes and then we'll get to questions Steve thanks Chief and good evening soul and mayor Brockett next slide please uh Steve Redford Deputy police chief and I'm going to talk fast because there's a lot of information in the last quarter to go over um let me know if I'm going too fast so you might recall from the last presentation we did through stratified policing we look initially one of the big premises is to look at the locations in the city that have an inordinate amount of calls for service and so when our data analyst looks at this data to see all right why does this place have more calls than for example you're going to hear us talk about a convenience store that has a huge number of calls compared to other convenience stores and that's one of the the successful things we've done in this program is to figure out why and then try to get to the root of that issue so I'm going to take you through some problem locations I'm going to talk about uh three of them and then I'm going to talk about a new location we've just started next slide please so you've heard uh more than once from

[82:01] us about the Circle K over on Canyon and when we started this program we realized that the Circle K had hundreds more calls for service than the other convenience stores in the city we're at a point now in the Sarah model where we are at the response phase we've we think we have a good grasp of why that the location has a lot of calls for service and we've done a lot of work the great thing with this location is we have a very Cooperative management team that's not always the case and so we've had a lot of great collaboration with the regional manager uh local manager and then a lot of the uh the corporate Partners there and so while calls are are trending downward where they're not quite where we want to see them one of the things a few things we've done with management since we've last presented to you Council was a couple things such as the store now locks their single beer cans they still sell single beer cans but what we were seeing before is a lot of shoplifts so now if someone wants to buy a single beer they have to the clerk has to unlock the cooler they now lock the restroom it's still accessible but

[83:01] you have to get a key from the clerk they were having a lot of issues in the restroom and so small things like that we're seeing uh calls for service go down one thing we noticed you'll see in a moment when we started this program and we really met with the the management they they deemed that they some of their business practices were probably conducive to some of these calls they made changes with staff and one of the things we did is train the staff and so once we did that we saw actually some calls increase because staff was actually calling as whereas before they would let things Fester until they got to a really serious Point um a couple things improving lighting improving cameras including things like security and then we provided training for employees and and the company actually is providing a pay incentive now to attract employees that want to work overnight they were actually closing at night because they couldn't find people that wanted to work there next next slide please I'm happy to report calls are down if you see on this slide on the far right of the graph you'll see February we had

[84:00] 12 calls for service and that is really remarkable considering in 2021 some months we were seeing 50 calls for service at the location a couple of the things on the left you'll see we had a couple thefts trespassing but overall no serious crime you'll hear me talk about a significant incident that began at the Circle K but overall we're not where we want to be yet on calls but we're we're training in the right direction next slide please so this is new to the program since we last presented to you and we have taken on the library as a problem location I'll tell you tell you why in the big um the exciting news as to why we're able to focus on the library now is because we had such Success With The Table Mesa RTD park and ride that we've actually removed that as a problem location and I'll talk about that in a minute a year into this program and we are comfortable now with our staff our commanders our sergeants our officers where we would have not taken the library on as a project right away with this program because of the complexities there but I think we're in a good place now that we know this this program so we've assigned

[85:01] a commander and two sergeants to specifically deal with the library and we've had great collaboration with the staff our officers now on a daily basis several times a day our parking getting out of their car walking through the library getting a cup of coffee at the cafe there and having a lot of pleasant interactions we all know some of the issues surrounding the restrooms and things so our drug task force has been out there to provide employee training on recognition of hazardous situations and they've also the drug task force has done some investigating into some of the Nexus to some of the drug related crimes that we saw there I'm hearing really good feedback from the library director and the staff on the increased presence from the police department next slide please so calls are actually down at the library um significantly if you look back to August of last year 51 calls for service there one of the problems that we've seen here is the library is an icon there and what Dr Reinhardt has had to do is to kind of parse out what calls are actually at the library in the parking lot and what calls maybe on the creek path and

[86:01] getting called into the library so that's been a challenge as we're assessing this this problem the nature of the calls you see on the left are all over the board some disturbances trespassing the library had some issues with their security company and they've hired a new security company and we're working with them and training the security company on when is it appropriate to call the police those kinds of things so we're hoping the presence there will also help reduce calls for service next slide please so the other location I believe we had just started the assessment phase on this or the scanning phase when we presented last quarter is the Millennium Hotel um it was at the top of our one of the top locations in the city for calls and when we compared it to other motels uh it was the other motels had very minimal calls compared to the Millennium um another really nice thing with the Millennium is extremely Cooperative management their manager there was brought in specifically by the company he goes around the country and deals with locations that are experiencing issues and so from day one it's been

[87:01] great a lot of collaboration we did a crime prevention assessment and we determined a couple things such as they could not account for their key cards to access the building 24 7. there was a few of them more than a few out in the community they've deactivated those we worked to help them with things such as not being able to prop open a door I mean allow people to come and go and so the hotels have changed some policies with our recommendations on just some of their renting practices and things there was a several month period where there was is transitional housing in the Millennium and we're happy to say that we were able to look at that data and really the transitional housing did not cause an increase in police calls what we're seeing on some of the issues is just traditional Hotel guests that come here for whatever reason and some of the problems have just been some of the folks here we're being told that the Millennium will close in the fall about November and so we're going to work with them to that point to ensure that they continue to have a decline in crime they're sold out on a couple of the upcoming weekends where things are happening in town

[88:01] next slide please I won't spend much on this because I've already talked about some of this as you the reason that we this came to our attention was last summer just the spike in calls and then the end of last year a large Spike and so we are trending downward and we are it's really a wide range of calls some things like fire alarms medical calls are not of of major concern and so I think we're heading the right direction we'll keep you posted on the progress there next slide please I mentioned Table Mesa park and ride I feel like this is a great success story for this program it was the first uh problem location that we tackled I know that Council had previous questions about um the location I know that at least one council member had was victimized their vehicle there and so we heard it loud and clear from the community about this location and so initially it was slow but we now have an incredible partnership with RTD we had a lot of meetings a lot of collaboration the new police chief with RTD has started forming Regional Police groups within RTD they just hired a commander from out

[89:01] of state who lives in Boulder and he's the regional RTD police Commander I met him for breakfast the other morning he's going to come to some of our meetings and so RTD plans to bring more officers specifically focused to this area and they've been great if you see the camera in the lower left on the picture that's a brand new camera when we started this their cameras were horrendous could barely make out any anything and quite frankly people who come here to commit crimes they notice those things and so um things like the signage all of those things are new another thing that we've done and it's successfully been implemented now on the top couple floors of the parking Park and Ride is long-term parking and it allows RTD and us to focus on those areas short-term Day Parking on the lower levels and it helps people a big problem there we've seen is it could be a week before somebody realizes their car has been broken into or stolen and so that's been good and I'll talk about another thing on another upcoming slide that we've had success with there so we've moved this into the assessment phase which means it's off our problem location list and

[90:00] we're going to continue to monitor going forward to make sure problems don't continue next slide as you can see in this slide we've only had five and seven calls in January in February location none of which only one in the last month was an actual criminal offense of a theft you know the top three calls were crashes and so that's good I mean not the crashes but the fact that we're not having a lot of crime there we're really happy about that and uh we're going to continue to work with our TV going forward next slide please we have two other properties that we started out as problem locations that are continue just to be monitored one is Depot Square we talked a lot about that property and that had a lot of impact there for the residents we're seeing five three to five calls a month there and that is completely normal activity for any apartment complex continue to monitor that but good success is there as well next slide please so um we are fortunate as I mentioned last quarter when we look at our top top

[91:00] crimes for the city of Boulder none of them are persons crimes we don't have the issues that other cities have where we're trying to uh in this program address violent crime um all crime is problematic and for people who are burglarized and their cars are stolen we understand that's a significant impact so I'm not diminishing that but the three crimes we're focusing on still are property crimes next slide please so burglary we are seeing an uptick in burglary it is still trending downward overall but I want to give you some context on this and so while from January to February looks like a large jump if you look at the numbers on the left axis that's we're really only talking about an increase in about 10 burglaries what we've seen in the last two to three months is a large uptick in burglaries of storage units and I'm not talking the where you go run a storage unit of Public Storage I'm talking underground apartment complex storage cages for lack of a better term and we've had a couple different groups of Thieves that are specifically targeting those locations stealing bikes sometimes

[92:01] the storage cages themselves are are not well constructed they're chain link and not well made and easily defeated we have an ongoing education campaign with our community resource officer Mr Trujillo to help educate these different apartment complexes on better ways to prevent those we are still seeing that for example the Peloton building over on Arapahoe and 33rd saw a large number of storage unit burglaries in a week our overnight officers made it a point to get out on foot they made contact with some people acting suspicious in the garage and they also hired off-duty officers temporarily our crime there has ceased knock on wood but a lot of that too is education the community about not don't leave valuable things in plain view in these locations next slide so talking about burglaries and there's a lot on the slide I'm going to quickly kind of touch on it I want to just give you the same caveat I did last time as burglary encompasses a large number of potential circumstances it's not always someone breaking into a home we're still seeing a large number of the storage locker burglaries

[93:01] and what we're seeing is still some burglaries of unlocked homes and some construction site burglaries so uh there's a there's a 48 burglaries in the last month we have made Seven arrests in those burglaries which is good and really what we're seeing is again a small number of people committing a decent number of these burglaries what we do monitor with our crime analysts is these clusters is where burglaries are occurring and that allows us to to kind of focus on enforcement as well as being just smarter about how we're focusing on disrupting some of these pattern of pattern crimes next slide please moving on to auto theft or motor vehicle theft I'm very happy to report we are trending down compared to 2022 27 so far and we are down from 20 20 about 14 average um our data what we're seeing from our regional cities is a lot of cities are still seeing a double-digit increase in motor vehicle theft unfortunately Colorado is still number one in the United States for car theft so for us to

[94:01] be trending in the way we are is is I think a tribute to the work that our officers are doing out there every day we can't pursue stolen cars and rightfully so it's a dangerous to do so so we've gotten smart by using data some Intel and also non-traditional tactics in making some arrests for people behind the wheel um couple more points on that on the next slide um we are uh seeing again looking at patterns and areas you can see right in the middle of the map um there's a lot of dots and what we've really been looking at is the green ones which is where stolen car is being recovered what that typically means to us if we're seeing a lot of stolen cars recovered in the spot there's a good chance an auto thief may live in that area so we've started looking where cars are being recovered and we've had a lot of good success in actually putting surveillance and other things out there where we can hopefully catch the prolific Auto thieves of Interest here um some of the things we're seeing since we've really started tracking this data and we had 11 Vehicles stolen in Boulder

[95:00] we recovered outside of Boulder and what we're seeing is we're recovering we recovered in the last month six vehicles coming into Boulder from Denver Aurora and other spots we're really trying to impact the thieves that are coming to Boulder specifically to Target our community and we have a 78 overall recovery rate for stolen cars this year to date it's always of Interest so we put it on there the top three stolen cars in the last month Honda Civic Subaru Legacy and six trailers which is interesting because a lot of times those those trailers are coming from construction sites and they have valuable construction equipment so that's another prevention thing we're working on with construction sites next slide uh so last of our pattern problem crimes is theft from motor vehicle um unfortunately we are training up and this is a few things it's a theft of license plates theft of catalytic converters and theft of any parts off a vehicle um it's not uh it's consistent with regional and National Trends on catalytic converter and other things we're working diligently to bring these

[96:00] down our numbers are still significantly lower uh per capita however we're not we're not happy with these results and we're focusing to make some changes here um what we have seen though of node and a lot of these are crimes that are preventable we're continuing to see people leave valuables in plain sight and vehicles where it's very easy for somebody to smash the window or even more so unlock a car or open a door on an unlocked car a couple times in the last week we've had Firearms stolen out of unlocked Vehicles someone's keeping a gun in a glove box so a big piece of this is Community Education as well we're continuing our social media push about locking cars when you go into the gym don't leave your briefcase sitting on the seat in plain view um thieves will still find ways to get in your car however sometimes we're seeing it where they people are making it easy for them to find a Target so a big a big education piece on those next slide so we did it we have had 36 deaths per motor vehicle last month and we had three distinct clusters um a couple of them like if you're looking at 10th and University

[97:01] um what we're seeing and we've had some some education with CU and new students that might be leaving a place to come to college here that um they're used to being able to leave things in their car where it's not getting stolen so education there as well and then we're seeing things debit cards clothing Sports tools and electronics and I mentioned this every time we present mentioned it last time with bicycles folks do not are not diligent about keeping serial numbers on things as you sit here if your iPad was stolen out of your car would you have the serial number a lot of the times the answer is no we recommend people take a picture of it save that and if your item is stolen then we can enter it in the the National Crime computer as a stolen item it makes it a lot easier for when we contact somebody with items that we can confirm they're stolen so a few things on there one thing we're going to look at and we are looking at RTD is very uh has been creative with this it's a report card they actually will go to their parking lots and facilities and and look at your car they're not entering your car do anything like that but they're looking to see is there anything in plain view are there things is your car unlocked

[98:01] and they will actually leave this on your vehicle saying hey you passed our random inspection and so we're exploring doing something similar kind of just to say hey the good guys were here to do this luckily you know it wasn't somebody intended to do you harm but you may think about removing these items next slide one more thing on here just catalytic converters we've had 18 in the last month we're still seeing the same sorts of vehicles targeted Priuses pickup trucks Toyotas especially and some Honda products one of the things we're doing differently is we're working with the Department of Motor Vehicle and we're figuring out some ways where we can do community outreach to people who have the vehicles that may be likely targets to have catalytic converter stolen they're hard to track at least in the last month as you see on the on the screen there's no discernible patterns however a lot of them are off main roads people may come into town get off the highway and it's usually overnight hours so we encourage people when they hear things at night sawing noises anybody suspicious please call us we'll get out

[99:00] there quick next slide please the last thing on catalytic converters I'm happy to report we had just started this last presentation in the last quarter we have handed out 550 catalytic converter etching kits people have come into the police department Mitch Trujillo officer Trujillo provides them with the kit and when they come in and they drive one of the top stolen vehicles we're also providing them with the steering wheel club or anti-theft device that we've been able to to give them so continuing on that as well next slide we're almost done uh obviously we want to highlight a few significant incidents because while we're doing all this work to try to prevent crime and and determine who's committing crime we're continuing to respond daily to significant events we've had quite a few in the last quarter but I'm going to highlight just a few just so you can see some of the work that we're doing next slide please um this case you may have seen it made international news it read something almost out of a a movie and it came early to our attention we had a a truck

