April 20, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] foreign [Music] thank you [Music]

[1:17] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

[2:21] thank you foreign [Music] foreign

[3:00] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

[4:11] [Music] thank you [Music] means it's time for the April 20th 2023 meeting of the Boulder City Council I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order and ask for a roll call in Lucia yes sir thank you present mayor Brockett president

[5:01] councilmember falcon present friend here Joseph present spear president Wallach Winer present and Yates president virtually mayor we have our quorum rustic thanks so much and if I could get an emotion to amend the agenda to add an item 7A a matter from the city attorney report from special investigator clay Douglas so moved Motion in a second all in favor raise your hand okay looks like that's unanimous the agenda is duly amended and so we are going to start tonight with a guest speaker we have Kevin Baumer the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League joining us here Kevin it's a pleasure to have you and looking forward to hearing about the 100th anniversary of the league that's coming up in just a few days here so thanks so much for joining us well I appreciate being here thank you mayor thank you council members and staff

[6:01] um uh Boulder is one of the cities that is nearest and dearest to me uh not just because of my 23 years at the Colorado Municipal league and having had folks from Boulder on our board and a lot of interaction with staff over the years Carl and I have each other on speed dial it's just uh it's it's a pleasure I have like I said been with CML for 23 years I've been the executive director since 2019 and I was just reminiscing it's been too long since I've been in Boulder but the last time I was in the council chambers was four years ago shortly after I started as executive director I was doing a 2500 mile 24 municipality listening Tour all around the state and one of my stops was was here in Boulder and we circled some chairs up here and um I I got a lot of info about things that I should be considering as I was starting as executive director and

[7:01] things I think of uh every day I think for those of you that are uh familiar with CML this may be a little repetition but CML is a member based organization every municipality in the state say for a couple little tiny ones and I'm working on them uh our members of CML so if you drive through an incorporated municipality including the newly Incorporated Municipality of Keystone who adopted or Incorporated at the end of March and also approved a charter commission so likely our next home rule municipality if you're driving through one of those you know it's a CML member and our 21 member board which is elected at large ensures that by population category ensures that even large cities like Boulder and small towns like our president in 2003 was from a little tiny town of Genoa out on

[8:01] the Eastern Plains everyone's represented and as because it's at large when someone runs in a population category they have to say things that appeal to all the other popular categories so I truly believe it's a representative board and Boulder has like I said been a part of the board over the over the many years including and to the reference of Mayor including right from the very beginning so next week is a very exciting week for us because it will officially be our 100th birthday uh Colorado Municipal began right here in Boulder Colorado on April 26 1923 there were representatives from 15 Colorado municipalities that gathered at Mackey Auditorium which was a year old at the time I understand in a room which we still don't know which one it is but it was called the Senate room at the time so if anyone knows any historians of Mackie find out which room was the center room if it still exists but they

[9:00] they'd gathered for three days and they discussed like we do at every have we done it every conference since they discussed Municipal issues including things that we still talk about like Transit they were talking about street cars back then they were talking about Municipal Finance the growing city manager movement Council manager former government movement and uh and so at the end of that conference there were 15 municipalities there 11 of them including Boulder um I'll just name them all Grand Junction Windsor Haxton Loveland Longmont Boulder Arvada Denver Fort Morgan brush Littleton Creek Kansas City Pueblo and Trinidad all adopted a Constitution which now are bylaws informed the Colorado Municipal CU President George Norland was the opening speaker and obviously a storied figure here in Boulder and at CU and and he said something which is worth repeating the community is a partnership not for the sake of personal security

[10:00] of police protection alone but a partnership in the promotion of health of intelligence of morals and of Beauty and the best thing which has happened is the dawn of the conviction Among Us that the municipality can and should be a partnership in promoting the best and fullest of life and that's what that's what led off the the CM of the first CML conference that created CML the uh the first CMO president was the council president from uh Pueblo Colorado his name was John Jackson and he was a bit of a funny guy um and uh at our conference last year I read I read something I'm not going to read tonight but uh he he told jokes and his uh response address to President norlen but he did to get serious for a second he said Municipal problems are not easy on the other hand they are often complex and naughty k-n-o-t-t that kind of naughty and and at times call for great resources we're gathered here for the purposes of discussing problems that are vital to all of us and to the cities and towns we

[11:01] represent our particular Mission here at this time is to discuss specific subjects in relation to our Municipal governments hoping thereby to benefit ourselves in our constituency that's what you do every day and that's what the league does in bringing together um uh you know from Denver to Dove Creek and uh from Boulder to Holyoke and everything in between that's what makes the league strong and that's what makes our our family of municipalities strong and all the all the interests and opinions that we have one uh notable attendee at the um at the first conference was Ida Campbell who is a boulder council member and one of the only women women recognize in the University of Colorado bulletin outlining the proceedings of that first annual conference and on our website we've got a link to a 2009 Daily Camera article that was

[12:01] all about her and one of her colleagues Flora mccarg Campbell was elected in 1917 the same year that her attorney and friend Flora mccarged user legal training to help draft the city's Charter uh which set up the city manager form of government still in use today so um you know a lot of things happened even back then at that first conference and with people that were involved that um that are the foundation for obviously the Colorado Municipal league but um but also the city of Boulder uh and so here we are a hundred years later and uh on the 26th we'll be up at um uh up at mackie again and we're going to celebrate we've invited representatives from each of the founding municipalities our honorary life members past presidents and and League directors and one very talented Municipal attorney that's uh that is one of our life members and and we're going to uh

[13:02] recreate a little bit of that first conference and we're going to celebrate um 100 years that began at Maggie see you actually um was home host to CML for 20 years after that the president or the secretary treasurer of CML which served as essentially the executive director uh worked in the extension office there and and uh and a couple of directors after that and and Boulder was home to CML for a number of years in fact one of the buildings I mean I can't remember the address and I apologize is actually still still there and and then the league bounced around a little bit before we finally found I think what is our permanent home it's been such since 1998 that's 1144 Sherman Street in Denver some of you have been there it's your building so come visit anytime I just worked there but it belongs to the members and I thank you for that so I hope that you are able to

[14:01] um uh I guess Relish in the celebration with us that Boulder is where it all started we will celebrate a lot more at our annual conference which is at Gaylord at the end of June Gaylord Rockies and I hope I hope you can come I will say that and this is hard to believe when you consider how big Gaylord is it's it's sold out now it's not all CML because there's it's a big place they got a couple other conferences but if you're if you uh are looking for lodging for that we do have some of the surrounding places um uh because it's certainly a little a little bit of a a ways out there but I sure hope you can come those of you who haven't been to a annual conference seek out members that have and uh and we're always uh able to see in the next newsletter second time we posted we've got board vacancies and uh 10 10 seats are up every year three from uh small medium large category um and uh and one in the uh actually

[15:03] there's four in the medium category this year and one in the largest category Boulder is one of the large municipalities so let me know if you're interested and I can get you more information Juni knows the drill so so uh um if uh but I appreciate you having me here I know you got a lot on your agenda I want to be respectful of your time uh thank you mayor thank you Council and thank you staff well thanks so much Kevin for joining us in for that bit of History it's fascinating stuff and I look forward to the 26th event I will be reading a declaration in honor of the 100th anniversary at that time and I hope my Council colleagues will be able to join us as well at uh Mackie at two o'clock at 2 p.m on the 26th yeah and there will be an email that goes out from my office on the know before you go uh by Monday I believe very good and just a shout out to Mark and Matt who are CML Representatives currently so and Juni who was before any final thoughts sir we can let you go okay thank you bring me back anytime all

[16:02] right take care [Music] all right um now we will go to item 1B which is an Earth Day declaration presented by council member Benjamin thank you mayor Brockett this is a really important declaration it doesn't speak to anyone individual or group but speaks to the planet we reside on and the precious nature of of life um and so it's important that we recognize it and the changes that our planet are undergoing every year on April 22nd we celebrate our natural environment and bring awareness to the ongoing need to build more resilient systems that protect our community from the threats of climate change from the 2013 floods to the 2021 Marshall fire we have already felt climate change in Boulder communities across the world are forced to confront dangerous climate events the most severe damages are sustained in the least resilient places deepening disparities

[17:00] and weakening already vulnerable communities this harm has been inflicted by human systems that extract degrade and harm our planet Humanity has a practical and ethical obligation to redefine redesign and recover a healthy relationship with the natural world our community has a legacy of adaptive leadership in taking a holistic approach to climate action we were some of the first in the nation to trailblaze efforts like curb siding recycling Municipal carbon taxes on electricity our Ambitions city-wide climate goals are set pursued and periodically updated in accordance with specific with scientific consensus consensus on the level of carbon reduction needed to stabilize the planet to meet these goals our climate initiatives department has evolved their work into three key action areas Energy Systems circular economy and nature-based climate Solutions regionally we collaborative collaboratively launched and continue to co-lead a Vanguard group called Colorado communities for climate action this

[18:02] Coalition of 42 local governments sets aggressive targets and network with other jurisdictions to share best practices and Advance the field at the state level our city leaders collaborate year after year to advance policies that grow green jobs Empower local approaches improve how we handle materials and identify and build complementary Solutions Boulder Beyond Colorado Boulder is an active member of several consortiums of City governments such as the urban sustainabilities directors Network local governments for sustainability and the carbon neutral cities Alliance our threats our threats have no borders nor does our commitment to Solutions we the city of Boulder we we sorry we the city council of the city of Boulder declare April 22nd 2023 as Earth Day and urge the community to celebrate the environments we call home and join the city's efforts to slow climate change and build a more resilient and Equitable community

[19:02] thanks for that Matt looking forward to Earth day here in a couple days right so now we're going to move to our open comment period so we have Ryan here tonight to go over public participation guidelines or at least here virtually thank you good evening and my name is Ryan Hansen I serve the people of Boulder as Community engagements manager I want to make sure we cover uh the you guidelines for public participation during this council meeting we want to make sure each of you know that we appreciate your thoughts shared here tonight and that the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive Civic conversations that this Vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members staff and Council as well as democracy for people of all ages identities lived experience and political perspectives

[20:01] more information on this Visions on our website and on the next slide we'll go into a bit more detail uh sharing that the following examples are rules of decorum found within the border of is code and support this Vision each of these will be upheld during this meeting all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against another person obscenity racial alphabets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the median are prohibit participants are required to sign up using the name they're commonly known by please display your full name if you are joining by Zoom before you're allowed to speak currently on the audio testimonies permitted online and then in-person participants are asked to refrain from expressing support