[100:00] that was parked at a motel with high-end art most of the art had already been purchased and was on the way to the owner and someone was able to break into that truck and stole 400 000 worth of art we were able to make an arrest in this on this case very quickly within a week and that was because of a relationship that one of our Patrol officers had fostered with a Community member that happened to be in Lakewood in a motel room where this thief had the art guns and drugs this uh this man had seen our story and called the officer just a patrol officer and said hey you may want to let your people know I just saw your stolen art in the motel room in Lakewood our detectives wrote a search warrant and with assistance of Lakewood PD we made contact they had stolen handguns an AR-15 assault rifle 1700 fentanyl pills a lot of meth and as you can see I'm not going to read them all multiple felony charges on these individuals so it started with art and we were able to get a lot of guns and some drugs off the streets so that was a great case next please this stabbing was you probably heard about it made some significant news we had a shoplifter at Barnes and Noble you

[101:02] know just a low-level crime which confronted by an employee uh he stabbed the employee thankfully the employee did survive and uh the suspect we were on scene within a minute of the call and within under 30 minutes we located the suspect nearby at an encampment and we were able to charge him with first degree assault which is the most serious form of assault there so that was a swift resolution and we're happy that the manager is okay next slide so we had last month two very uh concerning incidents in a week as you all are well aware um I wanted to just give a couple updates so uh on the Monday morning Millennium Hotel two officers one from us and one from cupd we're driving in the area of 28th and Arapahoe her gunshots our officers quickly flooded the area and there was a man that was firing rounds out of a fourth floor uh motel room actively shooting that obviously triggered our response with SWAT all on duty personnel and we were quickly able to isolate and contain this person in the room uh we were able to

[102:00] determine that he was alone which was good and then when he tried to escape the hotel our officers were able to immediately confront him uh he had two handguns on his person this could have ended very very differently if not for the Restraint of our officers he also had methamphetamine we found a vehicle in the parking lot that was shot up 19 times we're never able to determine why there was no association with that vehicle this guy had come to Boulder from the Denver metro area and had an extensive criminal history so we were very happy to be able to get some serious felony charges on him it was a we were very lucky no one was hurt in that incident next slide uh the same week two days later uh early morning in a snowstorm our call came into dispatch and the subject on the call said I'm at Boulder high school I'm in the parking lot I have an AR-15 and I'm gonna head inside and start shooting people uh he then it turns out it was recording but we the dispatcher heard automatic gunfire on the line obviously this everybody from the chief on down we rushed to the scene and treated this like the real thing we were able to determine relatively quickly we um that

[103:01] our officers were in the school under three minutes with contact team's form ready to go find this thread and neutralize him if he was indeed shooting in the school we were fairly quickly able to realize all right um this probably is unfounded but we went through all the Motions he mentioned explosives so we made sure it was safe to turn the school back over to bvsd that was one of many calls that day ours unfortunately was one of the first in the metro area and so this person we believe may have been overseas the FBI is investigating that case one thing here that came out of this incident thankfully it was not a real incident and it actually was a great real-life exercise for us tested some things with bvsd security we've since done some tabletops to make sure our next response is even better and so that was a good outcome next slide uh this was uh you know fortunately for Boulder we don't have a lot of shootings um this shooting did happen a couple months ago our officers were called to The Atrium building about 10 o'clock at night for a person shot our officers arrived and found a person that was uh

[104:00] shot in the leg our officers immediately put a tourniquet on the person and uh because of the leg injury and the propensity for a serious arterial wound they put the subject in a patrol car and drove them lights and siren to the hospital they were at the hospital within two minutes and the person was rushed into surgery uh expected to make a full recovery which is fantastic initially we had some challenges with this investigation I can't get into a lot of them it's still uh early on happy though to report due to some top-notch detective work in the last two days I believe we've gotten much closer to making an arrest in this case we have a suspect identified we have some other things that we're working on I can't share but uh we will hopefully share with you in the very near future that we've been able to arrest the suspect in that shooting next slide as we did last time we talk about a lot of heavy things and all of the some of the bad things we have experienced and so in the last quarter I wanted to just highlight four quick things that we've done in the community that have had great results upper left slide I will point out Chief Harold in a Wonder Woman

[105:00] costume that uh is the the lake at Boulder I know council member Benjamin can attest how cold it was they chipped the ice off the lake and we did Polar Plunge for Special Olympics that morning this is the third event in the last year we've done with Special Olympics we raised six thousand dollars or 5900 we were the top law enforcement fundraising team it was actually a really fun morning after we got out of the cold water um can I say one thing I suppose councilman council member Benjamin is really wicked fast in the water I was not and I almost froze to death so just wanted to point that out all right I'll leave that alone um the upper right corner uh I want to just share with you we had a very successful mass casualty exercise um we worked with a a vacant building here in town in partnership with the fire department and we staged a mock a terrorist attack including uh with some explosives to set it off we used real Patrol officers real uh firefighters and put them in the scenario it allowed our

[106:01] commanders to utilize instant command we use actors with mulage and fake injuries to really ramp up the seriousness and realistic nature of the exercise and we it was great it really uh exposed some things we need to work on but also really put our our responders in that situation of a realistic event so when the real thing happens um they're better prepared so that was great the lower left corner I know we've had questions in the past couple Council meetings that we've been at just about officer Wellness officer safety and what we're doing to support our Personnel who are out there every day dealing with bad things we have hired a part-time employee support coordinator and what she is doing is starting to do things for our department and specifically our families and so we had our first family night two weeks ago and we had several speakers on employee mental and physical wellness employees were able to bring their kids and our Cadets babysat them they watched a movie while we were able to talk about some of the challenging things in our profession we wanted to get our families in there and we're going to continue to do these things

[107:00] we're going to do fun events things for kids but to really continue to Foster the family environment it's been a scary few years for our families on everything that's gone on and we really want to to help if our officers are better mentally at home and better relationally at home that's going to directly reflect on their work so we're excited to see what's going to happen there lastly last weekend you'll see the little the young man DJ Daniel he came here from Houston it's sad because he's terminally ill with cancer when he was in a shelter after a hurricane he had a very positive experience with some police officers in Texas and when he was diagnosed in 2018 with incurable cancer he decided because of that impact he wanted to go get sworn in as many police departments as he could as a cop uh working with some Regional Partners um I was at Aurora there and I swore him in as an honorary Boulder police officer and he came up and got to see all of our SWAT equipment he was cop for a day here in Boulder and we were the 764th

[108:00] department to square him in it's he's an incredible young man incredibly inspiring in his fight um continues and we wish him the best of luck last slide next slide please Council you may have seen we've started sending you a snapshot of some of the positive appreciation we're getting from the community we don't often hear about these stories and so I just want to share since January to March we received 40 citizen letters of appreciation via email and other things I'm not going to read all of them we've highlighted some of those positive interactions which we really need to continue to do March was women's history month and I it was an opportunity for us to celebrate that we have 20 percent of our officers our female officers and 16 percent of our leadership are female national average is 12 percent female for officers and three percent for leadership and so we're part of the 30 by 30 initiative to have 30 percent of our staff be female by 2030 we're well above the national average and also really cool and we're sharing this it wasn't in the update we

[109:01] sent you earlier this year we had our first ever female Squad operator she passed every test every uh very challenging criteria and she is now on the team and we're very excited we celebrated that in March as well that's it um I'm glad I'm not paid by the word that was a lot I appreciate your attention um we'll take time for questions and then if you can go one slide further I just want to remind everyone on the lower left corner is our crime dashboard it's incredible it's interactive and you can go on there and find crimes specific to your area and track Trends and find info so thank you for your time thanks so much for that deputy chief Redford that was an extraordinary amount of information presented extremely well appreciate that and thanks Chief Harold as well for being here tonight free words and I'll just offer a little bit of extra thank you you know some of those incidents that you mentioned the significant incidents have been very concerning for the community a lot create a lot of stress and fear in folks but the department handled them as best

[110:00] as they could have been handled and so just very grateful for how well you've done that and laid the fears in the community the best that possibly could be done I'm going to call it one more significant incident because a couple weeks ago there was one just a block from my house about an individual that holed up um that broke into a house and then hold up there for a number of hours and it took a while but you all were able to get him out without any injuries to him or to anyone else in the neighborhood and really appreciate the amazing work there as well and with that I'll turn to council members for questions I got Jenny thank you so much uh mayor Brackett and deputy chief Redfern and chief Mary's this was a really good presentation I enjoy hearing about some of the progresses that you've made on the different crimes in the community and also the fact you as well in communities so thank you for sharing that with us I just have well my first question is not a real question because you mentioned three things that when

[111:02] you're looking at different situations or crimes or problems you're trying to solve you said is it effective is it Equitable there was a third word and I was thinking I didn't catch it well it's the threes that I really care about and is it equitable um is it ethical and is it effective you can add a fourth e for the taxpayers that are listening is it efficient yeah thank you for that this is great I wrote it down for myself that's great I did have two other questions you mentioned the Circle K and I know you've mentioned a few times how it's it's a problem in our community that you are trying to resolve and I'm wondering do they have their own security and and if not how come you are the one who's trying because I know sometimes these businesses do have their own security so I'm trying to figure out why

[112:01] is it you know you're trying to resolve that problem in this is at the Crux of what we're trying to do because I don't want to actively manage the Circle K the police department or other City resources it's not just the police department it's a fire department it's all it's all kinds of City departments um that are going there almost daily and so I don't want to be in the business of managing the Circle K and they have resources to do this a lot of times at these problem locations they are not actively managing their properties and then were put under extreme pressure to help them but at some point to your to your question we have to turn over the reins to them and they have to actively manage their properties and we give them suggestions we help them but at the end of the day there will come a time where if we're not satisfied with

[113:01] the management practices then we'll have to leverage the city legal team and possibly the county team to help us ensure that they're actively managing this because it is a tremendous amount of resources for the police department to go there almost on a daily basis and so right now I'm happy that they're going in the right direction they've taken really good steps but what I what I have seen in the last several months is they'll make tremendous amount of progress they'll slide back they'll make tremendous and so at some point you got to call it this is now your problem and if you can't correct it then we have to leverage other City resources to ensure they do that does that answer your question yes thank you for that I appreciate it I do have one other question and I want to also note that acknowledge that I appreciate knowing about the Table Mesa park and ride and the work that you're doing there with the signage and also the

[114:02] cameras thank you for that you mentioned you do random vehicle checks and I was wondering what do you mean by that so great question councilmember um so we RTD is doing that right now and they're doing it at their facilities and we're thinking about adopting a similar process and really all it would require is an officer to go we're gonna go through a parking lot we're going to look at your vehicle and oh you know you have something laying in plain view and we're going to note that on this paper and say not a good idea you know that kind of thing um or you know just kind of kind of do a check and say yeah your car looks great there's nothing in plain view if I were a thief there's nothing about this that is attractive to me just to kind of help them think about it because a lot of people you know you don't think about it because Boulder is is safe and and it's people aren't victimized for the most part which is great but it's just kind of another layer to help people think about how to not be victimized thank you very much and thank you mayor Brackett if I could add just one thing because it is an

[115:00] important project it's called the report card from Cincinnati but the cool thing about it is you can measure it so you do it for a short period of time and these uh clusters that Steve talked about there's three that we're looking at right now so you send crime prevention officers out they do a quick report card they put it on your car we can number those report report cards and we can actually determine did the report cards impact the thefts from the Autos so I love it because it's evidence-based it works and it actually is a Community Education tool and I feel like it's part of the problem solving process as well does that help thank you thanks Tara I had just one question and a few hoorays that I'm so happy that we saw some changes number one is my only question has to do with the nest is that a problem area or are they doing better

[116:02] um how's it going over there rural you know it's our affordable housing and we want to make sure that the people feel safe that live there I could ask Dr Reinhardt I don't know if he's looked at the nest specifically um but I think the best answer is I haven't looked at the nest data and can I get back with you on the correct calls for service and crime at that location I want you to know that we do meet with the management team there and they they in my opinion they're actively managing those properties so I would love the opportunity to get back with you with the correct data and calls for service unless doctor you have that my name is Dr Reinhard I'm the chief data analyst with Boulder Police Department the only thing I would add Chief Herald is that in the last couple of months there was one successful arrest of a repeat offender at the nest but aside from that

[117:01] um yeah I would say we could do some research and dig into it a little bit more good deal well that sounds like good news if nothing comes to your mind um I wanted to tell you how excited I am um about well Juni said some of the things that we were very happy about but I would say that Depot square that is doing better is great news and um lastly I want to comment oh two more things I if you remember David farted I don't know if everybody remembers he asked for the police uh for some police officers to come and have coffee there and I'm so glad that that happened uh that was his request and so yay um and lastly I want to talk about the Millennium Hotel I'm really really glad that it wasn't that crime was not coming from transitional housing because that transitional housing is such an important part of our housing strategy but also so many a lot of people live

[118:01] there really depend on that place right now for living uh to live and so it's great new I mean it's not great news that we have crime there but it is great news that it wasn't transitional housing that was the issue so that's great that's it thanks Sarah anything else about thank you foreign citations are are down and I don't know if that means there's fewer crimes in those categories or if um or there's been a conscious decision by the police department to not cite people in certain instances I'd love your view on that and and she specifically mentioned um propane tanks and I realized that obviously if a person's not with the tank there's no ability to site but but um I know that city manager and Joe tariuchi uh reported there was 352 confiscations over about a 12 or 13 month period so I imagine a few of them involved people that were kind of you know in possession over near their tanks but it sounds like there's been a few

[119:01] citations on that so I'm just wondering as a matter of policy is the police department um issuing fewer citations for some of those crimes relating to Camping to possession of tens possession of propane tanks or is is there a reduction in incidents great question um I can tell you um next week we'll have robust stats and all of this but I can tell you over the last three years our officers have written and this would be a low estimate um over a thousand citations for illegal camping and Tents propane tanks are challenging because people abandon them and so as soon as we walk up the people say they're not ours and we we confiscate them I would say that we've probably confiscated literally by this point close to 500 tanks um we take it seriously when we see them

[120:01] we grab them obviously if the tank is in the tent then that requires another legal hurdle for us so we'd have to get a search warrant if people don't voluntarily give us the the propane tanks I can tell you that if we have had a reduction in the last couple years it's due to Staffing at times we've been down 20 percent and obviously that takes a toll on police officers discretionary time to write citations but it isn't a policy decision at my level in fact I'm pretty hard on the on the police officers that in their discretionary time I want them out be an active writing citations because some of the behavior that we see is is very concerning especially as it relates to community members so and I'll have much more information about crime that we see in the encampments next week but if there is a slight

[121:00] reduction it's slight and I know the officers are out writing a lot of citations and they haven't since I've been here thanks Chief and yeah if you could weave that into your presentation with Kurt and others next week just so we have some some some data that would be really great absolutely thanks so uh yeah Matt then Mark appreciate the presentation and I would say hopefully we can measure our crime by how few words uh officer Redford has to present to us and that'll be our our barometer um I will say it was a pleasure doing the the Polar Plunge with you guys I will say that um this Buffalo couldn't let a ram out swim uh him so that's maybe why I was a bit emboldened um but but it was it was actually a genuine honor and I had a lot of fun uh my my question was sort of a little bit of piggyback around Bob and I was just sort of thing Upstream of obviously the citations of the tanks at the tents but I'm wondering you know 300 some odd tanks they're coming from somewhere and so my question is are these purchased

[122:01] are these stolen tanks and so I'm just wondering if we work upstream and and as a chief you mentioned you'll talk about that in the 13th so maybe that's just a primer for there um but that's just that's where my head goes is where we we're there where how are we acquiring um those tanks and from where and and what those situations involve yeah we'll definitely include that but I can tell you um because I hear it every day when I walk into any business we have a tremendous amount of food trucks in the city and um we have people cutting the tanks off the food trucks even if they're in sophisticated cages even when people are cooking we've had tons of those instances if you look at the convenience stores across Boulder tanks are being kept out in cages I have video of people that have sophisticated wagons that they're pulling down the street that they steal from convenience stores when

[123:01] they're closed so you know 10 15 20 tanks at a time and then there are people that are giving tanks out in our community and and that's problematic as well so theft is a big portion of it and then we have community members giving actually small propane tanks out that we find constantly when we do the encampment cleanups so I can get more information on that specifically but that is that is another crime prevention area that we we need to pay attention to um you know and unfortunately I was at a full cycle the other day and the uh the owner of the bagel food truck came out and she said I you know I continually have my propane tank stolen off my truck and they're they're not they're they're expensive right to to cook all that food so we're working on

[124:01] some crime prevention tips around that as well I hope that's helpful it is it is I appreciate that my other question Senator is kind of around Staffing um I sort of reflect on my ride-along with Sergeant Marquez and that night um from one of our whole staff it was at minimum Staffing levels that night um and I didn't know what that meant and so once we were out and about I recognized how quickly that puts the city at pretty at an anemic level in response and certainly as we're dealing with some of the issues that are present I was just kind of curious I know that we went on a call there were four officers that responded that left four to cover the rest of the city in that moment and I I understood geographically and efficiently wise that that became problematic so my question is I know we just hired a brand class of officers and I'm curious What's the timing in terms of how they're getting phased in and and up and running and and you know out and about out in the field and how how is Staffing and is it headed in the right trajectory so we're not at those minimums or or where are we at

[125:03] Washington and uh we we definitely appreciate those of you that come out and done some ride-alongs lately our officers it makes it they know us they notice and it makes a difference so thank you um so with Staffing we did recently hire 20 basic officers which means we hired them and now they're in the police academy and so uh they'll be out back in our uh house within about four months uh then they'll start field training um so that's another three plus months so realistically it will be a little bit before we are where we want to be Staffing wise um we have a few impending departures people leaving for other things and so that's always the battle is attrition but um we have hired in the last uh two weeks we've hired two uh previously certified police officers one from Northglenn and one from out of state and both of those officers have challenged the post-test and are getting certified uh the Northland officer is already certified and so they'll be out on the street much sooner and so um it's it's it's getting better and and we still have you know units that

[126:01] initially we had to pull officers from the patrol that are not fully staffed so um our hope our big hope is that we can Stave off some of the attrition for long enough to get some of our newer officers there if we can keep all of those 20 plus officers and we can Stave off attrition I think we'll be in a really good place to come late summer early fall and we can start not only getting Patrol fully staff but potentially backfilling some of the special units adding some more detectives so um please uh you know anything you can do to to send us anybody that would be a good police officer we'll take them mark um first thank you for that presentation it was uh very very thorough and substantive really appreciate it um I assume the problem areas you Illustrated in that presentation are not exclusive of other areas that that may not rise to that level but still cause a little bit of problem would that be the case yes

[127:00] okay because I was going to ask um I've gotten a bunch of letters um uh with respect to say attention homes and uh I don't know whether that's actually a problem or not or um but I've been giving a bit of feedback on it and I was wondering how they were doing um in terms of uh calls for service uh thanks for that question and um 1440 Pine uh I think they're now called together um they are on our radar and have been for quite some time and actually we have not deemed it an official problem-solving project but it is a problem-solving project for us um Steve has assigned a captain and an officer to work uh with together on some of their management practices and I have met with their staff we have an ongoing meeting monthly and the good news is their calls for

[128:00] service are trending downward Dr Reinhardt provides them with um weekly data that's given to them automatically he's automated the process where they get data on all their properties not just 1440 Pine but they have a couple other properties as well and so we continue to work on their management practices they've been very cooperative and we do have an officer that goes to 1440 Pine on a regular basis and talks to the members of their community and tries to prevent the calls for service that we're seeing but I I can tell you that it is problematic for the community and will probably Elevate their status next time to one of the projects that we talk about so you have a good understanding of of what's happening

[129:00] there and I think it would be good for the community to hear as well thank you very much appreciate it thanks Mark Lauren thank you um one of the things that I recently been noticing in the national news is an uptick and reckless driving and sort of associated incidents and I know that we're going to talk about our vision zero plan later but I was just wondering um what data we have around that in the city and what trends we've been seeing and if that's not easily available right now I'd be happy to take my answer as an email later no I think it's an excellent question and I think you're absolutely right and I think that fatalities I just watched the presentation um at the state level of how many people are being killed on expressways and state highways in Colorado and it's really alarming and there's probably several reasons for that but we most certainly can provide you with really

[130:00] good data on our what we're seeing and some of the reasons that we think that we are seeing upticks with auto accidents and other pedestrian vehicular accidents as well and it is I do find it very problematic and again a lot of the traffic you really need to pay attention to it several different ways right other City departments traffic calming traffic enforcement traffic visibility by the police department and so I'd love to give you some key points that we're seeing in our data and Dr Reinhardt would be glad to get you those mm-hmm and I believe that's it so thanks again so much thanks mayor appreciate it yep thanks for all the information all the phenomenal work the department does each and every day thanks I'll appreciate that a lot very good well that that brings us to the end of our initial

[131:01] items and I'm very grateful to the open comment speakers for your patience uh we're now going to get to open comment uh item two on our agenda and I'll just mention that speaker number two Jan Burton is going to be virtual so we'll be at the end of the list number four Robert smoke has withdrawn and number seven Patrick O'Rourke has withdrawn and then we have added an in-person speaker Catherine Barth is the last in-person speaker so with that I'll turn it over to Brenda to do our code of contact conduct thank you so much and I appreciate Lisa sharing those slides for me especially since my computer is acting up so I also apologize for any glitches there may be in tonight's process so so we love to start each public comment Portion by reminding those of you who are participating tonight as

[132:02] well as everyone else in attendance and participating that we have engaged with community members to co-create a vision for Meaningful and inclusive Civic conversation and this Vision really was designed to support the physical and emotional safety for community members staff and council members and also supports democracy for people of all ages all identities lived experience and political perspectives for more information about this vision and the community engagement process please visit bouldercolorado.gov Services productive atmospheres or you can just search productive atmospheres in our search bar next slide please and the following are examples I'm just gonna make this a little bigger for myself so I appreciate your patience channel 8. the following are examples of rules of

[133:01] decorum found in the boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this vision and these will be upheld during tonight's meeting all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business or here in open comments um whatever you come to share with us that relates to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they're commonly known by and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online thanks to those of you who've helped me do that for you tonight currently only audio testimony is permitted online in-person participants are asked to refrain from expressing support or disagreement verbally or with Applause with the exception of our declarations as we did earlier this evening

[134:00] traditionally support can be shown silently through American Sign Language Applause or jazz hands and with that I think we are ready to move into open comments our first three speakers are Trish Emser Evan ravitz and Michelle Rodriguez come on down you get two minutes thank you my name is Trish Emser and I'm here to speak tonight about the safety of Boulder Creek I'd like to start with a recent account from a local Boulder Erp physician who's been in that business for more than 20 years and I quote I've seen many patients in the ER who have been injured or sickened after swimming in the Boulder Creek in recent years everything from GI issues to skin ailments I treated a young boy who had stepped on a needle while playing in the creek he required post-exposure treatment which made him quite ill and he experienced months of anxiety waiting

[135:01] to see if he contracted HIV end of quote please refer to the PowerPoint that you'll see over here this is from the keep it clean partnership data and what it represents is the increasing levels of E coli annually from 2014 through 2019 you'll see the trend line there for recreational use since 2015 E coli levels in Recreation season have exceeded the threshold of safety with numbers trending up yearly when the last publicized water quality measures at the cu testing site were provided the fall of 2019 E coli averaged two to three times the safe threshold of 126 cfus out of 100 milliliters there are four signs posted um fairly far apart and they're not really adequate to warning the danger within the creek with the E coli with some are fast approaching our children and loved ones will be waiting tubing and swimming in the creek very soon

[136:02] in July of 2020 the city reported to the wra-b that quote E coli concentrations consistently show increases especially between Evan G Fine park and 13th Street is also a popular location for recreators in Boulder Creek thus better understanding E coli contributions may help further the city's goal of protecting Rec creators end of quote since that report no information has been provided to the public please if you could immediately release the water quality findings thank you okay thank you now we have Evan ravitz then Michelle Rodriguez and Darren o'car foreign God bless the ACLU by taking the city to court they made you finally tell the truth that there often are not enough shelter beds for the homeless in deadly weather at least three local media debunked the sly years ago but the city

[137:00] soldiered on because its culture is deception and manipulation masquerading as engagement another official lie was that a legal Campground would cost more than hotel rooms only the lawsuit has gotten you to talk seriously of legal campgrounds next Thursday there were many city lies that led to butchering the details of our first in the country online petitioning system which I have documented at tinyearl.com petition story they resulted in the city spending over half a million dollars and counting on inferior software and rejecting on false pretenses a free offer of exactly what we needed and spending more to find a new city manager new city I.T director and new city I attorney to replace the previous

[138:02] Liars there are eight billion people on the planet who want real government by the people thousands are being tortured to death as we speak for working for democracy and you some of the most privileged people on the planet think it's a game to obstruct it you kiss up to the 800 pound gorillas who control You by subverting democracy anyone abused by the city should sue if only to get the truth I regret that I didn't back in the 80s when the city's Mall commission was shutting down our shows with no authority to do so may the lawsuits fall like rain on this truth desert thank you Evan now we have Michelle Rodriguez Darren O'Connor and Travis Hugh Cully hi guys Michelle Rodriguez um I wanted to say that today at two o'clock after two years and eight months

[139:02] in several federal court with my lawsuit Rodriguez versus Lola Thai my unrepresented self and underrepresented itself have my case dismissed based on your senior city attorney's words that Miss Rivera wasn't she wasn't convinced and that there were no terms to be negotiated on and your name was used personally um I'd like to say that there's an officer here present today that per your former city um attorneys words and responding to the motion of summary judgment to have my case dismissed he said it was non-named defendant officers and paramedics that were guilty of the my incident and of having me chemically sedated and he said in fact there was one officer Mr Sterling eco who spoke up in her behalf

[140:01] and said that it was wrong of what he was doing Mr Officer Eco back here and this is the first time we've gotten to see him since then I want him to know that he should be honored at the highest level and chief Maris Harold should feel privileged to have you it's an honor that you were one of nine male officers there that spoke up you can be seen and heard on video and I want to thank you for having the integrity speak my behalf despite all your fellow officers there 30 of them dropped the roll the week I filed my civil lawsuit I still have the right to I guess um hope that somebody will operate with Integrity but this man right here deserves to be honored thank you Chief Harrell for hanging around to hear this and these were words that came out of the former Tom Carr mouth right before he resigned

[141:01] but thank you guys Darren O'Connor Travis Hugh Cully and Jennifer Rhodes hi I'm Darren O'Connor I'm here speaking on behalf of the NAACP Boulder County Branch tonight about a year ago roughly 25 of us were here speaking out unanimously against Boulder signing and mou with the FBI joint terrorism task force Chief Herald claimed then that the FBI was necessary to protect Boulder from White's premises even as our black and other at-risk community members said thanks but no thanks we remember recent history when around 2010 the jttf made spy files on racial and housing Justice advocates in Denver and were caught by the ACLU of Colorado in less than a year since signing the mou the local FBI jttf has been caught doing exactly what we warned of and worse in Aurora at protests over the

[142:02] brutal police murder of Elijah McLean they tried to entrap Black Advocates and a plot to murder our attorney general breaking national articles have discovered that a man named windecker with a significant criminal history including a sexual relationship with a 14 year old girl was used by the FBI as an informant for this work in Aurora in Colorado Spring the FBI's targeting resulted in the arrest of a colorado-based staffer for Democratic U.S senator Michael Bennett as well as racial Justice and housing Advocates with the non-profit Chinook in less than a year the FBI has shown our warnings were warranted and your promises of their good behavior were empty even now mayor Brockett shares that the addendum to the mou prevents the FBI from breaking local police policy as if that will stop them the mousse has no such thing the addendum paragraph 4 requires only our Boulder officer to follow BPD administrative procedures but if the

[143:01] procedures conflict with the FBI policies that officer shall follow FBI policies you have invited the police state into Boulder with this agreement and the nou with the FBI jttf end it now end it now end it now thanks Darren now we have Travis Hugh Cully Jennifer Rhodes and Terry brinjick good evening Council it's a pleasure to be here um Miss Winer I um I hear that you're not well I'm very sorry to hear that you're under the weather I wish you a speedy recovery my concern is an environmental one I hate to pop the bubble however if we can throw a stone and hit a doctor in Boulder it's because someone probably should be testing those stones we need to sample and Sample and Sample the region around Rocky Flats because it endangers us in terms of future fires

[144:00] um Miss weiner I wanted to remind you and hope that in the April 3rd meeting which you are at you were able to see yourself some of the insolence of the rocky fat Stewardship Council in terms of their approach to public engagement they went ahead after pretending to hear us presenting uh architectural drawings about um entry into the wildlife refuge and I think it's important that we restrict that as the crow flies the Marshall fire took place one branch outside of the Crow's Nest the Crow's Nest being the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge two fires took place there may a September 11th of 57 May 11th of 69 and the third fire was December 30th 2021. I hope Miss Winer you will join Broomfield Arvada and Boulder County in