[21:00] or disagreement verbally or with Applause with the exception of support for declarations please know that traditionally support is shown silently through American Sign Language Applause or jazz hands thank you thanks so much Ryan so we've got 12 people signed up to speak in person and eight signed up to speak virtually each of you will have two minutes and our first three in-person speakers are Annette James Joanne Corson and Anna casa sibara Annette James good evening a couple of weeks ago we witnessed two Tennessee lawmakers be expelled from the legislature for an egregious attempt to silence their voices talking about this with my fair-minded well-informed Bolder friends and

[22:02] neighbors they offered a clear insightful repudiation of this outcome calling it a farce of democracy this discussion tonight treads in those same tracks we have a dually selected unanimously confirmed slate of individuals having ability to perform the duties of police oversight as attested to by a committee comprising representatives from two Community organization current police oversight panelists a city director and a consultant yet it is in Jeopardy of being dismantled because a member or members have exercised their right to criticize their government or for fear that a critical opinion might emerge if the special counsel's recommendation of expulsion is accepted it will

[23:02] exacerbate the erosion of Community Trust I asked my friends and community to uphold one's right to petition their government and to do so without fear or penalty will you my community and friends and neighbors see the same verse of democracy here at the base of the Rockies that you saw in the Smokies of Tennessee NAACP Boulder County is fully experienced with the city's efforts to control a meaningful exchange of ideas centering around policing therefore we ask Council to reject the special counsel's recommendation thank you thank you Annette now we have Joanne Corson and a casa sibara and Michelle Rodriguez

[24:05] my name is Joanne Corson I'm a long-standing member of the Boulder Community I went to Platte Junior High I graduated from Boulder high in 1987 with one of Penfield Tate II's daughters my dad worked for IBM my aunt was a emergency room physician for many years at Boulder Community Hospital I'm a member of First Congregational Church of Boulder and a member of the NAACP I'm also an administrator at CU Boulder just up the hill all of us have bias prioritizing Mr Douglas's bias over the El Centro Amistad and the NAACP Boulder County who recommended in favor of the current panel members is in complete opposition to the intent of the existence of the police oversight

[25:03] panel as I said everyone is biased the biggest bias is that we need the police as the primary way to create a safe community in the first place there are so many other ways to invest in community safety and care that do not involve the police and that prioritize the safety of our bipoc neighbors the panel is here to hold the police accountable if panel members don't have an opinion about what's going on in the city then the panel is useless the panel members need to be interested informed and concerned qualities that Sweeney Moran embodies if policing is biased as we know it is

[26:02] then those with negative police experiences or critical views of policing are needed to move us toward fairness negative experiences or statements but if you could email us the rest of your comments please so we can get those okay thank you next to Ivana Casas Ibarra Michelle Rodriguez and Judd landsman hello everybody my name is Anna Karina I stand here as a representative of Amistad and our community for those who have stood before me for those who could not be here and for our future Generations as a representative of Amistad and part of the police oversight panel selection committee I made recommendations for people who have who we know would speak the truth to our lived experiences

[27:00] it is when this truth it is spoken by those who are not afraid to speak that they become a threat and an inconvenience to those in places of power when these truths and these people are there to make possible systematic change as when they become a threat and that's when they try to silence us taking the recommendations of a single lawyer for the removal of the member Suni Miran would once again silence the voices of historically excluded communities or voices the complaints file where complaced against the police oversight panel selection committee now the police oversight panel nominees why was the selection committee never interviewed how can he form a natural opinion and write a complete report of his findings without even talking to us a report in which my name is misspelt and incomplete a report in which he failed to make a

[28:01] distinction between bias and informed opinion based on scene actions and interactions if you're looking for people who have never had a bad experience or bad interaction with police to form the panel you may as well just call it police fan panel having a police oversay panel but not effective police oversight is only symbol a symbolic gesture and not a real path to create Community Trust which is what you claim to want once again it is obvious that what is wanted as a continuous continued continuation of a system that is ruled by white supremacy that protects the wealthy white land owners Landa was violently stolen from indigenous people at the wealth that was built on the Blood and Tears of people stolen from Africa and their descendants and the rest of your comments please thank you for your testimony now we have Michelle Rodriguez Judd landsman and hope Mickelson

[29:02] is Michelle here not seeing her so we will go to Judd landsman Jude sorry Jude yeah my name is Jude lanceman I served as the NAACP County representative to the police oversight panel selection committee along with Anna from El Centro Amistad and two serving oversight panelists we carefully chose our slate with discussion of pros and cons and consideration of the interviews of each candidate and the needs of the police oversight panel it is beyond belief that a lawyer could come up with a ruling such a special counsel has after a shoddy and ill-considered and obviously geared towards a particular outcome

[30:00] investigation without even a pretense of interviewing the accused panel selection committee members this is a blatant attempt by city council and staff to delegitimize Citizen Police oversight and override Community decision making in order to continue pandering to the police and the Union clearly City Council Members should decide police oversight matters because after all representatives from NAACP and El Centro Amistad cannot be trusted to represent the community members statistically over twice as likely to be impacted by police misconduct it is a slap in the face to all members of NAACP Boulder County El Centro Amistad the communities we share and to the police oversight panel itself the selection committee unanimously chose to promote a slate

[31:01] that would fulfill the mission the oversight panel was created for to assure community members that efforts would be made to hold police accountable for misconduct complaints Boulder is not unique special or Progressive it is just like any other mid-sized City in the nation with a union that is currently resisting police oversight I urge city council to consider the chilling wider implications of following this manipulative ruling thank you thank you for your testimony I know we have hope Mickelson Claudia thieme and Linda Quigley my name is Hope Michaelson and I'm here to speak against supporting SB 23213 even in its present rendition I'm a professor of mechanical and environmental engineering I've been studying atmospheric and combustion

[32:00] science for over 30 years and in my professional opinion SB 23213 is a direct assault on efforts to accept the reality of climate change and adapt to it in a sustainable way after two day Decades of drought in Colorado we are facing diminished water resources and greatly increasing risk of wildfires and uncontrolled fires like the Marshall fire at the Wildland Urban interface climate models consistently predict continued drought in the future according to a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences one of the main factors for high risk of Devastation from Wildland Urban interface fires in their spread is increased density and of Housing and other structures many of Colorado cities and towns including Boulder sit at the Wildland Urban interface and are susceptible to wildfires increasing density in these areas is irresponsible at best in addition water resources are under strain in Colorado the Colorado River is already overdrafted and climate models predict further depletion of the Colorado River by 10 to 30 percent increasing growth increases water demand

[33:02] and in addition to increasing risk of devastating fires SB 23213 will put additional strain on depleting Water Resources yes urban sprawl is irresponsible but is unconscionable to encourage population growth in climate driven drought-ridden regions particularly those at the Wildland Urban interface without first developing well-designed goals of sustainability and implementing an effective set of policies for adapting to climate change we need Boulder leadership to have the courage to demand comprehensive status strategy and not ignore or deny the reality of climate change in consideration of council member's Benjamin statement to begin with let's think more deeply about this subject and please do not support SB 23213 thank you thank you hope now we have Claudia theme Linda Quigley and Darren O'Connor

[34:06] good evening council members my name is Claudia Hansen theme I'm a resident of Boulder and I'm speaking this evening on behalf of the boulder progressives I have two comments or comments on two issues tonight I'll try to be brief about both the first involves the police oversight panel as we shared in our statement earlier this week we're extremely concerned that the recommendation of the special counsel undermines the independence of the pop and jeopardizes the entire project of civilian police oversight in Boulder our oversight system empowers intentionally and correctly members and representatives of over-policed communities to review and recommend applicants the appointment system was intended to build trust and to correct however modestly the historic and ongoing exclusion of black and brown voices in our community representatives of the NAACP Boulder County and El Centro Amistad two groups

[35:00] who twice approved the most recent slate of nominees are here tonight and we ask that you honor their expertise and follow their lead in Seeking a resolution the second issue also on your agenda tonight is the state land use and housing Bill known as SB 213 the bill that passed out of committee on Tuesday is diminished but it is still alive and it still matters we're incredibly grateful to members of our Boulder Community who took time off work wrangled child care and in some cases waited over 10 hours to testify for the bill before the Senate local government and housing committee two weeks ago while at the Capitol we witnessed a parade of Mayors and local officials denying the unmet housing needs in their communities they claimed over and over that things are under control we appreciate that Boulder this time has chosen a different path we really do we ask that you formally confirm your support for SB 213 tonight and that you continue the important work that we've

[36:00] started locally on occupancy adus and middle housing the housing crisis requires all hands on deck at all levels of government thank you thank you Claudia now we have Linda Quigley Darren O'Connor and Eric Budd I think um I want to specifically address the six three majority in our city council that votes something like a block over and over and over to often defy the quite expressed wishes of the people of Boulder being up here um 52 percent of the voting public said no to bedrooms are for people yet what we heard from Council was that you wanted to tweak out some reasons that a few people gave you

[37:01] as a justification for pushing forward on your own ideas about how to go more dense and then you surrender to the governor home rule which was something we also voted on except when I suppose you want it which is for safe injection sites um and it seems like there's this disparity so my question is when do you represent me um now I'm a disabled retired Widow of a veteran when do I get represented at 52 percent apparently not I don't I rarely get a response from the progressives on this Council I used to call myself a progressive so I'm mystified I really am mystified you come to counsel you do all this reading you

[38:01] do all this research and then you ignore us I don't have a sign but I did want to say oh here's my countdown that um I saw police oversight as something that maybe required extreme discernment and impartiality that is not Lisa Sweeney Moran and deleting post does not create impartiality please consider having her removed your time's up thank you appreciate your testimony Darren O'Connor Eric Budd and Kimberly Lord good evening Council Darren O'Connor speaking on behalf of the NAACP Boulder County Branch regarding the recent recommendation of special counsel Claiborne Douglas first off the code of conduct complaint was directed at the actions of the selection committee who recommended police oversight panel candidates to this body no one from the selection

[39:00] committee was interviewed the special counsel recommendation to remove a pop member that this very body voted on and approved is a shoddy error-prone document that appears to have been written conclusion first this by a man who appears to have little to no knowledge of important movements like abolition and deep fund the police unlike Mr Douglas selection committee members included diverse community members with insight into such topics this included selection committee members representing the NAACP and El Centro almost if every person recommended for pop by historically excluded communities was required to have no negative opinions of any kind towards the police lest they be deemed to have bias forbidding them from serving the legislative intent to ensure historically excluded communities have a voice in police oversight will never be achieved

[40:00] surely the original drafters of the police oversight ordinance did not intend for negative experiences or public statements questioning police Behavior to be reasons for automatic exclusion of the very people the very population that this ordinance is meant to include city council voted and approved the Full Slate of recommended Pop members to not substitute Mr Douglas's biased opinions for that of the selection committees and yours to remove a pop member due to dissenting voices voices that go to the extreme of not believing police oversight is even necessary would once again be Justice denied for historically excluded communities thank you thank you Darren now if Eric Budd Kimberly Lord and Evan ravitz hi Council Eric Budd I live in Boulder it's been about four years since I've testified in these Chambers and it seems

[41:02] like it's about time that I come back um I I want to also talk about the police oversight panel and I'm asking Council to reaffirm the selection committee reaffirm the vote that you took just a few months ago the one where you all decided using the criteria who was fit to be on this pencil panel and you approved these folks to be on the panel um I really want you to understand the depth of legal issues that the attorney Dan Williams sent on behalf on this issue understanding that this entire process of code of conduct appears to be invalid understanding that a proper investigation as so many have testified tonight does not appear to have even been taken to get a response from this third party special investigator making a recommendation that you do

[42:01] something that you do not have the power to do all in order to overturn what the people on the selection committee what you all ultimately decided I find this baffling how did we get here I have to be honest reading through the depth of illegal issues here reminds me a lot of three years ago when myself and Chelsea Castellano sued the city with bedroom server people because of the absolute malpractice the city managed on that issue and I see I see this to be very similar overturning decisions potentially taking actions that are not legal I'm asking you not to do those things so I stand here here tonight with so many people that they just want to see the work of the police oversight panel the important work be done please reaffirm that please move on this now this this has been a really destructive

[43:00] process let's just move on thank you thank you Eric now we have Kimberly Lord and Evan ravitz thank you good evening Council Kim Lord I'm actually here in my lawyer capacity tonight I'm The Landings attorney for the Viewpoint just get into the microphone sure um I'm the land use attorney for the Viewpoint Office Park this is on the call up check-in as item 4B I'm simply here to say please don't call this up we don't ask for it to be called up it's a very simple use review that was approved unanimously by planning board I am here to answer questions if there were any during that call-up discussion but we would just simply request that you pass on a call-up and that the planning board's unanimous decision be affirmed thank you thanks Kim last in-person

[44:00] testifier Evan ravitz waiting for my presentation oh there it is um Jared Polis always dressed the king for his lavish Halloween parties a few years back I'm a no on hb23 I want to see more housing but with guarantees of affordability and less car use and I want it done locally and democratically number one Boulder and Denver already have the highest density in the state and the most expensive housing so without affordability mechanisms this bill will not get affordability two the city has always lobbied against state laws like this that hobble local government laws against local rent control pesticide control a real estate

[45:00] transfer tax and forcing us to keep our money in banks that invested in fossil fuels Etc now only Boulder is asking for the state to preempt local land use laws because the council majority can't get what it wants democratically since mayor Jones The Motto here is get her done Ram it through quick and dirty this would set a precedent to impose other preemptions what if a future legislature wants to again prohibit local gun laws or to prevent us from being a sanctuary City or to stop our first in the country gay rights law passed in 1987 by citizen initiative the city asking for amendments but approving the power grab even without amendments I believe shows council members are cravenly kissing the Ring of

[46:00] the king hoping for a job with him like jobs held by former mayor will tour former mayor Sean McGrath and former commissioner Elise Jones were not your stepping stone I think seven our first three virtual speakers are Lynn Siegel Kim McCarthy and Mylene Villard Lynn Siegel just testified at the state house today about Excel and the rate hikes our utility rate ice and they prefer that I use my video window get that do you hear that they prefer and the city of Boulder can't even provide me a video window and they don't want to see me what is this you know and yet the contradictory yes of Jared Polis pushing this land use reform liberalization that is just

[47:01] mind-boggling four plexes in all residential rl1 unbelievable you know um adus doesn't really matter so much because they aren't going to get built all that much because they're expensive but the the occupancy level and I've had up to 17 people at my house before Airbnb dumped me so I I've had plenty of folks here but I'm opposed to that just being as high as you want to go that's ridiculous and especially for University Hill you know this land liberalization has a major effect on Boulder with use of open space fire after the Marshall fire you know this morning on kgnu the guy that was addressing fire issues or I mean addressing growth issues didn't even phase him that more density like Al

[48:01] Bartlett said means more dead people when the fire comes like this is just obscene what's happening with our state government and you know what it's doing it's gonna it's gonna bring people from all over the United States to this state and then they're going to be spread out at the edges into all the other states it's and he says it's not a sprawl it's the biggest sprawl you could process possibly imagine to push that kind of land use reform UNS untenable done thank you Lynn now we have Kim McCarthy Myleene Villard and Sammy Lawrence hello hello oh you can hear me my son applied for a job through Boulder

[49:00] downtown and a block by block interview with the boulderdowntown.org email requested my son to text his social security card to the interviewer's personal phone as a form of conditional job acceptance my goal is to find out who's holding chip and Boulder downtown accountable for their involvement with block by block and employees or contractors for any illegal or questionable hiring practices and activities who has audit or other responsibility for how block by block receives and stores personal information of candidates and employees being hired on behalf or through Boulder downtown I also alert City Council of how chip the CEO of Boulder downtown responded to this illegal hiring practice and his intention to resolve the issue two things stand out my various Communications with chip one chip stated Boulder downtown functions as a quasi-government entity and two after

[50:02] being told about his interviewer requesting my son's social security card chip dismissed me and the incident only stating it was blocked by Block's problem I asked city council and Boulder residents if Chip claims that Boulder downtown has no responsibility yet the website has a page dedicated to the ambassador program and ambassadors then who holds this quasi-government entity responsible when he won't hold his ambassadors and program Partners to Legal hiring standards and practices I searched sam.gov for Boulder downtown registration active or otherwise and this quasi-government entity is not listed or registered as a quasi-government entity conducting business on behalf of the city or local Chamber of Commerce Boulder downtown is proving itself to be irresponsible with regard to its performance and this incident needs to be audited and entered into the responsibility and qualification reports

[51:00] thank you Kim now we have Mylene vielard then Sammy Lawrence and Kathleen Hancock hi my name is Milan Villard I am a resident of Boulder a core member of Boulder search showing up for racial Justice and a member of the NAACP bullet County Branch I'm also a new police oversight panel member um tonight I'm not representing Boulder search the NAACP Northern police oversight panel but only myself for several months now have been I've seen the purpose of the panel be at best ignored and at Wars trampled by privileged and Empower Savvy members of our community and some city council members who have been loud and clear in wanting the mission of the pop to fail a mission which is a quote to ensure that historically excluded communities have a voice in police oversight unquote there's been a huge amount of noise lately but most of it has been to

[52:00] silence them let's not forget the Vera report that was done not too long ago where if Boulder County was a state it would rank among the worst in terms of racial profiling let's not forget either why the pop started it started with Zayn Atkinson an Arabia student of color who was held at gunpoint for doing his job of picking up trash and let's not forget also that the gun was only lowered when Atkinson's boss a white man showed up and without showing any form of ID confirmed that Atkinson was indeed a student after this there was Sammy Lawrence and many others could have similar experiences and no recourse what we've been talking about tonight it's not about Lucy Sweeney Moran's competencies as a panelist it is an overreaching mentally discredit the independence of the panel before it even gets to work this year if you're going to judge one person whether post on social media let's check each other's posts that of any and all police officers and of anyone involved with the

[53:00] panel I would also like to know how much Dei work special counsel Douglas has done I'm disconcerted by the many blind spot in lack of awareness in their conclusion please reject their recommendations thank you thank you Milan Sammy Lawrence then Kathleen Hancock and Laura McGuire mayor Brackett I'm not seeing Samuel Lawrence president Duncan move on to Kathleen Hancock then thank you can you hear me yes okay great thanks my name is Kathleen Hancock I live in Boulder and I help run a group called I think Boulder thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight we advocate for a variety of actions and policies related to housing and climate change because we support home rule we oppose

[54:02] sb213 it will do nothing to lower housing rates in Boulder instead the open market envisioned in this bill will lead to unplanned development that works well for wealthy developers but not the rest of us the sheer number of amendments shows the Folly of trying to legislate from the talk down for cities as diverse as Boulder and Pueblo okay we're already on my next slide that's fine we created a petition for those who cannot come tonight but want you to know they oppose this bill and why they oppose it I'll highlight just two points here simply building more undermines our climate change goals with no opportunities for helping reduce housing costs in high demand markets like Boulder 0.8 lists other ways the state can help without infringing on local rule we welcome that kind of help next slide please we did not have a lot of time to work on this but in the eight days we did the petition received 367 signatures here you can see some examples of comments

[55:01] people made about why they opposed this legislation next slide here are some additional comments against this bill is it doesn't consider the impact of overbuilding on the environment local policies are what have made Boulder a special place there's no sense in terms of creating more affordable housing in Boulder the local control has a long way to go to serve the people of Boulder I strongly support local control and housing and land use there are proven ways to get more affordable housing we need to double down on those policies for example the cash and lose should be doubled this will bring in more money for non-profits to build permanently affordable housing it will also incentivize developers to build more affordable housing units mixed in with market rate units that's the ideal way to build more housing that creates diverse communities your time is up but thank you for your testimony now we have Laura McGuire Emily Reynolds

[56:00] and Chelsea Castellano how to Echo when people have already said tonight I expect the police oversight panel to hold the police accountable therefore I expect panel members to be informed interested and to have opinions about how policing is practiced in Boulder removing releases Vinnie Moran for having these qualities would make me seriously doubt the Integrity of the police oversight panel furthermore she was recommended by diverse community members who were authorized to recommend her and the city council subsequently voted for her appointment removing her would continue a long pattern of protecting wealthy white property holders over the welfare of black people and other minority groups if Sweeney Iran is removed I have to question whether the city council is in fact committed to police or Farm inequity or whether the existence of a police oversight panel is meant to be for show