[145:00] developing an air monitor system directed to capture hazardous radionuclides from Rocky Flats you are the only hope we have as the rocky flat Stewardship Council clearly is not interested in executing any effort for our safety the executive director has given these three cities the room to draft a radiological emergency response plan I think it would be wise to support this conversation thank you very much thank you Travis now we have Jennifer Rhodes Terry branchich and Abigail damaraki hi in Boulder we have a city a school and school leadership that will not support a school safe Zone we have two council members who originally voted against the propane tank Ban two years later several propane tanks exploded near schools with near misses we have a VP of bvsd who on the same day of those tank explosions tweeted that moving people in their illegal propane tanks away from schools is unethical

[146:01] we have a Sharps container for fentanyl needles placed adjacent to a high school we have a council member who unethically and under false pretense is testified at the state level claiming she represents the voice of Boulder in favor of safe injection sites there's an active complaint against filed against her we've a municipal court judge who does not believe in consequences even if a person has a hundred camping tickets near a school we have a town court where it was recommended to me that I should teach my daughters to protect themselves because judge cook won't consider enhanced penalties even for multiple offenses committed around schools we have a city where there are numerous reports of sexual assault and harassment kids being lunged at and encouraged to take drugs all near a school weave E coli and infected in an infected Creek from public defecation we have biased journalists who report on these issues and twist and misrepresent the truth so much so that we people are afraid to speak out yesterday it was reported that quote earlier this year the 72-hour rule was lifted no that was two weeks ago after the tank explosions and the city decided to follow their own ordinance we have council members so afraid of

[147:01] lawsuits that the policies have been wavering and unclear at best despite the 21 ordinance that was instated to protect the public propane tanks have remained hidden intense and in plain sight photographed and reported by us and the city to the city for 10 days prior to those same tank explosions we should be compassionate and help those experiencing homelessness and we should protect our kids and provide a safe environment for them the city has the capacity to help both vulnerable populations those experiencing homelessness and our children permitting people to erect tents again and again where they are using drugs overdosing and hiding tanks that then explode that is not compassionate We are failing at providing a safe environment for both vulnerable populations and we have had enough thank you Jennifer now we have Terry branchich Abigail domaraki and Catherine Garth yeah hi my name is Terry burnidge I'm speaking on behalf of the safe zones for kids initiative I want to address several statements that have been made by City officials and other community organizations in response to our

[148:00] proposed ballot initiative first I want to talk about propane tank removal policies in 2021 the council passed an emergency ordinance to permit the immediate removal of tents and propane tanks in public spaces largely in response to the significant Public Safety and fire threat posed by the propane tanks the removal of tents was included in that ordinance because the council acknowledged that propane tanks were often stored inside tents where they were not immediately visible to law enforcement despite this ordinance the city has stated it will immediately remove visible propane tanks but not tents that might contain them propane tanks are a public safety threat whether they are in or out of a tent of the three tanks that exploded in March and the 352 that were confiscated last year can the city confidently say that 100 of these would have been removed under the visible tank policy if not then there is no rational justification for this wolf ignorant policy second several media reports suggested that removal of the 72-hour notice period May compromise the city's defense against the ACLU lawsuit

[149:00] but the ACLU lawsuit claims pertaining to prohibited items were dismissed in full so why are we still giving 72 hours notice for these items furthermore many of the individuals that are illegally using tents and propane tanks in public spaces have been cited repeatedly what possible legal argument can be made for continuing to provide warnings when someone is knowingly and repeatedly breaking the law finally in the materials provided for the upcoming study session it was noted that other cities provide 72-hour notice around schools I was on this call with the city of Portland what they actually said was that they provide notice except when there is an immediate threat to Public Safety it's hard to imagine a larger Public Safety threat than propane tanks exploding next to a school immediately following the tank explosions at BHS the city manager announced a special enforcement policy that allows for immediate clearance of tents on paths and signage in these areas this policy effectively mirrors what the safe zones initiative is asking for and is overdue but given the city's track record we want it codified through safe zones thanks thank you for your testimony

[150:02] Abigail dumreci next and then Catherine Barth I'm Aviator Meraki I'm a junior at Boulder High during my high school years I never thought that there would be so many issues around the safety of students the fact that Boulder High has had multiple threats shocks me within multiple lockdowns this school year and police on campus numerous times for safety issues it almost seems common now teachers have always told us that schools are a safe space but it isn't anymore kids should not be stressing out every Wednesday morning wondering if we're going to go on another lockdown I shouldn't have I shouldn't have to have the police telling me and my classmates to go back into school because there's an argument and a fight broke out in the homeless camp near the school's rope course it shouldn't be like that we should make sure that there aren't homeless encampments bordering our schools and paths my experience is that they harass and you yell at people walking by and could not have to deal with that on a daily basis just to get

[151:02] to school things need to change we need new laws to protect our students what happened to our rights what happened to schools being a safe haven our old school board is fighting against us having a safe space how is that okay our school implemented ID checks and that isn't working anyone can get into our school and they have there's no one there to enforce or check this we need actual laws that the people who are supposed to protect protect us aren't afraid to enforce we need a safe environment to attend outside Sports and classes and we need to feel safe walking to and from school not afraid of someone yelling at us we're approaching us we don't need needles and drugs present around us every day our own school board has failed to help ensure a safe space claiming it is against the rights of the vulnerable homeless what about our rights what about our vulnerability students are speaking out because we don't want to be labeled or criticized but let me be the first to tell you I don't feel safe in or around school and

[152:01] I won't unless you start to listen and finally do something about it thank you thanks Abigail and appreciate you coming out we don't get many high school students given testimony soon thanks for joining us tonight Catherine barthus our last in-person speaker then we'll go to online my name is Catherine Barth I haven't been here for a while it's nice to see you all again I'm a preservation architect and um I have worked for 10 years with the boulder duchampeety house doing first to study with Laura Ramsey and then doing some sampling and looking at some issues with color and paints and all this and that and I'm very thrilled that we're having starting our celebration of 25 years of the tea house being part of our

[153:02] community and the I mean maybe hundreds of hours that I've spent there studying it and photographing it and and grabbing a chai um so while I'm will be um celebrating it um colleague of mine who I became quite close to Vern Cyril will not be at the celebrations and I was at the library and and realized that the Carnegie Library did not know that he passed away so I thought I should come here and speaking here perhaps it'll reach a somewhat larger audience and I'm hoping that at some point his enormous contribution to Boulder both the tea house and the 200 cartons of building he put together plus the library plus all of the work that he did at CU can be acknowledged and

[154:01] honored at some point so I thank you very much for your time thank you Catherine all right we have four online speakers the first three of whom are Lynn Siegel Carter Hilty and Dana Bove Catherine I didn't know Vern died but I'm so glad that I heard it from you that's so horrid um what I wanted to talk about today was um I'd like the city of Boulder to commemorate Dan Ellsberg Dan Ellsberg and lots of you young folks don't even know who Dan Ellsberg is but you should look him up he leaked the Pentagon papers he's turning 92 tomorrow he was born in 31 the same year as my mom in Chicago my mom also was born there and it's my birthday too tomorrow but I'm

[155:02] going to be 70. um so Dan basically single-handedly stopped the Vietnam War um he had an interesting situation happen the the National Security secretary that he worked under James McNaughton um spoke about how we could fashion the um Vietnam War so that it looks better to the public because a lot of uh you know people were getting killed that were from the United States and of course this the civilians in Vietnam and he suggested flooding the rice paddies so that the people would not be killed but would be starved and then you could throw money at them feed them and it would look better than them being killed and that was a strategy for the war um Dan is an amazing guy that should be commemorated

[156:01] um from the 24th and the 30th of this month there's an National effort in that and I hope that the city of Boulder does something about it um I wanted and this reflects on on the issue of the moratorium in 1969 the year my mother died from Marky Flats no doubt um from the 1957 fire um and I don't have a um timer up your time's up it just beeped yeah I just need um to have a timer up so that you know like so that I know I can you know we'll get back to you on that but thank you for your testimony and a very happy early birthday to you now we have Carter Hilty Dana Bove and Jan Burton hello my name is Carter Hilty and my family has been in Boulder for four generations my grandfather left Boulder after getting an art degree from CU and he returned in 1970. he purchased his

[157:02] first property in Boulder in Table Mesa in 1970 for seventy thousand dollars he later sold that home for six hundred and eighty thousand dollars and it isn't a secret that the overall cost of housing in Boulder has risen exponentially over the last few decades according to the apartment association of metro Denver has risen 88 in the last decade and according to rent analysis organization rents auditor Renton Boulder has risen 13 in the last year alone although Colorado's wage increases outpaced the US nationally according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the these increases fail to offset the impacts of rising costs of living the rental crisis and inflation the city of Boulder should support responsible rent control laws similar to the bill currently in front of a Colorado Senate are responsible they allow Boulder to manage its own rent control scheme accommodate the vast number of college students propping up older's economy and protect those college students from predatory rental practices by limiting rent increases landlords would still be able to rent to

[158:02] raise rent higher than the rate of inflation and as a short-term solution geared towards stabilizing the rental economy this Bill economy this bill is an excellent option otherwise I encourage thoughtful discussion of Alternatives including continuing to push for the construction of more affordable student housing and other affordable living communities similar to Boulder Junction thank you thank you Carter now we have Dana Bove and Jan Burton okay um thank you my name is Dana bovey I lead a 501 3C research organization is called Front Range Eagle studies the city of Boulder is privileged to have one pair of nesting bald eagles that nests on its Crown Jewel hcaa open space at white rocks this pair of eagles is one of 240 nesting pairs in the entire state bald eagles are still federally

[159:00] protected and the Colorado population is one of the smallest in the country due to our very dry climate white rocks Wetland restoration project was effectively under the radar to the public and was planned and initiated on February 6 and continues today due to its timing it's not only coincident with historic egg laying averaging near the end of February for this particular pair but also during Peak use of a nearby bald eagle communal ruse just like last year these nesting Eagles began active nesting activity about one half mile apart at two nest in the HCA nesting activity has been near evenly observed at both nests unfortunately one of the nests was right in the middle of heavy construction activity near the end of February when these Eagles typically lay eggs there were dozers and track backhoes no less than 100 to 150 meters

[160:00] from the eastern most active Nest even after our organization alerted all these entities osmp continued heavy construction activity still 150 to 200 meters from the Eastern active Nest power out Parks and Wildlife has written science-based guidelines that require no surface occupancy or potential disturbance less than 800 meters from a bald eagle nest during the time frame that includes egg laying this season the white rocks bald eagles have not laid eggs they are now about five weeks past their normal incubation or eggling time frame is up but appreciate your testimony and thanks for that our last speaker is uh Jan Burton good evening Council Jan Burton on behalf of create Boulder on the eve of Boulder Arts week I'm

[161:01] pleased to announce that the final report for the Arts Complex visioning Workshop will be available tomorrow on create Boulder's website we are grateful to those of you who joined dozens of other stakeholders to weigh in on the community's need and Readiness to build what many Colorado communities already enjoy a central arts and culture complex with performance spaces Galleries and Studios for local artists and arts organizations Our Guest panel of experts concluded that Boulder can support a new arts and culture complex but it may take as long as 10 to 15 years to bring to fruition however they identified more pressing needs for affordable work and Living Spaces including Studios rehearsal and class bases and smaller performance venues in the next few years and at a much

[162:00] lower cost than a new Arts Complex Boulder can provide more spaces for diverse Community uses by adapting existing underused or vacant buildings some of which are owned by the city in central Boulder it is worth noting that the dairy bimoka E-Town and Museum of Boulder are all successful examples of such adaptive reuse as your declaration stated tonight arts and culture enrich the lives of all who live visit or work in Boulder and are an economic Cornerstone of our city we encourage you and all who value the economic social and educational Vitality of Boulder to learn how we can all work together to fill critical gaps in our arts and culture ecosystem thank you thank you Jen well thanks to everyone who spoke to us

[163:00] tonight whether in person or virtually appreciate your involvement turn to City staff to see if there are any responses thank you mayor a couple things there there are a couple things today that I'll follow up on as we continue to move forward including the Wastewater testing and the reporting I know that our utilities team does a quite thorough and frequent job of testing as we move forward I also just want to appreciate um comments made about um camping and Tents and I know that we're going to have a much larger conversation about that next Thursday we certainly have and I hope you've seen we have tightened up some of our protocols we'll talk a little bit more in detail about that and always want to say that we're trying to balance um public safety concerns with supporting and trying to help our unsheltered community go into housing which we know is for many in our community the

[164:01] solution to homelessness as we move forward and it is it is not a simple issue it is hopefully not a binary issue as we continue to learn about this in community and we'll be talking a little bit more about that in detail next week thanks no comments for me thank you thanks Andrew from Council Rachel Gloria I got a couple things um I just wondered if there was a testimony that the FBI has bungled something in the last year um and and that maybe our mou would not inhibit what was bungled so wondering if we could get an update on that if not tonight then you know within the next few weeks I am happy to follow up I'll note that the addendum to the mou does say that if there is a conflict that are designated officer can remove themselves so as not to violate City policies as we move forward but um I don't know the details that were referred to but happy to have us look at

[165:02] that and if there is an update to provide that to council sir if I can just follow up so Mary can or shall my memory the addendum says that if there is a conflict with City policies then the boulder officer should not participate in in the violation of those policies it does say uh that although it depends um on which policy it is there are some conflicts that are are administrative in nature they're not about the nature of the work but they may be um and the chief's not here to explain it a little bit more but it's it's less about um whether it's it's less about things important things like the use of body cam footage for example or body worn cameras or things like that but it does say that um we will take a look at that and the officer um the officer is intended to remove themselves if there is something of substance of significance but do you mind getting this Clarity on that absolutely I'd appreciate figuring out those details and maybe like applying our mou to the

[166:04] facts that supposedly occurred in Denver because I'm not super familiar with that but I think that it would be helpful to know like does rmou ever that strictly cover that and maybe so we all have awareness of that situation as well it was certainly my understanding here we would not participate in any conflict with policies yes yeah and it's not just a Denver incident there's been a couple um like the Aurora incident as well which I believe there was a municipal police officer undercover working for the jttf doing things that I would see as not being in line with maybe maybe that we don't have explicit rules against but infiltrating organizations like the black lives matter movement um so I would be interested in knowing more about um you know is our officer participating in undercover work as part through the jttf