[57:00] a panel that can only have positive opinions of the organization it's supposed to be holding accountable would be worse than useless I stand in solidarity with the community organizations that were part of the selection committee including NAACP Boulder County and El Center Amistad thank you for your time thank you Laura now Emily Reynolds and Chelsea Castellano good evening Council Emily Reynolds my topic this evening is the breathtaking overreach of SB 23-213 in which city leaders see local control of zoning land use and home rule to the state this flawed inconsistent land grab document requires 18 amendments totaling dozens of pages it does little more than give lip service to affordable housing is that the new vision

[58:00] this bill is in direct conflict with the decisive defeat of the bedrooms initiative and with the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan the fullest expression of how this community wishes to develop going forward how is this Council so willing to divide the will of the people a home rule City like Boulder can operate independently as long as it does not violate state law weeks ago Council wanted under this home rule authority to have the right to establish safe injection sites and now to obtain drastic controversial changes to housing policy you want to surrender that authority to the governor asking the governor to override our Municipal Authority is an abdication of council's responsibilities what if we had a different Governor supporting State legislation diminishing a woman's right to choose what if the state decided that we should dedicate half of our open space to housing

[59:00] please listen to constituents and vote no quick side note I request that Council observe the findings of bias by the special counsel they hired to investigate the disgruntled Lisa Sweeney Moran I hope she hasn't bullied her way into your heart with her abrasive and Reckless recent actions unfounded accusations and lawsuit she needs to be removed from the police oversight panel thank you very much Kimberly we finished with Chelsea Castellano do we have Chelsea in the meeting shall see you there

[60:00] I think your mic is open Chelsea we can give it another try all right seems like we got technical difficulties but Chelsea if you could email us whatever comments you're going to deliver to us audibly we'd appreciate that and with that I'll close open comment and I will turn to City staff to look for any responses I said I know that two of the items major items that have been spoken to today are something that we're going to be speaking to later on this evening and I just want to appreciate everyone who has shared their voice on difficult issues and I hope that as we continue to discuss particularly the role of police oversight in the city that we don't overlook the tremendous and great work that the current panel is doing panel

[61:02] members before them had been doing as that work continues thank you 300 send her to Germany any comments or questions from council members oh yeah Junie I did have a question or a comment um and I was puzzled by some of the comments that were made earlier and I started thinking and asking myself because I hear the word marginalization and how the special counsel decision would somehow marginalize historically excluded communities and I did not understand that part and then someone else made another comment how that removing Lisa and a lot of the people with the small little panel it has discrimination crossed over it and I was thinking to myself how is removing Lisa I don't know her Heritage but

[62:04] I don't want to go there but anyway I just I was not sure how would that be discrimination in itself and I thought to myself okay I think I get it because I've had community members who just reached out to me essentially what I heard today is that going with the special counsel would somehow lead to marginalization of excluded groups because the panel members were chosen by the NAACP and Central Amistad or at least that's what I heard tonight so I just wanted to say that to be clear to people who are listening who's reached out to me because at first I had a hard time what's the word making the connection between Lisa in historically marginalized people and also discrimination but I get it thank you

[63:00] thanks Judy anybody else I'll just make a quick comment about uh if Kim McCarthy is still on the line she was talking about some potential misbehavior by a block by block who is contracted by downtown Boulder partnership I don't believe we have direct oversight over the HR practices of that contracted organization so you'll probably encourage her to to reach back out to block by Block in in downtown Boulder partnership but thanks and thanks everyone very much who came with us came here in person or virtually to share your thoughts it is much appreciated okay um that then takes us to the consent agenda um daily shift you could yes sir thank you our consent agenda is item number three tonight and it consists of items 3A through 3M comments or questions on the consent agenda

[64:00] I uh yes Rachel just one on I think it's three h it was a consideration uh for a motion to waive the 12-month prohibition of a former board member and I just wanted I wondered if staff could explain that why we would um go for that in this situation I haven't seen that before so wonder what the proper consideration is there and I think that that individual was replaced on Clap by someone else from her organization so I wonder why that person could not um represent what the outgoing lab member could represent as well I'd be happy to answer that thank you um council member friend um so this came as a request from the Cannabis board which is also known as collab and they expressed a desire to have this member come back and share her expertise and

[65:02] certain uh products that um she manufactures and they wanted to know more information about the products and thought that it would be helpful to have her available to provide that education to the board and do you know like what when we have done this in the past or how common it is or anything like that and I apologize that I didn't ask in advance but yes that's fine I know of at least one circumstance in which we've done this in the past um think that it had to do with uh the downtown management commission I think it was called the time and might have involved Sean Maher I can't recall exactly but they wanted him to come back and also um you know as kind of an expert in the field provide some additional

[66:01] information so that's the same reason that it's been being requested here as well yeah okay thanks sure I'm just going to call on myself and just to highlight item 3G which is expanding two of our state natural areas on our open space areas and creating a new one the Coal Creek Tall Grass Prairie in the jewel Mountain area just uh thanks staff for your work on that and celebrate the designation of those special natural areas and with that if we have no other comments or questions perhaps there's a motion out there I move the consent agenda second we have a motion and a second as a roll call I believe is correct sir and we'll start tonight's roll call with council member Joseph spear yes mayor Pro Tim Wallach yes

[67:02] councilmember weiner yes Yates yes Benjamin yes mayor Brockett yes councilmember folkerts yes and friend um I'm yes to all except for H thanks duly note thank you the consent agenda sir items a through M are hereby past United unanimously except for the noted objection from council member friend on H on H thanks uh if we could go to our first column check-in please yes sir our call-ups are item four on tonight's agenda item 4A is the concept plan review and comment for a proposed Redevelopment of 4401 Broadway with a 107 250 square foot mixed use project to

[68:05] include housing retail light industrial and art studio space Community Green Space and a new home for the boulder Museum of Contemporary Art proposed project consists of approximately 17 000 square feet of Museum space 17 500 square feet of at grade storefront commercial space and 72 750 square feet of residential space split between one bedroom two bedroom and live work units with 96 parking spaces provided that is a 29 reduction this is reviewed under case number lur 2022-00046 solution I believe we have a short step presentation on this item we do I see Chandler at the ready you can all see my screen no no

[69:04] how it can you can okay um so I will be presenting 4401 Broadway concept plan I know you'd like this to be quick so I'm going to move pretty fast through the initial slides um this is a council call-up option for concept review we're all familiar with the purpose of concept plan it's to provide General feedback to the applicant prior to submitting a formal development review application this concept plan went to planning board on March 21st 2023 um city council may vote to call the item up for a council hearing to provide additional feedback and as noted the applicant is requesting that this item be called up by city council for a public hearing for public notification written notice was sent out to Property Owners within 600 feet and posted on the property staff has received numerous comments from neighboring property owners and residents some with concerns over

[70:02] proposed site access and the majority expressing support for the proposed project uh the location as you can see here is in North Boulder on the corner on the uh sorry on the North West corner of Broadway and violet it is located within the boundaries of the North Boulder sub-community plan and the land use designated in the North Boulder sub-community plan is a mix of residential and mixed-use transition to adjacent residential in terms of the Boulder Valley comp plan land use designation there are actually three designations on the site there's medium density residential mixed-use business and manufactured housing in terms of the zoning on the site it is split zoned between residential medium one and mixed use two the proposed project as was described is 17 000 square feet of Museum space roughly 17 500 square feet of backgrade

[71:01] storefront commercial space 67 residential units including 19 live work units and 96 parking spaces which represents a 29 parking reduction the museum would be three stories two three-story mixed use buildings as well uh two-story wraparound mixed use building on the corner Broadway and violet and three-story apartment buildings along violet 19 live work units are proposed on the interior of the site access would be as currently shown as proposed from Violet and 10th Street and the applicant is proposing roughly 17 555 square feet of shared open space on the rm1 portion and 37 000 square feet and change on the mu-2 portion of the site um so the summary of the required modifications to the code and why this concept review is particularly complex so the modifications to the land use code that they're requesting that can be requested through site review include

[72:01] the 29 parking reduction modification to maximum number of stories uh setback reductions and an increase in the maximum allowable building size for the museum to go up to 17 500 square feet there are also modifications to the land use standards being shown that would require uh either rezoning land use map change or changes to the use and or intensity standards or some other type of special ordinance by Council these include a museum as an allowed use that's currently prohibited in the mu2 zone District live work units on the western portion of the site which are currently prohibited in rm1 um approximately 585 square feet of open space per unit on the western portion of the site where 3 000 square feet of open space per unit are required at an far of approximately 1.02 on the Eastern portion of the site where the maximum far and mu2 is 0.6 so

[73:01] as we kind of discussed in the planning board hearing a summary of the required processes that kind of represent the um most I guess the most efficient path forward if this project is supported would be a targeted update to North Boulder subcommunity plan land use map to amend the underlying language designations there that would then lead to a Boulder Valley comprehensive plan land use map Amendment which would then allow for a rezoning of the site to a higher intensity Zone districts that would allow both the proposed uses and the far and overall residential density and then ultimately a site review which could be processed concurrently with the land use map Amendment and the rezoning as I've noted here three out of four of these required processes would require approval of an ordinance by city council um at the planning board hearing we

[74:00] discussed four key issues these are all outlined in the city council memo um first key issue is would would planning boards support either changing the me2u standards or potentially rezoning the nb2 portion of the site to allow for the proposed Museum use uh key issue 2 was considering Boulder Valley comp plan and nobo plan goals and policies with the planning board support a land use map change and or a rezoning to one or both portions of the site in order to allow for the proposed residential density key issue 3 was does the planning board feel that on balance this project is consistent with the gold goals and policies of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and ksu-4 was whether the board had feedback to the applicant on the conceptual site plan and architecture regarding key issue number one the board generally expressed support for the proposed Museum use and supported a targeted update to the North Boulder Southern community plan and a subsequent Amendment to the Boulder Valley comp plan Landis designation on the site to facilitate rezoning of the property the board generally did not feel that updating the youth standards in the land use code to accommodate a single project was appropriate and preferred a broader

[75:00] Community feedback driven process to change the underlying land use and Associated zoning some board members expressed concerns over rezoning without a specific development commitment I.E a concurrent site review submittal as well as the potential time and cost associated with the required processes regarding key issue number two in general the board agreed that the proposed density far exceeds the existing density anticipated for the site and the noble plan and bvcp Chandler is going to say you don't have to read every word on the side just if you don't mind well yeah it's it's just hard to um summarize but um key issue number two the board felt that the density exceeded everything um and that a yeah um they also agreed that if the Nobel plan in bbcp designations were updated they would likely support a rezoning if it was tied to a specific proposal um the board was split on the issue whether the proposed units would provide market rate affordability and some expressed interest in seeing a provision of on-site affordable units

[76:02] key issue number three uh generally three board members felt it was consistent with the bbcp four four board members uh generally agreed that it was to be determined based on the outcome of the noble Plan update and the final project plans and key issue number four um generally the board liked the site layout there were a variety of differing comments including access concerns by the neighboring property owner um TDM strategies a desire for excellent awe-inspiring and challenging architecture the programming for the open space and the need to consider the design of the northern wall of the museum as it interacts with the adjacent multi-use path so for next steps again the applicant has requested that the item be called up if Council votes to call the item up public hearing will be scheduled for a date within 60 days likely June 1st a public hearing will be held for

[77:00] Council to make comments and provide additional feedback to the applicant that is all thank you thanks so much thanks for the flexibility on the summarizing comments are desire to call this up new Matt uh I'll say comment than my response or actually no I do would like I would like to call this up and I'll say why um so I'm uh just for transparency I'm the council representative on the B mocha board and just sitting in on those meetings I'll just say that this process has been very thoughtful very intentional and really in line with what I think was really some of that core intention 20 some years ago with the North Boulder sub community plan in the North Boulder Arts District this seems to be part of a culmination of the success of that work in that part of our community so we have some challenges to work through but I think this is exactly in the kind of direction we want to go and I think we can work through these challenges pretty good let's see Mark um this is appropriate to ask a question

[78:00] sure what is the development and financial structure of the applicants proposal we have two main components we are contemplating a rezoning some of these will facilitate the um the private sector if I may call it that housing and and other and Commercial development and I'm asking because I my concern is that we don't end up with a project in which we have done all of these things to facilitate a museum and a private sector development and we don't end up with the museum for lack of fundraising or something like that so are they tied together is the applicant standing behind the museum um or are they simply two separate entities left to swim on their own we might invite the applicant up to

[79:00] answer that question if you could introduce yourself hi there Danica Powell trestles strategy group um I'll take a first blush at it and Andrew godimi who is the property owner and um The Joint developer with bimoka is in the zoom land if he could be promoted he could probably help answer this question the public-private partnership is based around a land donation to the museum for the museum site which is a a decent value a high valuation of land donation and so the private development market rate development would help fund that land donation so it was very much a public-private partnership it's all of us working together that's why the site review rezoning and land use map changes would all come together as one package so that you would be approving all of it together so that it wouldn't be developed without the museum when you say it wouldn't be developed without the museum in terms of fundraising in terms of actual Construction in terms of the approval so

[80:02] if uh if approvals were gained on this project and a site review was approved it would include a museum and the rest of the project would not be able to be built without that museum because it's in the site review development agreement it would be in the documents I'll just note if we call this up we can dig deeper into these members those are good questions so yeah do you want to add anything oh very good the only thing I would say is that David yeah oh yes executive director and chief curator for the boulder Museum of Contemporary Art the only thing I would like to add is that we really would love to hear your feedback and we're grateful for your time and we want to make this project the best we have started fundraising the total integrated Capital campaign right now is somewhere around 25 million dollars and we have secured 30 of that still the project is really ahead and I

[81:02] don't want to throw years but it's it would say four or five years ahead until we break ground so I think we're going to be able to raise the funds to fulfill the construction up for the project yeah okay and I'll just add a comment that I think this project is moving in really uh positive direction I would like to call it up so we can work through the details because there are a few thorny things in there so I'll just go ahead and make a motion that we call this project up second any further comments uh see none I'll call for votes a show of hands all in favor that would be unanimous okay call see you again before too long and if we could do our 4B call please follow up consideration of a use review that is referenced under lur

[82:00] 2022055 for non-residential uses at 4410 4430 4440 and 4450 Arapahoe Avenue within the residential high H zoning District this site is within the Viewpoint office plan unit Redevelopment any questions or comments or interest in calling this up no but I will say we're going to hear more about puds they're a thorn and this one's got a PUD but nonetheless we're gonna get more puds I'm gonna deal with that if you say so yeah let's do it very good any any interest in this one and nope okay not seeing any so thanks for being here applicant representative and leave that one alone so we can move to our first our next item which is a matter from the city manager yes sir that is I the middle income down tation

[83:02] there you go I will and um this is uh I think a it is one of council's current priorities but I'll say that it is one that was of interest uh for quite a few years now and started before uh certainly I came on board and so I'll we'll turn the attention to Kurt so he can get us framed up as uh staff get settled good evening Council Kurt fernhover and I support the people in programs of Housing and Human Services in the city excited to bring this city this priority to city council your your priority and um it was it was approved by the voters in 2019. and it's worth noting we have a lot of very different approaches to affordable housing in our city we have a lot of rental stock we have 800 units or 800 homes of

[84:00] ownership units many are are middle income and each each approach in a high income in a high priced City takes investment by the city this approach that you'll be hearing tonight is no different than that um and I I'll just thank uh our former uh Mayor Sam Weaver and and and uh current council member Bob Yates they were initiated this uh this conversation with us a few years ago and the the middle income nut is hard to crack and takes Innovation and creative ideas we don't know if we have the answer tonight but we have um some creative ideas and we're looking forward to your feedback so Holly Hendrickson will be presenting tonight and Jay segnott sitting next to her we'll also be supporting the

[85:01] conversation so thank you foreign hello good evening all right so thanks for the intro Kurt uh so the purpose of this presentation and this uh this brief here is to really review some of the history in the background of this like Kurt said it's been around for a while so we want to just ground ground ourselves in where this came from and review some of some of that history we also want to review some of the details of this unique program it's pretty Innovative and we want to kind of make make that clear uh there's also been quite a few changes between what was initially the initial concept from today and so we want to review those changes kind of dig into some of that and then identify a few ways if possible to move forward with the pilot so uh so like I said there's this this

[86:00] there's been a quite an evolution and quite a history of this pilot program uh so the concept was developed back in 2016 2017. in 2019 it was The Big Year the council provided there's a lot of research a lot of time put in by staff to identify ways to move it forward than uh Council Council in 2019 provided Direction on some of those mechanics and then in November of 2019 there was a ballot initiative to fund the um to create a funding mechanism for the pilot program that was approved by voters so we were all set to go but of course uh coveted like like everything else it put covid put this on hold there were huge changes in the housing market and economic and the economy obviously and so um early or sorry mid last year work was restarted we hired a consultant to do some modeling we kind of dug into some conversations with local lenders to

[87:01] figure out how we could move this forward so before we go into the com some of the specifics of the of this program I wanted to just kind of discuss some of these basic definitions and I know that you've seen some version of this slide over the past few months so I won't kind of belabor any of these points but these were kind of foundational Concepts in and kind of the backbone for the model the modeling presented in the memo and in this discussion so quickly affordable housing um we're utilizing this one-third rule in housing so households paying no more than one-third of their income on housing expenses when we talk about a deed restriction it's this permanent deed restriction that preserves affordability and perpetuity and then of course area median income is a huge one and we we use we we utilized a lot in the memo and for in 2022 for a household of three

[88:03] that area median income was about a hundred and thirteen thousand dollars all right so we can dive into the specifics now that we have everything all those other details out of the way um so we wanted to I wanted to First say how kind of unique and Innovative this program is as far as we know there isn't another um model like this out there and so this is there there this is a quite a unique and Innovative approach to middle-income housing and it combines the uniqueness that combines these two components this down payment assistance and the permanent deed restriction to create this pilot program so um we'll dive into some of those specifics on each of those components now so households earning um so the first component is this down payment assistance to a middle-income household households earning 120 percent

[89:00] of the area median income are eligible to apply for that down payment assistance and the max assistance available um is two hundred thousand dollars so the bolded text here on the slide is uh the the parameters that were changed from 2019 to today so I'll highlight some of those so uh the interest on that down payment assistance loan is at zero percent for the the household getting that down payment assistance that's at zero percent repayment is due at 15 years or when the home is sold and then this final bullet is a pretty big change before between 2019 and today and in the original pilot concept there was no cost assumed for the city but in this new iteration the city would bear a cost so these are estimated costs here but because this is a new change a new cost that wasn't contemplated in the

[90:01] first iteration I'll just kind of dive into some what what those costs assume and what those costs outline um so the cost the 40 000 to 113.5 include the cost of interest for the loan on that initial down payment assistance uh these costs assume we kind of like assumed the max for everything we assumed a Max 250 000 or sorry two hundred thousand dollar loan over that Max term the 15-year limit um at these different interest rates uh we feel we wanted to kind of identify what those maximum costs would be the kind of the upper end of that cost Spectrum to identify what that upper end would be for each unit brought into the into this program and so the natural question that I had When I Was preparing this was well how does that compare to other costs um of bringing in other middle income units into the city's portfolio so in

[91:02] this table the second row or I'd say the third row down is uh the costs that are brought into the city's portfolio by scatter site acquisition for these middle income units um and then the the very bottom row is the uh the down our current the city's current down payment assistance program which is the house to home ownership down payment program this utilizes a shared appreciation model so um there's no deed restriction so it's kind of a a different beast but um we wanted to kind of provide this assessment that to you know just to say that the costs outlined in this middle-income pilot aren't kind of like wildly out of out of the norm in terms of bringing middle income units into the city uh so now we can transition into that other component the deed restriction on homes purchased and the program so in exchange for that uh zero percent

[92:00] interest down payment loan the homeowner also agrees to make their home permanently affordable through a deed restriction that limits appreciation that appreciation rate is is an important one for this program and we'll dive into that in the next few slides we have a recommendation on how that can be determined so we'll dive into that but before we go uh before we go another big change again is this last bullet the income so for all subsequent and second the second and all subsequent home buyers there's no income qualification requirement to purchase the home uh so that first homeowner is income qualified because there's a down payment assistance component to it but all subsequent home buyers are not income qualified um this has been uh you know one of those things we've had to kind of dig into a lot um we had to make this change because the kind of no matter how we we looked at it the appreciation growth just