[167:03] happy to get back to Council on all of these questions as we learn more about what was specifically alleged in Denver did you have something else since I've since I brought it up I just wanted to make sure that Lauren's point was captured at Denver and others I guess that are relevant did you have something else to learn go ahead um also with the you mentioned brings forward some of the data around E coli and water testing um you know in conversations that I've had with our Wastewater and utilities staff there's been mentioned that sort of I think the community understanding of where E coli is coming from and their the city's scientific understanding of where or thoughts about where that might be coming from our difference so maybe that

[168:00] could also include some educational component to it and um I also just wanted to mention someone brought up the rent control bill hb23-1115 and I just wanted to say that the city did support that and I was able to testify on the city's behalf in support of that very good I got Nicole um yeah I really appreciated uh folks coming and talking to us tonight um one of the things I was wondering Maria you know our youth are just dealing with so much right now and what we're seeing is just skyrocketing rates of mental health issues suicidal ideation suicide attempts things like that and it just keeps kind of getting worse I'm wondering is there anything coming up in our agendas where we will hear about some of this I mean some of it I think it's tied to so many issues

[169:00] like we'll hear about family homelessness next week and some of that but is there anything coming up where we'll be able to do that if not I will be happy to email CAC see if we can get something about it I appreciate that council member there's a couple things that are intertwined I can't imagine that as we talk about homelessness next week that we won't be talking a little bit about mental health concerns that we're hearing and a proliferation of meth and Fentanyl in our community on the 27th as well of April we will be having staff enough present to talk about the impact specifically of what we're seeing of meth and Fentanyl and and how that impacts our city operations but that will actually be preceded by folks who actually know this best which are our partners in Boulder County Public Health and they'll be sharing some of that as well we have been having different conversations with our Belta County Partners just about mental health issues in general and I believe that's an area that perhaps we can bring to council to

[170:00] talk a little bit about soon I know the Boulder County has been working on research and reports and I believe they have put something out recently and if not it's soon to come out about some mental health behavioral health issues in community and it is something that I think would be of interest to our community as well so we'll be thinking about how to bring that more to the fore soon yeah thank you and in those conversations anything specifically around youth I I would be particularly interested and I believe they're just in the first semester of the school year I believe one of our high schools had three suicides thank you I'll open another uh I just wanted to call on what you brought up and just to add to what Nuri was saying um I'm expecting the next week or so to be able to provide an update to council about what we discussed at The Retreat about a potential um ballot measure and tax that would look at tobacco alcohol and cannabis perhaps to directly support mental

[171:00] health and drug addiction and so perhaps There's an opportunity to the timing may work but we're still waiting on on the Financial finance team but I just want to make sure that you know that that's down coming down the pipeline as well and then I just have one last thing to bring up we had a test of testimony from Dana bovey about the Eagles nesting and I just want to confirm I think I've seen some regular email correspondence with Mr bovey and just want to confirm that our open space department is looking into these issues around the equal nesting I do I know that they did they take that very seriously I know that they always look at those issues and we can certainly provide counsel with an update on that particular issue in the future appreciate that all right so that brings us to the end of open comment at the early hour of 8 50 PM thanks again to everybody who testified Emily if we can move to our consent agenda please have absolutely thank you mayor next on our agenda we have our consent agenda and

[172:00] that consists of items a through f questions or comments about the consented I'm going to have a question after we vote if you don't mind thanks somebody want to make a motion sure I moved to approve the consent agenda second motion and a second oh this is a roll call vote all in favor if we could get that roll call please absolutely we'll start the roll on tonight's consent agenda with council member friend yes Joseph yes spear yes mayor Pro tem wallet you're muted mark maybe that was intentional yes Winer yes yes mayor Brockett yes and council member folkerts yes

[173:01] the consent agenda items I through f are hereby approved unanimously great Bob you wanted to say something yeah it's kind of a question for Sandra um Sandra um the item that we just approved was on item 3F was with respect to a code of conduct complaint and I think this is I don't know the fifth or sixth one we've had this quarter uh and as as I recall and I think Aaron and I compared notes on this recently I think in the first seven years we served in Council we had maybe one so it seems like there's um a lot of these recently and I don't wanna comment on the merits of any of these because I know you've got special counsel looking at these but I guess a question for you is would there be bandwidth if this was the will of council would there be bandwidth in your department sometime in the next few months to take a look at our kind of conduct complaint protocols and make some recommendations and maybe the recommendations not to make a change I'm not implying or suggesting there should

[174:00] be a change but I just can't help but notice that there's been a lot of these recently and I don't know if that's a new trend and maybe something that Council might want your department to take a look at if that's what council wants to do yes thank you for the question uh councilmember Yates and uh if it's the will of council we can certainly look into it I think it will be challenging because obviously we won't we don't want to curtail the ability for folks to be able to issue valid complaints but we can look at other jurisdictions as well to see if maybe they're doing it differently or if there's perhaps a just some sort of filter a threshold point where we could make that determination so we can look into it if that's the will of counsel we just need your direction okay maybe what I'll do colleagues is I think we usually typically around the junish time frame maybe June or July have a work plan check in mid mid year check-in and so

[175:00] maybe that'd be a good time for us to kind of evaluate what our workload is I mean people want to do it sooner that's fine but check in on work plan and workload and and what the rest of the year is looking like I just wonder if this is something we should at least evaluate thanks for the point Bob I don't think we'd want to discuss the substance of that right now since it hasn't been brought up in advance but appreciate you raising the point and maybe you can make it a CAC request sure thanks a little further great I think that's it for that so um Emily if we could go to our next item for matter from the city manager please yes thank you so much mayor next is our Matters from city manager and on that we have item 6A which is a vision zero Action Plan update and I'm going to turn it right over to our interim director of transportation and Mobility as I see she won the Short Straw of standing at the podium instead of joining us at the diet I'm happy to stand at the podium good evening Council I'm Natalie Stiffler the interim

[176:00] director of transportation and Mobility um well they're getting the shuffle done I'll uh just quickly say I'm here with Devin Jocelyn our City's principal traffic engineer Charlie Alexander is joining him up there he's our consultant with fear and peers and Melanie Sloan from Transportation Mobility she's a principal planner she's also with us tonight she helped with the engagement on this project so I just wanted to highlight a couple things and then I'll hand it over to Devin um we're very excited to be here tonight to share an update on and present our draft division zero action plan this is an operational plan for us that guides our work plan so we're not seeking any action from you tonight only your informal support and any feedback you have on the direction we're headed with the plan and I think you'll also be pleased to hear about some of the key changes we've made to this update since our last action plan this update really focuses on taking a more proactive approach to how we address safety across our system and

[177:00] then secondly this update is also really timely in that It prepares us to consider grant opportunities with the 2021 Federal infrastructure law specifically the Safe Streets for all Grant opportunity that will be a significant opportunity for us to seek significant funding for our community and this plan tees us up well to be competitive for that so those are really the only two things I wanted to highlight and at this point I'll hand it over to Devin thanks thank you Natalie good evening members of council my name is Devin Joslin and as Natalie said I'm the city's principal traffic engineer since I last met with you in March 2022 to present the Safe Streets Boulder report I've been serving as the project manager on the vision zero action plan and very excited to be here tonight to present this updated plan to you as Natalie also said I'm joined up here tonight by Charlie Alexander our consultant team project manager from farron peers and he's here to help me answer your questions following the presentation before I begin I just want to thank the

[178:02] team that worked on this project it was a very large effort for the transportation and mobility department to accomplish this project and there were many people that worked behind the scenes I also want to thank our community for providing very good feedback to this project along the way and I also want to thank our transportation Advisory Board the community connectors and residents Community Cycles advocacy committee and the center for people with disabilities who also played an instrumental role in the execution of this project next slide please I'll walk through five main points our process for preparing the updated plan how we engaged with the community and other stakeholders and use that feedback to inform the plan how the updated plan is different than the prior action plan the progress we made on actions in the prior plan and how the new plan Incorporated additional analyzes to identify top crash types and shape actions around

[179:00] eliminating them finally the next steps for implementing the plan and how there are complementary efforts underway that will further serve to achieve the city's Vision zero goals next slide please our process included three major steps in the first step we completed Community engagement and city-wide crash data analysis to better understand locations of greatest risk and crash trends in the second step we did a deep dive quarter level analysis on each of the 18 high-risk Network arterial Street segments we use those analyzes to develop 20 actions which we've added through a second round of community engagement and tab feedback next slide please the plan included two phases of community engagement in summer 2022 and winter 2023 throughout the project the project team offered be heard Boulder and other project materials such as social media posts in both Spanish and English

[180:02] the team was also fortunate to join in the San Lazaro resource Fair following the first phase of Engagement we met with the community connectors in Residence in late October to help inform our Phase 2 engagement strategies as you can see on the slide and as I mentioned earlier we met with tab Community cycles and Center for people with disabilities twice throughout the life of the project based on the feedback we received we made 20 changes based on 25 comments that generally made the plans language more clear removed or revised actions and integrated language on improvements and benefits for people with disabilities next slide please we heard from stakeholders a desire that the new plan should focus on action and be achievable with anticipated Staffing and funding levels and this plan is structured to do that Natalie mentioned that this plan tees us up to pursue State Safe Streets and

[181:00] roads for all funding and I'm pleased to say that this plan checks all the boxes and the requirements that that Grant has in terms of an action plan and being able to move forward to the implementation stage next slide please before I talk about the updated plan I want to provide an update on the prior plan the prior plan included 50 actions and half of those actions were on track to meet um their target they were either completed or on track to on track to be completed a quarter of the actions um fell in the category that we've referred to as some progress made but not quite on track and the third uh a quarter the last quarter of actions basically did not have much progress made or was not complete the actions that were completed were things that focused on installing countermeasures implementing signal phasing changes

[182:00] enforcing unsafe travel behaviors advocating for changes to State legislation participating in Regional Vision zero meetings to share knowledge and improving accuracy of Crash data and data transparency actions that had some progress but not enough to meet the target included such things as updates to design standards refinements to signage at right turn slip Lanes developing a pan a plan for multi-use path lighting at underpasses and key intersections bolstering social media engagement and conducting evaluations to measure effectiveness of vision zero and capital Improvement projects most of the incomplete actions are focused on things like education campaigns raising awareness of and increasing funding for vision zero and better tracking progress of actions in a more transparent way next slide please for context going back to 2009 the

[183:00] city's highest number of severe crashes was in 2014 when we had 75 Serious injury and one fatal crash last year we had 48 Serious injury and one fatal crash while Boulder's annual number of fatal and serious injury crashes is low compared to other peer communities and has decreased since 2014 when Vision zero was first adopted it is still too much our goal is zero however what this all means is that our current level of severe crashes makes crash reduction in the city uniquely challenging since it is difficult to establish location-specific patterns of crashes for this reason the updated action plan looked at a period of five years from 2016 to 2020 to help inform the actions to meaningfully to meaningfully reduce crashes we had to think about safety intervention differently which is why the updated action plan included what's

[184:00] called a systemic safety analysis next slide please because our level of crashes makes it difficult to establish location-specific patterns we need to take what's called a systemic safety approach this approach is an international best practice for safety planning the systemic systemic approach focuses on common crash types and effective Solutions prioritizing locations with the most risk and implementing Solutions across the system where possible to focus on common crash types we found that just seven types of crashes account for 62 percent of crashes on the high risk Network to prior to prioritize locations with the most risk many of our actions rely on Broad implementation first across the high risk Network which has five times the risk of Boulder's entire arterial Street Network as a whole then on the remaining city streets

[185:01] for this reason many of the recommended countermeasures are focused where High volumes of pedestrian and bicyclist activity exists next slide please you've seen our high Network before in your packet but we wanted to point out these interesting statistics that reinforce how focusing on this limited number of streets will have an outsized impact on reducing fatal and serious injury crashes the statistics are listed there on the slides as you can see seven percent of city streets we found had 48 percent of our fatal and serious injury crashes next slide please we also wanted to reiterate how the high risk Network overlaps closely with many core arterial Network corridors such as Baseline Iris and Folsom so we hope that through implementation of the core arterial Network many of

[186:01] these Visions Euro recommendations will be built out I also want to reiterate and emphasize here the many other concurrent work plan items of the transportation and mobility department that are also advancing safety in addition to the action plan things such as the Ada transition plan and the pavement Management program Mobility enhancements for example you'll see on the map on the right that much of our high risk Network also overlaps with the Denver Regional Council of government's High Injury Network which is an important tool for allocating Regional safety funding there remains a gap in funding required to implement many of the higher cost projects that the updated action plan identifies while the transportation and mobility department has about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually toward Vision zero the cost of higher cost projects can be hundreds of thousands of dollars each slide please

[187:01] I mentioned that there are seven crash types that account for 62 percent of severe crashes on the high-risk Network these include things like running Red Lights making left and right turns and involve a vulnerable roadway users getting hit while crossing the street or driveways along a multi-use path next slide please here are some of the engineering solutions that the action plan recommends implementing more broadly across the transportation system in some cases there are multiple solutions for a given crash type the plan is focused on action and that mostly takes the shape of projects in some cases actions include process or guideline updates and experimentation and evaluation of solutions the guidelines plan to be reviewed or updated as part of the action plan include The Pedestrian Crossing treatment installation guidelines and the signal timing practices next slide please

[188:03] the action plan itself is divided into four categories of actions encompassing a total of 20 actions the categories are implementing engineering Solutions which has nine actions pairing engineering Solutions with education and enforcement which has six actions improving the city's internal Vision zero practices which has two actions and improving Vision zero data and transparency which has three actions next slide please this slide focuses a bit more on the engineering actions first the broad implementation of several different countermeasures according to the systemic safety approach these are things such as leading pedestrian intervals no right turn on red prohibitions protecting left turns green pavement markings and right turn slip lane improvements in many cases we want to update relevant City practices and guidelines to ensure

[189:01] that our systemic implementation of these treatments is uniform and will most effectively manage risk across the system we also plan to leverage our core arterial Network improvements to further address Vision zero needs along our major arterial corridors speed management is also an important tool Citywide and this year we are beginning to update our speed limit setting and signing practices in some cases we will be experimenting and evaluating with different solution options where good research on Solutions is not available corridors next slide please I mentioned it briefly earlier but I wanted to highlight here how we employed