[93:01] simply outpaced income growth and so in order to keep that Home Affordable for a middle-income household a subsidy would be an ongoing subsidy would be required we've done we hired a consultant last year we kind of uh we we beat this one over and over to try to figure out how to make it work and this is what this is what we came out with so back to that appreciation rate uh so this appreciation rate uh you know we've worked really really hard to figure out an appreciation rate that would kind of uh serve the short term and the long term so there's this balancing act that we have to we have to figure out here so the the appreciation rate has to serve the function of being being high enough for that first household to repay the initial down payment assistance so there has to be some type of wealth generation net Equity involved in the in the appreciation rate and it also has to incentivize participation if it's too

[94:01] low we don't think anybody wants to participate in this um but it also has to be not too high because there has to be some kind of preservation for affordability over time we're trying to make sure that houses in the program are uh affordable to that middle income bracket over time and if that appreciation rate is too high um we're not achieving that and the other thing if it's also too high because there's no income qualification for the second buyer you know we're not sure that we can disincentivize people who can participate in regular Market transactions not to Target these homes so to do this you know like I said we worked we worked quite hard to figure out where where this balance could be we utilize the 10-year average so our recommended methodology is using the 10-year average appreciation rate for the current permanently affordable home ownership program that's kind of where

[95:00] we started in terms of trying to model out how this can this appreciation rate would work over time and then simply we we use that as a Baseline and added percentage points from there to see what what could serve those two functions that I mentioned before low enough to preserve affordability and high enough for some kind of wealth Generations Equity participation incentive uh in exploring uh and exploring this and modeling out modeling that out over the long term we identified this option too so the 10-year average appreciation rate which right now is 2.2 percent but obviously since it's an average it might change um and then adding two percent um we think that this uh methodology going forward for this pilot program is a good starting point um a starting point meaning we can reassess over time um but we we think that it this uh option two or this uh this methodology

[96:02] methodology methodology preserves that affordability over time uh so this graph so I'll just I'll just wow sorry that was cute uh so this graph kind of shows what we're trying to do in this program and where that appreciation rate kind of lives over time so this rate shows that if a if a program if a house was brought into this program today how uh where it would be in terms of area median income affordability in 15 years and in 30 years so given this appreciation rate that we recommend the household brought the house brought into the program today would be affordable to a household in 15 years earning 164 of the area median income and in 30 years that affordability would rise to 209 percent

[97:04] um so I will say that that kind of exceeds those those area median income exceeds what we traditionally think as affordability in terms of middle income but it's this middle space right here that we're really trying there's this huge gap between our current offering and the permanently affordable homeownership program and where the market is going and so we're trying to kind of you know use this tool to fill this Gap um now of course I should you know quickly note that when we're looking at this Gap that market rate is assumed we're assuming a 7.5 appreciation rate which has been which has you know we've just projected what has been happening over time um and we've also we're also assuming an area median income growth projected over kind of what has been happening

[98:00] um recently um so those are some of the assumptions but I think the big takeaway here is we're really trying to fill that Gap in terms of creating this pilot program so I'll just uh quickly um close up here with what we see in terms of next steps uh so you know given the green light we would go ahead and implement this program um you know in the short term like the the now the very short term uh in the short term say one to two years there's uh I'll say like a you know a strategy assessment or looking at evaluating who's participating do we change or are we going to consider refining pilot program parameters to incentivize participation kind of looking at that participation as like the real evaluation in the short term but in terms of measuring success because this the the term of the loan is 15 years and it is a zero percent interest loan there might not be a lot

[99:01] of incentive for a homeowner to exit to refinance to sell their house and so it's possible that we won't know what that what success looks like in terms of the how the first homeowner exits exits the pilot program how the that product how that house looks on the market in for 15 years and of course the impact on the city finances first for 15 years so like a short-term a short-term next steps in terms of like participation evaluation but in terms of really measuring some of these big big metrics for Success it might not happen for 15 years so with that I'll just uh leave these questions these were in the memo and um happy to answer any questions that come presentation appreciate that let's start with questions and then for staff and then we can go to answering their questions for us I've got Bob up first

[100:01] and then Nicole and Juni thanks Aaron and thanks Holly that was a great presentation I know that um staff has lived with this for a really really long time and I really appreciate the Persistence of Staff as you've consulted with Realtors and bankers and consultants and experts and look at programs similar programs in other cities I know it's been many many years that you all have worked on this and a lot of a lot of time a lot of money and I'm glad that we're very very close to launching this pilot hope we're very close to launching this pilot I'll have some comments later but I did have some questions some some of which are things I'm still not quite sure about and some of them are are just two maybe um elicit a little bit more clarification on on the memo and the presentation uh four or five questions if you know minor uh first question for Holly or Jay um could you explain why the program is not limited to first-time homebuyers some some programs in some cities are and I I think there's some good reason for that but I wonder if you

[101:00] can speak to that so uh we looked back at the uh the memo that was prepared back in 2019 and I think we determined that it is limited sorry I'm some of these details will get lost housing and Human Services so um that that is certainly a policy option for Council to consider um it was not part of the original um presentation or the package that was presented but to council way back when um and you know I would just we should probably have a conversation about why Council would want to do that um so but obviously it's an option okay thanks Jay second question is um Holly thanks for for clarifying and explaining the fact that when the program was originally contemplated a few years ago there was payment by the homeowner on this kind of second

[102:00] mortgage the city was providing uh either interest only or maybe some sort of payment to to not have the city go out of pocket or not just go outside go out of pocket as much but the program has shifted so that there is actually no payment of interest during the term of the loan and then the loan is repaid either upon the sale of the house or 15 years whichever happens first could you talk a little bit about why there's no payment during that time yeah so we we spoke to um we spoke to impact Development Fund who's a community development financial institution who it would would help administer this program and um they basically said that the having this kind of dual the deed restriction and a uh a loan that would require payments or that would balloon over time is just kind of a no-go for a big financial institutions and so there was

[103:00] really no way around requiring that um interest bearing loan and having financial institutions be comfortable Lending so in other words the the because the city would be paying the down payment assistance and would be holding a second mortgage or saying that um we've been advised that the first mortgage lenders would not uh be happy with that they they want to be in first position and they want to make sure that payments go into them and there's no payments coming to the city and they have negative amortization is that right yes yes yeah right yeah we wouldn't want to limit three billion people to get that first mortgage otherwise they won't be in the house Holly I think you alluded to this but I want to make sure I understood this correctly um you estimated that the cost of the city over the whole if along with the full 15 years which was the maximum the cost to the city because there was no no payment of Interest could be as low as 40 000 as high as hundred and thirteen thousand under various interest scenarios and I know interest rates are are moving around and they probably will come down over the next couple years they're probably kind of a historic high right now um I assume that those were assuming the

[104:01] worst case situation in other words that the loan lasted full 15 years I assume that if if someone sold their house after seven half years and paid us off it would be half that amount if it was killed after five years it'd be roughly a third of that amount is that a fair assumption that that's the worst case scenario if they held a little 15 years oh sure yeah yeah it was the that full 15 years with the full uh loan that full maximum loan amount this is probably an unfair question but does anybody on staff have to know the average holding time for kind of these um I know they're not all first-time home buyers but home buyers that are in that kind of modest income uh situation oftentimes first time that are seeking the down payment assistance does anybody have any idea what the average holding time is yeah I would say in our permanently affordable home ownership program it roughly mirrors the market so around seven years seven years and so if someone did this for seven years you'd be about roughly half the numbers of Hollywood is that

[105:00] right seven being half of 15. okay um just a couple more questions um I know that the city would once we launched this pilot we launched this pilot the city would need to go out and borrow money which is the very question we presented to voters of course in 2020 which they overwhelmingly approve D but um I seem to recall that that there is some money some kind of seed money that we have kind of in a fund uh that might be um repurposed for this pilot program at least for the first few loans I know that we eventually we'd have to go out to Market could you remind us if that's money is still available and if so how much that is yeah correct um so the current home to ownership program has about eight hundred thousand dollars available that we would use as sort of the seed money initially um so 800 000 depending on the amount of the loan that's four to maybe eight loans um so that really gets us going um if we do get a lot of demand we will

[106:00] we would explore other opportunities for basically you know it could be a line of credit or other things but we'll we'll cross that bridge when we'll get there great thanks just a couple of process questions and I'll then I'll turn over to my colleagues when do we if you get some green lights from from Council tonight when do you think you might be able to launch this program and start using that seed money Jay yep we think we could do it with you know within a month or so it shouldn't take that long to to get going well so like the summer or fall is that right yeah I would I would say the summer is reasonable that's great that's super and um just I'm gonna ask you especially here I know that there's a measuring periods on this pilot to determine whether it's a success but you guys have any like any feeling like if you got like three houses in the program five thousand program fifty thousand program we're like what's your hope in the next five years I mean you know what what would you consider a success as far as just numbers um I'm I'm I'm kind of struggling myself

[107:02] with this so I'm not too sure what the definition of short-term success is yeah no we so so I think one of the this is one of the difficulties and this is the this is like a real Innovation and how uh you know the down payment indeed deed restricted home and so we we really don't have a good idea about who what the uptake in terms of participation would be um and that's kind of that short term if there isn't any we'd have to really go back and take a harder look on on some of those terms to figure out how we can incentivize the program a bit more I assume that you um you we'd be reporting back to council maybe every six or 12 months in the first couple years just to give us an indication of how how it's going is that right yeah like I think that's the yeah that would be the idea Bob do you remember to call a queen on that please I'm done with questions if you don't mind if it's a directly related yeah um since Bob asked how would you measure success I guess the question is in one

[108:00] of the last year or five years how many homes in this ballpark have have we folded in through into deed restriction into our city so are we pulling anything that's in this ballpark of what we're trying to Target uh with this into our overall deed restriction deed restricted portfolio in the city so I'm just kind of curious what the rolling average or how many we've pulled in over a bit of time because that might be a baseline from expectation if we pulled in one and we can pull in six then we're doing pretty well but if we pulled in 10 we're only getting four maybe it's the other direction so I'm just sort of curious you know so the um the scatter site acquisition that um how they talked about so we started that about two years ago uh and I I think we're on house number five um with the sixth one that will be coming up fairly soon so that gives you a sense of three a year is that helpful um yes a little bit hopefully we can exceed that with this program yeah well as Kurt said the middle income ownership