[190:00] several strategies to elevate Equity through our work during our community engagement we made a significant effort to engage Spanish-speaking people in Boulder we translated the vast majority of our public-facing materials and surveys additionally we participated in a Spanish language Outreach event at the San Lazaro Mobile Home Park in the plan itself we use the city's racial Equity index to prioritize low cost and higher cost location-specific projects next slide please aside from the action plan I want to again mention the many concurrent projects and programs that will also work toward achieving Vision zero keep in mind again that things such as the core arterial Network Ada transition plan and the pavement Management program Mobility enhancements are all ongoing work plan items that further serve to advance the city's Vision zero goals and work to improve comfort and safety for all modes and abilities

[191:01] next slide please I could certainly present for much longer on the details of this plan but I want to leave plenty of time for your questions thank you very much I think that was the perfect link for that presentation packed with information but without too many details so really appreciate that appreciate all the work the Department's doing questions slash and we're well just to clarify you're not looking for feedback per se right this is an opportunity to learn more but if people also want to throw out a couple comments they're welcome to but let's start with any questions we have for City staff Matt [Music] thank you guys for that presentation and uh I really appreciate um the tactics used to sort of think about how to really specifically Target and let that money that we do have limited resources go as far as possible to really make sure we don't just put all our eggs in one single location and

[192:00] really spread out the uh the reduction of crashes so I appreciate the thoughtfulness of that and in the long Runway to get this done um and trying to get out to 2027. um a couple questions I have one is um I'm just sort of curious where the action plan fits into maybe the department pie chart more or less I'm looking at Natalie in terms of I know we got can we got this and I'm just curious how much meat is maybe left on the bone uh because if you think of how much we got left on can and this are we in a place where you know in the next year or two we're kind of capped out or are we in a place to think about maybe those larger infrastructure improvements increasing bike Lanes I can 2.0 I just don't know how much of the pie this takes up because there's so many little projects I'm just sort of curious yeah it's a good question so um I think to Devin's point the there's a lot of work within the department that we're already doing that encompasses what's been identified in the plan um there will be certainly opportunities for us to have you know more specific action items that are identified that

[193:00] we're focusing on say for example the right term bypass lanes that could be a potentially like a more specific project that wouldn't necessarily be resolved in other with other projects or programs that were already on the work plan but certainly as we go to improve corridors for the core arterial Network many of the ident the things that have been identified in the plan would be addressed through those types of quarter-wide improvements but we've also been having conversation around the federal infrastructure bill and the opportunity with Safe Streets for all where we could potentially look at trying to tackle a lot of the things that have been identified in the plan but in a more quarter based approach that also helps further the core arterial Network work so we're trying to think about how can we kind of do it all but with limited resources um so that's certainly on our minds but I think everything that we're doing is furthering our action plan um and we'll just continue doing that

[194:00] work great thank you my other question just sort of had referenced right turn slip lanes and just so I want to throw the question out in terms of thinking about maybe pausing construction on new right turn slip Lanes at least until the study's completed and then that informs us where to go forward um I just I'm a little concerned about if we are in a position to be building anything that is still intrinsically dangerous until we study and figure out what are the treatments how do we fix it or I think in the memo it said we might consider removing them uh in those right circumstances so I just wanted to sort of toss throw that out there to see if there's interest in doing that to make sure we're not building the infrastructure we would otherwise be thinking about removing yeah I mean I think I can broadly say we don't have plans to build more right turn bypass Lanes um that was really something that was honestly looked to as a safety mitigation measure a couple decades ago um and and I think we're seeing that we're there's um potentially more opportunities for harm in in those areas through our

[195:00] analysis and so we don't have plans to build more of those um and as we've identified there potentially could be opportunities that we look at how do we actually mitigate some of what's going on out there in those instances and there would be Devin and the team has talked a lot about kind of more short-term solutions that we could potentially do that are more low cost and then there's opportunities that are more long-term I don't know if you want to speak to the Broadway and University example yeah thank you Natalie um just for your awareness the Broadway University location is a location that did have an identified crash trend of people getting hit at that location with the Northbound right turn movement and the path users and we had applied through the highway safety Improvement program to get funding for that location it was not granted highway safety Improvement program funding but CDOT region four still thought it was a worthy project and gave the city funding to complete a project there which the project will be to signalize the

[196:01] Northbound right turn slip lane and that should begin design next year and I'll just say you know that's a really great opportunity for us to address kind of an issue there but that's a very expensive solution and we wouldn't be able to do that across the system I don't know how many right term bypass Lanes we have but a lot um so we need to also be thinking about what can we do that's more low cost and short-term do you mind if I ask a follow-up question there do you mind just explaining what you mean by signalizing the right term by pestling because I'm trying to think of an example where we have that number certainly one example that we have is Broadway and Rayleigh that was one that was done just within the past two years and essentially what it means is you would put a signal poll on the island and then likely another signal poll on the right side as you're making the right turn and both would just have either a red yellow green indication or a red yellow green arrow indication

[197:00] okay thanks for explaining that go ahead I think I know you answered my question it's good to know that there aren't any of these in the pipeline to to make and we're not putting ourselves further behind the eight ball and I appreciate the the treatments that are going to go to the existing ones and look forward to the conclusion of the study because I don't know I've been I've I've had two near misses in a right turn sibling I probably know a few people maybe we've all known someone that's had one so these are something that impacts just about anybody who's walked or been on a bike so appreciate the work on that other questions Lauren and then Bob um sort of in the same a similar vein where we have I appreciated some of the changes that might be made for where streets cross or where there are turns crossing multi-use paths and I think a lot of those were also somewhat expensive to implement but have

[198:00] we updated our design standards so that at least new versions of those would follow the best practices yes a component of the recent DCS update was to have design drawings that indicate a raised Crossing DCS oh I'm sorry the design and construction standards those are the standards that guide I guess construction and and completion of new development projects within the city and so there are a series of standards that Engineers within the city use to guide how things are are designed and built so we do now include a lot more discussion in the updated design and construction standards related to raised Crossings which are a proven safety counter measure for slowing down speeds when turns are made across multi-use paths it also mentioned sort of separating it back from the street is that also part of the design and construction standards

[199:02] I do not recall off the top of my head but but that is what is referred to in this industry as a Bend out path design and the idea behind that is it gives space for an exiting vehicle to first yield to the multi-use path Crossing and look for path users and then proceed forward and there's enough distance in advance of the path that that motorist can then focus on completing their right or left turning movement and not be in conflict with path users I guess and then signage you just hear all the time there's so much confusion in the community about like what are these big sidewalks and why are people going the wrong direction on them um so our is signage also part of that or is that something that we need to look at in sort of more of a corridor treatment rather than signage to an

[200:02] extent as you noted had has already been broadly deployed on our multi-use path system and the sign that we often use at the intersecting driveways is the two-way crossing sign and it's intended to remind motorists to look both ways before they make their turn because often what happens is the motorist gets fixated on looking left to make their right turn and if a path user is approaching from that direction there can be a conflict sometimes do we have any evidence of how effective those are at encouraging people to look both ways I don't know that we do I can't recall when they were implemented in the city but certainly as I had pointed out we we have seen a slight decrease since 2014 in in the number of severe crashes in the city thank you um and then I was also wondering about you know particularly where we're looking to reduce speeds and if there

[201:03] are any overlaps with streets that we're looking to do that on and areas of town where we're looking at trying to reduce heat island effect and if we might be looking at design things like using Street trees as a calming effect on traffic patterns that's something that we're trying to dovetail in terms of different work efforts or not that's a really good question an observation I do you have anything to add on that Natalie not to my knowledge but it certainly is something I think that is being more broadly encouraged in the design Community to make more complete streets and to incorporate natural elements that can facilitate drainage and provide shade and and it is noted through our studies that having narrower streets as well as streets with more mature trees that present a narrower look and visual

[202:00] Corridor do tend to have slower speeds just add I mean I think traditionally as we used to do Corridor planning and Corridor design we would certainly approach it to look at how can we potentially rebuild the whole street curb to curb to incorporate those types of that frankly that kind of planning and design is just very expensive and so we've been trying to Pivot to a more like incremental approach to improving our corridors and that doesn't always give us the opportunity to redesign a street from Curb to curb so a lot of the opportunities we have to take are like what's already there in the right-of-way unless we have substantial funding and it's a pretty massive Corridor project that we're able to go in and completely rebuild so when those opportunities are available we certainly do I was just thinking there might also be the Dual benefit of I think you had mentioned trying to do some of these updates in um particularly neighborhoods and things that aren't necessarily getting the same

[203:00] kind of investment and that that might also overlap I believe with where we're trying to focus spending on Street trees for heat island issues as well yeah that makes sense thanks pump I think it's you for you Natalie um I live right off Iris Avenue and so people in the neighborhood are kind of freaking out that the iris Avenue transportation Improvement project which we're just getting launched our plan is our evil plan is to narrow high-risk from four lanes to two can you say out loud that is not our plan to narrow iris from Fort La Institute between 28th and Broadway I can say out loud that we have no plan thank you thank you so stop talking right now thanks for the presentation and thank you so much for all the work that's gone into these changes I'm really eager for

[204:01] them one of the things that I was just wondering about is just the demographics of people in our community who are severely injured or killed in crashes I think youth are on my mind tonight motor vehicle crashes are in many cases one of the top causes of death in children and adolescents do we see the same Trends here in our city and if so are we targeting any changes on increasing the safety of our youth yeah thank you for that question council member Speer I would point back to some extent to the Safe Streets Boulder report that did have a bit more detailed information as far as the demographics and ages of those who are involved in crashes I think from the point of view of who is most often determined to be the at fault motorist we find quite frequently that it's the males who are between like 18 and 24 years old are

[205:02] often the ones that are speeding or distracted or under the influence while driving and and are causing crashes and then we did see endnote Trends as well in our older population are 65 and over population being kind of overrepresented in crashes I I'm waiting for my computer to get memory up but thanks Charlie related to the youth I don't know that we found that they were over represented in in any way um but I know that that is they are certainly folks that can be I would say influential and how we get the message out about safety so thank you for bringing that up as well anything else right seeing none

[206:00] I will just give you all an enormous thank you for the incredible work that you're doing this area I'll say this has come so far oh wait no no Tara Tara Tara's got a hand up can I just give a shout out that I sell lighting and underpasses on that list I can now stop bothering Natalie great point we look forward to more Lighting on our passes anyway just in this the seven odd years I've been on Council this has come so far I remember when we first got started it was called towards Vision zero so we weren't quite ready to have a vision of zero we were working towards it and so there have been so many improvements that have been made and excited to see so many more coming up the next couple of years so really appreciative for the groundbreaking work that you all are doing here thank you very much yeah take care all right so um it is 9 25 we have three items left so the the

[207:01] first one is pegged at 30 minutes on the discussion of Overdose prevention centers and then a process update on Senate Bill 213 which actually I think we could do that in five minutes and then a Library District Board of Trustees up to the state which is probably three minutes but are folks okay with us proceeding with what's left on the agenda yeah okay great so Emily if you could take us in please next on our agenda we have item 8A which is a discussion on HB 23-1202 local option to operate overdose prevention centers Council um Carl Castillo Chief policy advisor for the city of Boulder um I guess I wanted to just start off as far as a transition from the last conversation to mention that um we had some good news yesterday a bill that we've been working on one of your priorities that would expand the Authority for the city to use Photo

[208:01] speed enforcement did pass out of committee in the senate committee that was anything but a guarantee we've worked with a bicycle Colorado who's a prime Becker and with um the sponsor of Senator Faith winter with to uh to help make some changes to help protect her interests and we had two members we had Joe Van our photo enforcement supervisor testified yesterday as well as Trinny Wolverton from a transportation Advisory Board they both had a complimentary story so anyway feel really good about that and by that I shouldn't jinx it and suggest that we know where it's going to pass but we're going to work hard to the item of HB 1202 um I don't even have a presentation because I think the memo probably has explained everything you need and I want to make sure that you have the opportunity to discuss it Bottom Line This is a bill that would authorize cities to provide overdose prevention centers is the way it's being termed in

[209:02] the bill we took a position on it sometime between February 15th and March 1st um February 15th is when it was introduced a few days before March 1st I've reviewed it along with um Wendy Schwartz who is on the line she is our human services manager our policy advisor excuse me um we also did check with the County's Public Health Department based on that and based on our review of the policy statement particularly the position that would have us support local control we did take a position of support so I want to acknowledge that right now because there has been questions about whether the city had taken a position so consistent with council's expectations we do as always use your policy statement to inform positions and that's what we did here however we I'd heard fairly quickly afterwards that there was questions

[210:00] about whether it was an appropriate interpretation of the policy statement whether in fact local control was always something we should seek or sometimes it's maybe you know not necessarily what we want so um I convened the intergovernmental Affairs committee and the committee made it clear adapter process perspective they were concerned that this is the kind of Bill that should have received more vetting from the committee at a minimum if not the full Council um so that's why we're here today they actually did consider the item uh they asked us to retain the position of support but to do so passively so no longer to Lobby on it certainly no more testimony I will mention that the bill did pass the house it is pending before the Senate it is not scheduled for a hearing as of today so don't know what its Outlook is at the Senate um that is by way of saying that any position that we take could be

[211:00] influential in trying to shape our own Senators perspective on it um so the item is is for you to discuss whether or not um well basically I guess it's really a question of how you'd like to respond to the committee's recommendation of continuing to support it which has been made and whether you have any questions and I'd really like to defer to the committee to allow them to have conversations on this with the rest of the council thanks girl for introducing that and just to be clear I think we're looking to get a read from Council on whether or not to support this bill or if we were to support if we would ask for any amendments and I'll just mention that the IGA committee at that time was uh Rachel Matt Lauren and myself uh since since then Rachel has left the committee in Terror has joined if this was before that happened and so there was I think all four of us said you know this seems like something we should support but let's take it to the council for their consideration as a whole so if we could

[212:01] just if people could ask any questions that they have and then maybe we can have a quick discussion on where to go with this Bob thanks girl I just want to make sure that I'm clear on on what the bill does um because you mentioned local control a few times so I appreciate that so is there currently under under Colorado law a preemption or prohibition by the state prohibiting cities from having these types of things is that right that has certainly been implied it's actually a question I never looked up to see if it's in fact in the law books but I do know that the city of Denver has had a has had this on the books and it's kind of been like a trigger ordinance that as soon as they interpret the state law as allowing it they would move forward so I have not done the individual research or even heard of a state law preventing it um but it's been an assumption and it's one that's been made by Denver in other words Denver has passed an ordinance

[213:00] that would allow them to proceed with opening up a overdose prevention center pending the authority to be the authority given to them by the state so I'm afraid that might not answer based on the quizzical record that you're giving me I feel like it's safe to say that the state does preempt this we might not be able to point to this specific code but since Denver has felt like they are unable to do one without State authorization I would bet 99.99 that's that's the case yeah I think it's pretty fair to say yeah I I think I'll just add to that I think that there has been some influence by the federal government as well in terms of whether or not um having a location like this would be providing Controlled Substances to individuals and which would be legal and so I think in the past there's been some pressure from the federal government coming down on these locations and I don't know what the situation is now it

[214:02] may be changing but I think that that's part of the history here do you have anything else no I'm still I'm still a little bit confused because I said the federal government so I appreciate that Sandra I thought I always presumed that Homeless cities could kind of do whatever they wanted as long as it wasn't prevented by the state is that a is that there's probably an overstatement of the law but is that generally true it's kind of a tense as long as it's a it's a home rule local issue and if if it's a mixed use issue then as long as it doesn't conflict with like the state law right right so I'm kind of confused why the state had to give cities permission to do this in the first place but but it doesn't matter the bill is the bill I just was just I was kind of confused about reason yeah so I just received the text from a former representative Jonathan singer who uh who actually had ran a bill on just this issue a couple years ago and it's based

[215:01] on a nuisance issue relating to otherwise illegal activity occurring in a particular location so that's his response I will also say that knowing that it is arguably illegal at the federal level much like the city has chosen to lead I mean the state has chosen to legalize marijuana and um and and mushrooms now it may be a way of validating and giving cover for cities to do something that they might otherwise feel as questionable Authority at the federal level yeah because I'm a little confused about why a state Bill permitting cities to do something that the federal government doesn't like gets the cities out of Dutch with the federal government it seems like you're still the same problem but yeah we can debate this this is an interesting argument but I was just kind of curious the reason for the bill in the first place if there was a Prohibition that was being lifted or maybe it just sounds like maybe more of a clarification okay all I can say is um I did go to the hearing and I heard hours of testimony and um not one person

[216:02] mentioned the explicit prohibition that's on the books so all I am left to assume is that it is uh at the very least cities do not feel comfortable proceeding without such Authority and uh perhaps illegal got it thanks yeah mark um yeah if I could get some information is is this bill agnostic in terms of uh the types of drugs that we would be permitted to set up um overdose prevention centers for is there any distinction for instance between heroin or Methamphetamine in terms of what we would be permitted to do so my read of the bill is it is agnostic now that being said one of the services that it is intended to offer is to allow people to have their drugs test tested to make sure it does not contain

[217:01] what's the term what's the one that kills people right away no fentanyl so uh so um while the bill does not specify which drugs they'd be allowed to use whether it does specify council member Wallach is that the the centers would not be providing such drug but it the person would have to bring in their own drug so I know that sounds kind of about to say okay thank you any other questions yep Nicole yeah just had one question I was just trying to remember back to being in the committee and if I'm remembering correctly the bill had pretty broad support right that it really was kind of a party line vote that it was the it was sort of all the Democrats regardless of where where they you know fall in the political Spectrum were supporting and they had three folks who were voting again uh against it were the Republicans

[218:01] is that am I remembering correctly I think that is correct and as you will see from the uh in your memo I've listed the sponsors which is pretty much the Democrats but and quite a few of them um yeah so I think it's fair to say that this is a heavily supported by the Democrats and opposed by Republicans thank you yeah go ahead so I think for the community that's listening at 9 30 or we'll read about it tomorrow and maybe just for my colleagues just in terms of where the meeting was in turn I just say maybe maybe I'm speaking about half everybody certainly myself um it's just that this is a right to local control but doesn't necessarily mean we have to exercise it and so I think the the support mechanism here is to think of well look our friends in Denver feel they need this why would we stand in their way if it's in need of theirs um so I don't think this means that

[219:01] just by us supporting it means that you know come January 1 2024 we're lifting up an overdose Center here in Boulder I would argue that we probably would want to wait and see and look at Denver and any other places long before we're looking to do that ourselves these centers usually need to be in heavily more urban environments larger cities or doesn't necessarily fit the regular uh index from which these would be but doesn't mean we wouldn't do it in the future but I think preserving the right to have that is what's important um so I think it's an important distinction much like we asked of communities when we wanted ranked Choice voting a lot of cities said we don't want it but we're not going to stand in your way of doing it so they still supported the bill so I think there's there's a consistency of logic that we would like to sort of stay stay with yeah Matt thanks for that I think that was the consensus of the intergovernmental Affairs committee was pretty much just what you said yeah one yeah do you want to expand yeah so Denver right now I believe is experiencing more than one overdose death a day um you know this is a nationwide

[220:00] epidemic and while there haven't been a large number of these centers in this country the evidence is pretty um support strongly that they do help with overdose um deaths and reducing those so but like Matt said you know it's less about us looking to put one of these in Boulder and you know my support was largely about um there are lots of things that different communities care passionately about and this is something that Denver has been trying to do and a direction that they want to try to help with you know help reduce death in their community and so I think that it's really important if you know especially for the next thing that comes in front of Boulder that we would want to have them support us as well and so in that partnership trying to help support these really important things for our surrounding communities as well

[221:01] right very good tara but isn't it also about a highly I'm not going to say contentious uh emotional subject for a lot of people I mean we say that it's oh well do what you want to do Denver um we rep we support you but it's I think this falls into a different category where there's a fair amount of emotion and opinion and so the question is is tonight should we discuss alternatives to saying yes just because we maybe me might say yes but with guard rails or do I forget my two-minute speech and not even say it because we're just voting on saying yes uh Denver do whatever you want I personally don't I think once we say yes to them then we

[222:01] are also opening up the door to maybe saying yes here and so I think it's worthy to discuss but also if nobody wants to discuss it you know I don't have to do it does that make sense or am I so sick that I'm not even making sense I don't know well I guess Tara in part but uh I I don't think we're going to decide tonight whether or not we think we should open one in Boulder but if you wanted to propose either saying no to supporting it or an amendment that we might propose instead feel free to to put that forward I might as well it works like pretty much like two hours on this thing I would hate to have lost that time to nothing but um you tell me when you want me to do that you you have the floor but sir can we or do you want to say something first Rachel say what I was gonna say uh which is that I I do feel it's a little bit hypocritical to say like we just support local control because we don't always we have another issue I believe coming

[223:00] right down the pike here where uh we're going against local control so I I think in frankness like I would only support like moving forward with the argument of local control if I support the thing that the local control is about so for example if the State passes an assault weapons ban and then 10 years from now we want local control for that I don't want it I'm going to want the result weapons banned so I think we should be a little bit more more crystal clear that if we are supporting this we are sort of signaling to the community yeah we think we might be interested in this and and kind of not dance around it because um I think that's what we would be doing it's kind of to Tara's point and um maybe if I'm hearing everyone correctly what we want is for Denver to do it so maybe that's an amendment Tara would like to ask for I don't know like yeah we support that for Denver maybe we support it here but I think we're going to do it let's just be clear on what we're doing and why we're doing it fair point I got Mark's hand up and then maybe Tara will come back to you yeah I kind of agree with with Rachel on

[224:01] this I I think it's I tend to be very protective of local control but not always and there are things that that you don't necessarily want to have control over I I think it's a little disingenuous for us to say we're doing this as a favor to our friends in Denver we have no intention of doing anything here we just want the um we'll take the local control but we don't really want to do anything other than to be supportive of our you know good friends to the South I if we're going to support this we're basically signaling for the community that we support this not just Denver's use of this but this option and I don't know how anybody else feels I I think it's I would find that the concept of um a heroin overdose prevention center a little more

[225:00] palatable than a methamphetamine um overdose prevention center because it in the latter case you basically facilitating the consumption of methamphetamine and that's not something we want we've seen the consequences in this community um up and down the line as to what methamphetamine does to its victims and does to the larger community and and the sort of the um the Optics of setting up a center you know come on in and take your dose here um uh is is very poor to me um and I'm not really prepared to say to the community that that's the direction we want to go in but if we're opening it up and supporting this legislation I think that's where we're going we're saying this is a good thing um not just that it's for our friends and we're doing them a solid down in Denver um we're basically saying this is a good thing and even if we're not doing it now we'll probably want to do it later and I

[226:01] think that conversation needs to be had before we support this legislation because if that's our goal or if that's our objective then let's say that to the community but not let's not kind of slink around and say we're just we're just being friendly neighbors and we'll we'll take the freedom and we'll deal with it later thanks Terry do you mind if I uh respond to the last couple comments before I come back to you no yeah so original Mark they both raise good points and I think what I would say is um is I don't think if we support this tonight I think what I would be thinking about is not just that we're doing Denver a favor because it is something that we might want to consider for the community at some point down the road but that I would look to Denver to be the Pioneer here and look at their success or failure with it before deciding whether it would be a good choice for Boulder so I would not be saying by supporting this absolutely within a couple years we'll do one in

[227:00] Boulder I would say let's let's let Denver lead and then learn from them so that's what I'm thinking and if I can respond to you uh mayor um that to me is a slim read on which two um support our support of this bill um we don't know what it's going to mean we don't know how it's going to work um but it sounds good and that to me is is not good governance Fair Point Bob I'm going to stand on that slim Reed because I agree with Aaron um and I don't I don't want anybody to interpret my support of this bill to mean that I am in favor of a safe injection site and Boulder that that is a months long if not years-long evaluation that we would have to do we'd have to have public health experts come in and tell us the pros and cons of this we need to listen to the community we have to make a decision on this the next few weeks I think Carl because it's already been passed by one house it's gonna go to another house we either support it or we don't and I would not want anyone any of my Council colleagues or anyone in the community to interpret

[228:01] my my support of this bill as supporting the opening of a safe injection site that's a completely different discussion I believe in local control I think this is another example of local control if Denver wants to do this that's their business um and so I I think there is a distinction between supporting the bill and making a long-term well-considered uh decision about safe injection sites which we're not doing tonight pretty good because you haven't said anything yet all right uh Tara will come back to you because you wanted to suggest something perhaps or who me yeah or not you don't need to yes I do I do I do I do okay okay so first a lot of you know or maybe you don't but Aaron does that I spent a long time thinking about this and I started out being a definite no-go because At first I felt the government shouldn't really be allowing the use of illegal drugs in a government facility it was enabling and something didn't

[229:00] feel right about it to me but then I talked to a lot of medical professionals like a hospital executive in Sydney Australia involved in that safe injection site there and some Physicians also and they all said to help professionals that they do save lives and there are no overdoses in the in those facilities and they prevent infections from Dirty needles and there have been skyrocketing deaths Lauren said it's true from overdose in our country and so I think mentioning that is an important fact however this is in the hospital executive said they have to be managed well and by that I just want to talk about guardrails for a second so what we put up guard rails because we're driving down the highway and there's people driving on the other uh part of the road and we put up that guardrail to protect the people in the opposite lane so that if we flip over or right into the wrong if we ride into the wrong lane to the

[230:01] opposite end we would kill ourselves and we would kill a lot of people so that's where the term guardrails came and I think it really applies here about killing ourselves and killing other people so um that's why I would only be in favor of this this house bill if we had these guardrails set up um first of all if they're strategically placed in minimum negative uh place to minimize negative impacts in neighborhoods for instance not in residential neighborhoods not near schools or stores if you think about Kensington Philadelphia where it is a just terrible it's just so sad what's happened there people are just walking up down the street shooting up yeah it's dangerous it's sad there's crime everything that's the kind of place that would do well with the safe injection site the neighborhood would probably improve but yet in the greater Harlem Coalition newsletter neighbors were upset in Harlem living near on points Harlem injection site Express daily fear of the

[231:02] dealers and users who swarmed the block so outside the facility is there sometimes crime if it's either not managed well or let's say law enforcement doesn't take uh you know isn't a partner in there I would say it could be a real problem now if it was up to me and it's not up to me um I would say if we're going to have safe injection sites then it should be mandatory for people who take drugs um in the out in the open to go to those safe injection sites I I studied a lot of European countries and they have no time they have zero tolerance policies for open construction of drugs which means that addicts will actually take drugs inside the safe and safe injection site because they will be arrested if they use drugs outside of the facility on the street so no consumption of drugs in our public

[232:01] spaces is important to me I personally don't think that's asking too much and just this quick story is a quick story I promise I was walking up the creek path towards the high school towards the Arboretum and there was a large tent encampment right by the defensive by the high school field and the people were sitting outside their tents smoking bath you know making the meth smoking them out it was not good so if that's the case can we say that no you're not allowed to take drugs in full view in our public spaces because there's a safe injection site I don't know that that is what is going to be you know what people are going to agree to um I just have a few more points and then I'll move it I'll move it over to Nicole um I feel I really feel strongly that prevention and harm harm reduction and

[233:00] treatment should be combined with law enforcement cooperation between law enforcement health care and Social Services as far as Europe goes data from these other countries has to be taken in full account many countries like I said have zero tolerance for consuming drugs outside the safe injection sites so I believe mandatory participant participation might be key in Vancouver outside that facility as many of you know people are shooting up shooting up their friends and dealing drugs um The Vancouver Police Department supported the opening of that injection site and they still supported to this day so that's another interesting thing we can discuss as well when we really do talk about this um the former mayor of Vancouver said they knew that the sis could not be run without the cooperation of the police especially the front line officers that Patrol those streets and alleys near

[234:00] there so that's an important thing to me next I would want to couple the site with wraparound Services which we talked a lot about tonight canceling drug addiction services so we can tackle the root causes of people needing the site to use drugs in the first place I'm sure we all agree that that really the tackling the root causes is the most important thing and lastly it definitely takes resources and how do we how do we prioritize our limited funding we need detox centers badly we need rehab centers badly we need mental health outpatient and inpatient units really badly and what are we going to do about staff we have such a staff shortage that I heard that in our mental health in inpatient facility over 100 beds are empty because we don't we have Staffing shortages so the last thing that I would want to do is say yes to step to Safe injection sites then we don't have the staff for it and it goes awry

[235:00] um so I'm just going to end with I'm not against if it was called the pilot program in Denver with those guard rails because let's face it you know safe injection sites they really do save lives and so many lives are lost these days from overdoses and I would say to people that are really against it if you have a loved one that has died from an overdose I would think that you would wish that they took those drugs in a safe injection site because it will give them more time to get clean but I really I would only vote for it if I had the we had those particular guard rails in place that I mentioned thank you very much all right thanks Terry you've been doing your homework and all kinds of citations and examples there so uh I'm going to turn to Carl here so appreciate some of the comments there are all the comments that have been made so Carl in terms of what you're looking for from us tonight is this would this