[109:01] is a big nut to crack so thanks for the nature all right Nicole Juni and Tara for all the work that has gone into this this program you can see that you've all been working on it for quite some time um I think I just kind of had a follow-up to make sure that I understand a little bit more uh to one of the points that Bob raised um if people lose their jobs or need to work move for work or family care or something like that and they duck out before that 15-year period is up um what what do we what do we do if they don't have enough appreciation in their homes to pay off that loan so say that somebody gets a new job after two years and they're making 120 Ami they're not somebody that's independently wealthy and can stay in their spot what what happens in that case yeah so I I'd say uh first I would say that when we were kind

[110:00] of tinkering with these numbers and modeling some of the Supreme these appreciation rates we did keep that in that in mind that very scenario of what if that exit needs to happen at year one and with the appreciation rate that we've proposed uh we feel like because there's this two hundred thousand dollars potentially of the city down payment with an appreciation rate there's a buffer there that exists for that homeowner um but I what I will also say uh which is something we've struggled with and when we've talked to lenders and a lot of other people is we just there is a level of risk that's being taken by both the city and the homeowner in terms of it's a real estate transaction and so we can't remove all of that risk so we by by kind of selecting a a healthy down payment assistance and by really making sure we get this appreciation rate right we feel like we're providing a good enough safety Network we won't be

[111:00] putting anyone out unnecessarily but there are risks involved absolutely yeah and I just wanted to clarify accessible understand I'm sorry so as an example this may help me understand a little bit so say that I am heading into the program and I take out a hundred thousand dollar down payment assistance um loan from the city right we've agreed that in 15 years all those is planned I will pay that back from the appreciation of my home a year later my job tells me sorry Nicole you're going to have to move to Wyoming and I need to get out but I owe the city a hundred thousand dollars and and I need to pay it at that point with when the home sells but the home won't necessarily have appreciated a hundred thousand dollars at that point right or the whole might not appreciate it a hundred thousand dollars but that was uh a bump in the purchasing power right so you were able to purchase a home that was a hundred

[112:01] thousand dollars more and assuming that that appreciation didn't fall by a hundred thousand dollars then that return should be available yep okay got it thank you okay that helps um and then do we know of people who are making 120 Ami are more likely to have to move for jobs and you know not necessarily have control over when they may leave I mean are they is is that you know so I heard seven years is that number any different um for folks I mean that's a good question I I don't it's it's okay it's a good question yeah I'm not sure if anyway okay yeah that's fine um and uh I was also wondering if we had any feedback on this program from different types of families who are at this income level in our community um and what what they have thought about this program so what I can say is I so you know I've been with the city since June so I haven't been able you know I there was

[113:01] an engagement that happened the first round in 2018 2019 uh but I have I I went to uh the housing Advisory Board earlier this year and I've talked to I went to a realtor group to kind of try to get that feedback um and so there has been a certain level of Engagement um and overall there is like the interest is peaked because of the the bigger down payment assistance number or that potentially bigger number um that's all I can say I don't know if you have anything to say about earlier engagement yeah um I would just add so one thing that we did back in 2018 was we started an interest list so um people who did call they heard about it or they voted for it back in 2019 um we took their email and address and you know have been trying to keep track with them a lot of them have moved on so and part of that's a challenge right

[114:00] it's only a certain segment of the population at one point in their life is ready to go out and look for a home to buy um so if they're not finding what they can find in Boulder our experience with other surveys and discussions is a lot of people look elsewhere they look outside of Boulder lower cost communities so that's about why we're trying to provide that you know how do we fill in provide an additional tool in the toolbox thank you but we didn't sort of have a group of of this income level of folks sit down or even even if they work in Boulder and live outside we don't we don't totally know what they all think that's fine okay thank you yeah no yeah that we have we approached some of the other groups about it and thank you for for doing that um Aaron before I asked my last question I'm recognizing that you had a colloquy and I dived right into my next question okay okay cool thank you um and then I was just wondering I mean you saw I know you saw today because you responded thank you um I sent out just a

[115:01] little spreadsheet with some cost estimates of what it seemed like this you know the mortgages and things were going to cost with this program um compared to the self-sufficiency standard for Boulder County for families of of different types and I was just wondering if you know if we have that those budget estimates in a a format that is more accurate for bother than the self-sufficiency standards or anything or I I don't so I'm not I I can't speak to have whether there's a more accurate or more like locally sourced self-sufficiency the only the only thing that I can respond to I think which I made which I responded with is um in terms of figuring out affordability we in terms of like housing affordability we don't look at like the whole budget portfolio it's

[116:00] really that the 30 rule is kind of the rule of thumb and how we determine affordability um so that's not to say these other costs aren't uh aren't there or that that won't impact decision making but that's not typically how kind of we're calculating what affordable learning means and these types of this type of modeling oh thank you um and then I just had one more question we had two different goals for this program um is our sort of primary primary goal more toward helping families buy homes or is it toward getting affordable homes for the future dare I say both well I can comment on that later but I was just I mean if you know as um and maybe somebody who isn't you know involved in the conception of this program I mean I'm just curious which what is that if you had to just pick one what would that one be what is the the

[117:01] main motivation for this program so the in terms so you're saying one of them can be for the now the homeowner looking for the the household looking for a home now or what it looks like in the future so I think there are so the the current down payment assistance program the H2O program would uh would fit that first first goal with pretty well you know it is intended to help a single homeowner get into the market and then there's the shared appreciation model over time um but I think the the key component of this is that this program is that it serves that homeowner that household and then it also provides some type of affordability preservation in the future so I wouldn't say that it does one or the other I say there's other tools that that does the first one but this is the tool that kind of tries to really serve both the now and in the future okay

[118:01] thank you thank you how did you come about the 15 years repayment yeah so it was initially 10 years and we had to push it to 15 years and uh from my recollection it was just IDF the impact Development Fund recommended pushing it back 15 years to ensure that um that repayment and the appreciation could grow to make that um is that yeah there was concern that at 10 years having a balloon payment due and having to refinance a home um might create a hardship so there was I think there was agreement among everybody involved at 15 years made more sense and that's why we're proposing that [Music]

[119:04] read cap that we have annual appreciation rate is it similar to does it match our affordable housing cap that we have as well yeah so the the concept here is that we'd use that as the Baseline and then add percentage points from that so it wouldn't the of the that current Baseline for the affordable housing has a the current permanently affordable housing program um certainly has a cap I think the methodology depends on area median income and the Consumer Price Index whichever is less and so that that's kind of the first step and then we would use that as kind of the Baseline for this program is that does that answer your question yeah yeah go ahead yeah sure

[120:00] where does the two percent above that to you above the Ami or sorry above the affordable home ownership program appreciation come from uh that's what we came up with in terms of the methodology for this we were we were we took that baseline from the current program and used that uh use that as the Baseline pegged these other numbers onto it to see what affordability would look like over time um I guess is part of the reason that the 2.2 percent or that the 10-year average 2.2 percent isn't used because that would create an issue for this program and could you elaborate on what those oh that current 2.2 for this program uh well no for like why not use the affordable housing um appreciation rate um

[121:01] um I think I think one of the main reasons we did it was to differentiate this this program and to kind of incentive that incentivize that participation and I I think that this was that the balancing act that we're talking about we need to figure out how to make it high enough so that first so there's there there is a hook for people to participate for those home those potential homeowners to participate and to be able to um because there's this down payment assistance component to be able to repay that um you know have some net Equity growth to be able to repay repay that over time thank you do you want me to give a try um so in our conversations about this when we met a few a couple months ago one of the pieces of this journey was there's trying to build the equity of

[122:00] scaffolding so as people appreciate and they sell out they maybe have enough equity to move up the ladder and get a different house and if you cap it too low then the Gap continues and they they're sort of they're they're stuck against the ceiling and they can't move anywhere in our housing market and then they're pushed out anyway which is futile we give them in and then we force them right back out so we wanted to create enough of a scaffolding with appreciation so that they could stay in Boulder but not so much that they're at Market rates it was trying to find that that sweet spot to keep folks in our community do you have another question yeah I was looking at um Page Six and trying to understand the figure for the market rate in the middle income options one two and three and the annual appreciations and it says market rate it would be seven percent put zero down you would have a your home would be worth 1.5 million after 15 years

[123:01] and then if you did take advantage of the uh two hundred thousand dollar um of the two hundred thousand dollar and at 3.2 percent you would have a net of five hundred thousand after 15 years of equity on the property okay and then option three but my question to you 3 3.2 4.2 5.2 which one would someone why do we have these options and which one would someone benefit from so we I think we we in order to create this pilot program we do have to the side these these options we do have to identify an appreciation rate so in terms of in terms of identifying an appreciation rate for the home that would best meet

[124:00] the needs of the first home buyer and the subsequent home buyers we believe that this option is the best choice option two yes okay thank you like that Terror then Mark then Rachel than myself oh we got a lot of takers tonight so I think that the 4.2 is good because when I have talked to some friends up at holiday they're in affordable housing their major complaint was always that the appreciation was too low and so they were disappointed that they took advantage of the affordable housing even though they couldn't have lived here so that was kind of interesting to me so I feel like this is a good place option too my question and help me through this because I'm stuck at this question so the person can let's say the person is right in that Ami where they can buy this first house then they decide to sell it and then anybody else can buy it anybody so what is presented what is preventing somebody

[125:00] with plenty of money lots and lots of money to say hey I need a house from let's assume the worst of human greed okay so what's going to prevent someone from saying I need a house for my kids it doesn't matter who cares I'm going to slap down five hundred thousand dollars I don't care if it doesn't appreciate or not what's going to prevent that so we're taking we're spending a lot of money as a city doing this so if it doesn't do that then what's it for yeah yeah so this is a great question and this is a a worthy concern I think so one of the we we've talked about this a lot internally and one of the things we we fell to was the idea of if you if you there's two things I want to mention so if you do have if you can compete with your resources in the regular Market there's not a lot of incentive to purchase one of these homes because there is this cap on appreciation so if you can just go out and buy whatever home that you want why would you buy a

[126:00] a property that has a deed restriction so there's a disincentive to participate if you don't have to the other component of this is uh There are rules in terms of like there's like an owner occupancy rule there's there's different rules that dictate um households or houses brought into this program that wouldn't be in the market and so I think given the fact that there's a this appreciation cap and this deed restriction that kind of limits these other things it's not a competitive it's not a um a competitive option right but it's so much it's going to be so much less than the average house so again I decide I want to buy how I don't even care my kids need a place they have no place this is their only option wouldn't I just slap that money down and not care if I was super rich they'd have the owner occupy they couldn't purchase it for their children to live in