[236:00] be like a nod of five to continue the position of support that that the city has already been taken or are you looking for something different from us what what are you thinking I'm open to whatever you want to provide me but certainly a not of five or six or seven as the case may be is totally appropriate and that would be helpful and would that not a five I would take the position of support and I would enact I would activate it in other words we would actually lobby lobby it I wouldn't say it's a priority for us to make equivalates not as a priority and I I I also don't expect that Council wants to necessarily for us to make this you know to create any confusion that this is something that you know is a priority for us because after all that could be read as uh we're ready to use that Authority when I'm clearly here and that's not the case and by the way it is worth noting and for the public in particular that our staff has no intention should this this bill pass and this Authority be granted

[237:00] come to you and recommend an overdose prevention center to be answered Wendy Schwartz who is available for any questions has detailed the extensive process that we have to look at appropriate measures along these lines and this is not on our writer that's that's helpful and if if we take this step just a moment Journey for you to mind if we take this step could we incorporate it in our efforts some of the issues that Tara brought up around citing and wraparound services and and things that facilities like this might need yeah that's a really interesting idea and I'd be happy to continue to work with Tara to get some more ideas because um you know what I'm hearing is um this bill could be improved perhaps there may be some some guardrails that she suggested on on where these could be uh yeah so that's a great idea and I could certainly do that yeah to explore those possibilities um to me thank you so much I just wanted to make the comment I will not be voting on this night of fight because of

[238:01] my work and community members but I just wanted to note as well this is the first time in four years or three and a half years since I've been on Council that we have had a lengthy discussion about a particular bill because yeah that is a signal to community of what the city intends to do so thank you all right so can I'm yeah Nicole I'm I just wanted to say that you know one of the things that I'm noticing here is that uh clearly we are ready to have a long long and exhaustive discussion on this and and I think that that's that's one of the things that the bill would allow um us to do at some point in the future or not not tomorrow not not in the next few months but you know years down the road um and you know I think if Denver's gonna go first cool um and you know if we think that these prevention centers are going to facilitate use of drugs then maybe folks will go to Denver to use and and that

[239:00] might relate to some of the issues that we're having here if that's what we think is going to happen so anyway so I I will be supportive of a support position on this bill thanks and can we move along or Rachel do you have something I'm just gonna Wonder like if there's no if there's anything scheduled can this just go back to the subcommittee to sort of like can we say you know General support but like look at it more and come up with some guardrails and also to to my suggestion to Tara I think when California considered um these sites they did specify like three cities that were going to Pilot it first so I don't think it's outside the realm that it could be Denver and and maybe another city or two but I think that is an option the subcommittee could look at well I think the subcommittee already weighed in so I do do you think we need to go back to the supplementation that was kind of to Carl's point about like we could talk about the guardrails and so I don't know I don't know maybe we don't need it I don't know that we need to get to that level of detail frankly but Carl are you

[240:01] would you be okay with us just doing a checking on notified tonight yes and when we and the intercriminal Affairs committee meets on the 21st if the bill was still around and there's still possibilities for amendments we certainly can discuss guard girls at that point as well great but I have a question how do I vote then if I would only vote Yes if there were guardrails but no if the bill passed as it was I mean it's up to you Tara I guess your message has been communicated and Carl would be uh passing some of those concerns along as part of the process but there's no no guarantees so your your choice uh mark yeah I would be very supportive of what Rachel is saying um I don't want to dismiss that out of hand simply because it's already been looked at I think there's I don't know if it's a not a five uh sentiment in the in this Council but there's certainly enough sentiment to be looking to focus on amendments and guardrails and those

[241:01] types of things that will make um people more comfortable with the very concept of what we're talking about I don't want to give a short trip to what what Rachel said point taken we do have kind of a busy agenda at the IGA committee so but I'll tell you what how about a not a five of whether we should proceed with the the support position that's been described and then I'll check in again not a five if people want to send it back to the IGA for further work is that all right but I think some people only want to say yes if it's with amendments like not a five to to support if I guess I'm looking to see if we can proceed tonight you know with with a council position and then check in after that if if we want at the IGA committee to do additional work people don't want to do that that's fine so can we call for that not a five there let's we'll just kind of do right I'm

[242:02] getting sort of head nods from it looks like we got six with uni uh stepping back staining yes abstaining and then you know within that how what are people think about the idea of sending it to the IGA committee for a few further work yeah Nicole do you have a comment I just I mean I want to be sensitive to the work of the ID and I know we've got this housing Bill coming up that feels like it's going to be pretty intense for the IGA so um I I mean I feel like Carl has heard some of the concerns that folks may have tonight and you know I know that you're in communication with folks so I don't I don't feel that's necessary Bob I want to pile onto that in addition to the work of the um I mean it sounds like it's unclear whether there's a Prohibition right now in the state law that the prohibited cities and so if we came back with um a bill that said yeah we support it but only if the cities do the following things so now the state is telling the

[243:01] cities what they have to do and so now now we're going from a place where maybe it's ambiguous about whether the state has restrictions to imposing restrictions so I think we either believe in local controller we don't I think if we tell the state that you here's a laundry list of things you have to do in order to have a safe injection site now we do have State Control we're going exactly the opposite direction that I think the bill is intending so I would not be in favor even if the inter-governmental Affairs committee has all the time in the world I wouldn't want you spending a whole lot of time on this because I think it's just the opposite of what the bill is trying to do real real quick and let's finish up yeah I'll make it three um it to more acutely it would be us prescribing to Denver the first one out the gate exactly how to run their overdose prevention center coming from a community that's expressing that we might not be interested in doing such thing but we will tell Denver how to do it that the logic is is backwards to me um so I I would not prescribe it if we

[244:01] were looking to lift one up I'd say yes let us Define those rules for ourselves but since that's not on our radar anymore if Denver wants to figure out how they want to do it and they're gonna be the first off the gate awesome but but I I'd leave it alone okay so how many people would like to send it onto the IGA for further work I got I got three three takers three takers at a eight Genie was staying uh so I think we have what we need to move forward great thank you thanks um all right there's a it's a little convoluted but thanks everybody figuring it out Carl um Carl could you give us a very quick update on the process uh that the Senate Bill 213 the land use bill I will note there actually they've been in a hearing on this matter in the Senate since around 10 o'clock this morning and it's still going is that right did you check because I checked before I came up here and it was still good I did just check yeah yeah I heard they had 300 people speaking up and uh

[245:01] um yeah so I probably have nothing to add other than the hotline message that went out today maybe I'll just walk through the very Basics so you and a PR the council at a previous meeting adopted a policy statement position which essentially said we're looking to support a bill of this nature but you did provide guard rails on what it would take for you to actually support that bill so when a bill was introduced and one was introduced I'm looking for the date here um of course I don't have it um it was brought to the intergovernmental Affairs committee per the request of the council that committee met yesterday they adopted a position of or I should say recommendation of support while asking for amendments according to the council agenda committee's meeting they thought that the public deserved enough time to not have this discussed tonight

[246:01] in substance but the way to the meeting on April 20th so tonight is merely me telling you that the committee here it is still going on uh the vote will not take place tonight nor will any amendments be introduced tonight we expect that to occur either next Tuesday or next Thursday in fact neither one of them is official but that's that's the Intel I have and at that point we expect the uh the bill to be amended quite substantially and I would say I I I did share the recommendation of the committee with the governor's office so even though this Council has not taken a position on it that is public information and I wanted them to know that because I think the city in no situation is worse off if they are to adopt those positions which actually are increasing local control so hopefully I got that right and I guess I will say for all listening

[247:03] that I think council did get what part a big part of what it wanted by adopting this policy State position which was a seat at the table we we've attended over a dozen meetings well over a dozen meetings and they have been very receptive to our questions to our technical feedback basically we're saying you know have you considered how this might play out in a city like Boulder and they are all ears so um we would not have had that support in fact as far as I know where the only city that's that's getting that attention and it's because we Telegraph that we could support this and that conceptually we wanted to support it but that we had to have our interests addressed so uh to support you for having the foresight to take that position and no no decision is being asked of you tonight so any questions about the process happy to answer them right if I just make one additional Point Carl

[248:00] thanks for that so that we'll be bringing this to the whole Council in two weeks for consideration and at that time the discussion will be informed by whatever whatever alterations have been made in the Senate assuming that it does pass out of committee will know what those changes are at that time discussion can be informed by that your government Affairs will have also had a prior to that I don't think so no it's notes the day after yeah yeah our next IGA Community is the day after yeah I had Mark stand up and then Rachel yeah just a question for Carl um you posted a correction today saying that that our policy was um support while requesting amendments um exactly how does that differ from what we had originally prescribed which would be support if amended I'd like to defer to the mayor on that yeah so this was something that we talked about at the IGA committee meeting is support if amended would mean that we would refuse to support it

[249:01] unless every detail uh that requests that we made were fulfilled exactly as opposed to support while asking for amendments says this is what we'd like to see and let's negotiate on these and try to make them happen and reserve the right to continue supporting even if one or two are not we don't quite get to the finish line well does it also mean that if we get none of our requested amendments we are still supporting we'd have to come back I think in that case but I also think that's extremely unlikely based on where the direction is of this is already headed okay it's actually impossible okay it's interesting what's happening on the 20th and what can we do between now and 20th as a city that might be different if we were making a decision tonight and I assume that the Senate hearing will not occur before the 20th when it comes back to us so that's a really good question because I think you're looking like what is the opportunity cost by us not taking a position tonight um so

[250:02] the possibility to testify has ended today it will be a committee vote without any additional testimony from the public so it will then go to Senate Appropriations and probably send it Finance testimony there is usually limited to the Appropriations and the fiscal note that's been added so that's not a place for substantive comments then it'll be heard by the full Senate second reading and then third reading so it's basically a recorded Vote or actually a non-recorded vote and then a recorded vote um so in terms of testimony in that time frame I don't expect we will have lost anything then the question really becomes are they gonna take us serious that these are amendments that we want since it hasn't been validated by Council yet and I could always say that as your representative what I would convey to them is if you want the city to support

[251:00] this it would be you'd be well served to strongly consider these amendments so in other words it's it there's no guarantee that the city will support it as councilmember Wallach said the recommendation is support with amendments but you know if if the sponsor would like to be sure that we're going to support it I think the Amendments would be important that's all I could deliver I could I could also just say that until our Council has an opportunity to consider this we have no position but a recommendation from a committee of four is significant and and we're not changing our policy here we don't usually have like public hearings Or List you know kind of have have a a weight as I recall um before Council would weigh in on something like this right so I guess I'm just trying to understand why they delay which why are we delaying it's a good point um so um we do have public hearings for revisions to our policy statement that

[252:01] is council's Direction on policy that's councilman making policy and directing me um in fact staff then connects the dots the bill we think of that as implementation it's like administrative in some regards um so typically we would not need to go even to the committee given these significant interests in this and controversy we thought it was important to bring to the committee and for that matter at the council agenda committee meeting it was decided that it was also important to bring back the council for that additional feedback that's purely decision that the council gets to make and uh um I I will say that because it is not even required a not of five would be totally fine as it was for the last bill on 1202 because in fact we're going up above and beyond what is typically done for the city adopting positions on bills can I also add to that that Rachel because I think a major consideration was that if we went you can only about 28 hours between

[253:01] the IGA committee making a recommendation and the council then deciding whether to accept it that would provide very limited time for the community to if they wanted to send us emails or phone calls or such on the topic and we heard that when we had the public hearing on the policy revisions people were upset at how short the time frame was and this would have been much shorter than that so making sure the community has some time to absorb this and land well just given that it's not a policy change I I hear what you're saying I don't quite get it I hear what you're saying um and it uh if it forfeits us any any advantage in having taken a vote on it in the next two weeks I think that's a bummer but I think I'm hearing you say that we shouldn't lose any major I I really don't and and I've got to say I mean I'm not exaggerating the attention that we've been given I get calls almost daily or I participate in calls and they're very interested in where voters at I think uh

[254:00] this is the governor's home City uh president fenberg really cares where we're at um those two things alone I think and plus the fact that we are the only city that I know of that is prepared to take a position of support and I I just think it's it's a very significant thing for them to say that Boulder is considering prepared about to take a position of support so I think that even where we're at we're not going I mean frankly if Council felt comfortable given the position of support today that make my job easier but I I'm trying to honor the fact that there's a desire to delay it and I'm just I really don't think it's going to limit our ability to shape things and if it were you could come back to the subcommittee and ask for advice on moving forward without full counsel at that point right in theory it's okay okay yes what Nicole was up first I think yeah I just a kind of quick Edition there Rachel at the Dr Cog meeting last

[255:01] night this bill came up and we had a pretty robust discussion on it I just wanted to normalize that we are not the only city that's kind of in a in a needing to discuss more position we uh there was a vote that was pushed through to oppose there were 17 directors who opposed but there were 14 of us who had to abstain and there were five in favor or sorry five against the boat to oppose so anyway so I don't think we're alone most people are going to be deciding at least in the Dr Cog context all those folks we're going to have decisions in the next two weeks let's wrap up here but go ahead Matt just for just for everybody listening Clarity we've talked about the Senate process but it doesn't end there there's another there's more bites the Apple when it goes to the house more chance of testimony more chance at amendments more tweaking modifying so just know that there's still quite a bit of Runway that just because testimony in a day doesn't foreclose more and once it get past here like we still have many bites at the Apple to keep refining this so I just

[256:00] want to be just so everyone knows that there's still plenty of Runway yes typically I would say this could be decided before you meet next but I fully expect that this will be debated up until the very last hour of the general assembly no guarantees but uh this is this is complicated okay well great thanks uh Carl for that update and on process and so our one last thing is a Library District Board of Trustees update maybe Nicole you could give this one yes I would be happy to thank you um so just an update on where we are with the library district selection committee um the committee solicited applications for the last three weeks of March we had 30 people apply so thank you so much to everybody out in the community who applied we had an amazing pool of applicants which made our job really hard we did review all the applications the committee met earlier this week and we are moving 11 people forward to interviews we will do those interviews

[257:00] over the next two weeks and then the committee will meet on April 24th to decide which seven will we will recommend for trustees and which seats they will fill because if you remember the the seats are for different lengths so we will decide that on the 24th and then it will come to a consent agenda item for Council on May 5th to ratify the appointment so we are getting close to the end of the selection process very exciting for that Nicole and I just want to emphasize we had such Stellar applicants and the 11 people were interviewing are all just fantastic people so we're going to be in good hands for sure all right any final thoughts seeing none thanks everyone for a good meeting I'll gavel is closed here at 10 15 pm [Music]