[127:00] they can't short-term rents they can't I mean they could rent for minimum periods of time they could give the money to their kids but they can it would be much more efficient way to do it okay and they would get the benefit of market rate appreciation which is seven and a half percent historically as opposed to four and a half or four point two okay Mark yeah just a couple of questions the first one is odd maybe Bob may be the best one to answer this um if you're entering into a zero percent mortgage and we are in effect funding the cost is there a tax consequence to the borrower do you want to provide tax advice I can I can do that if you want I need some tax advice I I think the answer is is no that'll it'll be up at the borrower obviously to figure out their own tax consequences but obviously you don't have tax consequences if you get a one percent or two percent mortgage I suppose a lawyer

[128:00] may take the cautious position that if it's both below Market there may be a benefit that's taxable to the um to the home buyer but it obviously would only be the difference between that zero percent whatever the market rate is so it would probably be a relatively nominal amount if it was tax to them I would prefer two tax lawyers for a better answer but my off the cup one um picking up on something you you said a little earlier and by the way thank you very much for the presentation it was really really quite good um if it's it is going to be owner occupied only correct there's no rental possibility we're not going to find one of these homes as an Airbnb at any point in time that that would be the rule yes okay yeah that's that's important yes um the subsidy that we're going to pay is going to be a number it's going to be three million five million 10 million depending upon how large the program is

[129:00] are we looking to the general fund to to pay that or are we going to bond it are we going to do a letter of credit so um it would essentially come out of affordable housing funds so not entire funds but affordable housing funds that's a lot of affordable housing that we will be foregoing for these subsidies when you look at the leverage that BHP uses in in developing housing that's a lot of housing and we need to think a little bit about that trade-off I think as we move forward because 10 million dollars could be a hundred units of middle income housing versus a lot more units of affordable housing I'm just throwing that out there as something to think about um and I guess my last question is

[130:02] um what if there are changes to the financial condition of the resident borrower to the positive they suddenly get a great job at Google assuming anybody gets a great job at Google these days um now they are occupying a house that that's intended for Middle income residents and they have far exceeded the Ami requirements do we have any kind of protection on that yeah no we have the same concern with our permanently affordable homeownership program right so we income announced that qualify the first buyer um but they can stay in that home really as long as they like there is no mechanism but the the main motivation is they're not getting market rate appreciation so if they are making a lot more money it's in their financial best

[131:00] interest to move into the market and make that home available for the next household well further to Tara's comment um uh if they move out into the market is there any mechanism by which we um know that they are giving that house to their children um they're moving by a two million dollar townhouse um and they want to leave this house to their children is that uh no because the so the program rules same as our current program we're trying to keep them as close as possible um is that we do have methods for making sure that people are actually living in the home so they get a letter every year we do check their addresses on their their tax records so there are ways and if there's any sort of Investigation or complaint that's also another opportunity where we look at that and we'll have a big nasty

[132:00] eviction Squad as that's suggested um okay my other comments I'll deal with later thank you can get through a couple more people look at I'm trying to get every give everybody a chance here because we've got Rachel myself and Lauren and then we'll come back to you Mayo yep okay um thanks for the presentation I just have one question about the I think it's maybe similar to what Jenny was getting at earlier around the uh 15 year um repayment that we upped from 10 years I just want to know why didn't we do 30 years like if we're worried that people won't be able to repay it 10 um you know for those of us who aren't wealthy and I had to refinance like you know if you go down from a 30 to a 15 which I think we're saying people would assuming that their salaries haven't gone way up that might be a mortgage

[133:00] that they can't afford so one question is what's wrong with 30 maybe it's Mark's point about like it's too much money away from the housing program but also did we consider like uh you know income verifying at 15 years to see you know for people that are now making enough to refinance whatever that threshold would look like if they could for some other folks maybe we wouldn't uh maybe make it 30. that's my question so in terms of extending to 30 I think we we moved from the 10-year to the 15-year upon a recommendation from Impact Development Fund and I don't think we really contemplated the extending out the this this out to 30 and I don't know if you want to add anything to this but I when I when I think about extending it out to 30 since there's this the city is absorbing the cost of this down payment assistance I that seems problematic to extend that out for 30 years um yeah it would significantly increase

[134:02] our costs right so instead of paying interest over 15 years at the most we would be paying up to 30. and I think Holly had a great slide that showed um or maybe it was in the memo that showed what typical appreciation my house would have at 15 years and it shows that they could very easily pay back through appreciation alone uh the two hundred thousand dollars and potentially depending on where interest rates are what your personal finances are to be tricky but that's my only question Aaron we're not doing the comments yet right correct thanks for chilling I got a couple of be quick here so in when you model the cost to the city um so if these are like the eight first eight hundred thousand dollars that we have already available for another program we're not going to be paying interest on that money right so is this like an opportunity cost to the city of

[135:01] the loss of Interest we would have gotten if we had not used it for this program that's a tricky one um so the the cost do you want to take this one that's right so so you're asking if the 800 000 is that going to the loan or is that going to the interest payments that the city needs to know I'm saying we're not making interest payments if we're using funds that we already have sitting in an account um that is correct yes so for those initial ones we do not have interest payments for um but if we were to continue the program yes we would or if there's a little demand than beyond the eight hundred thousand dollars but I believe you mentioned using affordable housing funds which we also wouldn't be borrowing uh sorry I'm at uh for the interest

[136:01] payments so the borrowing um that would be basically that what the voters authorized was up to 10 million dollars that is the amount of the loan we would to pay those interest payments we would be using um the affordable housing fund we'll be using the H2O funds got it so that needs to come from somewhere but thanks thanks for clarifying that so to Mark's earlier question we're not using uh the affordable housing funds to pay the 200 000 correct down payment we're using it to pay the interest on the loan so that's actually a much smaller number than two hundred thousand dollars since you know a few thousand a year per unit thank you for clarifying okay that's that's important to understand um and then when you uh modeled the Ami growth what number did you use I would apologies if I missed that I don't have the

[137:00] the methodology so uh we used the so we used the pass as a reference so we used the past I think it was 10 years of Ami growth and what that percentage was averaged it and then projected it out okay so based on his historical numbers yeah so one thing I'm struggling with is that that loss of of income qualification for the subsequent buyers and I saw your graph in terms of the numbers start to get away from you right so if you could no longer uh income restrict 120 and have it work out for them but have we thought about in continuing to Ami restrict but at a somewhat higher number right so like as as time goes on maybe it's the 140 or 150 Ami instead of just saying you know what anybody can buy it did you all consider that um we did and so that was um back in 20 2018 that was one of the options that staff presented um and you know and I think the the direction from Council at that time was

[138:00] to um you know based the idea was we would still keep uh it would stay at 120 for subsequent buyers but since we found that we couldn't do that um it seems simpler just to say no we're not going to require it for subsequent buyers the challenge is it all depends on what the market does right and it's going to be challenging to try to predict what exact percentage is going to be available for future buyers which may limit the the seller's ability or the person that owns the home to resell that home in the future does that make sense so I'll come back to that in comments and then just the last Aaron's question um we this is a pilot so we we can change and throttle whether it's 120 and two years from now we can make it 150 and 10 years from now we make it 225 so we're not locking ourselves in at any other point so we can adjust accordingly as we see

[139:00] fit based on market conditions so I just want to make sure that's something we can do we don't we don't set ourselves we don't lock ourselves in and are unadjustable right absolutely okay yeah I mean well you might want to lock in the terms for the that one buyer but for the next buyer you could change the terms right and the last thing is so you presented us with these three appreciation rate options and you made good cases for pros and cons there but there's not necessarily a magic number to 3.2 4.2 5.2 right because they there there's a trade-off between the appreciation for the buyer and how viable it is for them versus how unaffordable it gets to other people over time so we could always pick like 4 or 3.8 or something right if gives or start to look into those is that correct of course and we think that this option what in the middle and so it does provide some flexibility in terms of piloting this to to see what it looks like in the next two or three years great thanks for answering my questions okay we've got Lauren and Janika and then we should get with you

[140:01] so and you might not have an answer for this but do we have any idea how many affordable units we could subsidize for the cost of interest on a single middle income home based sort of on I don't know the median like the 15 years at the 4.2 percent I don't want to speculate here it would be something when we come back that would be good to know um for the 2.2 percent um appreciation for the permanently affordable program has that maintained fairly steady over 10 years I've heard lower percentage rates especially recently um could you speak to that a little bit for the current the current the permanently affordable should be yes yes it does it has been lower than 2.2 percent and 1.8 percent

[141:00] I think it hovers around this and this is why we we selected a 10-year average so this is the 10-year average and we could share that with you too if you'd like to see what it was for each each year in the past 10 years or even 15. I would okay thank you um does this affect or we are looking at some regulations that may allow people to do things like duplex properties if a home was in this program and someone wanted to duplex it and was allowed to by code How would what would happen that's a great question really good question we'd have to get back to you on that one I'm not exactly sure we're at an Adu or something I mean there's yeah I think the edu is more straightforward it's the duplex because typically duplex means you have separate ownership

[142:02] so perhaps maybe the deed restriction only follows one property as opposed to both that would be my off the cuff okay response and then if there was a downturn um and an owner needed to resell relocate and was unable to or at 15 years is unable to refinance because of economic conditions or hardships they're facing what would happen so what would for the so the city's down payment assistance would be the second or the subordinate loan so that that first loan would get repaid off in any kind of home sell they sell their home that first loan would get repaid the city that would then be

[143:00] made whole and then the if possible it's a risk of course that the city absorbs and then the the homeowner would gain the remainder um this is something we've talked about and something that has been brought up when we talk to lenders and to Realtors but I I I'll I'll just lean upon that idea that that there is there is a small risk yeah of course thank you that's it thank you thank you I think I still have a lot of questions but I won't be asking them right now I can always follow up with you my only question would be this particular pilot program as designed by the city of Boulder are there any see other cities that I've implemented a similar pilot and has it been successful thank you not not that I know of we've we've looked and this this kind of dual

[144:01] program with the down payment and the deed restriction we haven't been able to to find any any similar program elsewhere all right great questions um now let's move to answering staff's questions for us and maybe we can be efficient with our comments as the power continues to move on so should the city pursue this pilot program considering these program changes and discounts to agree with the staff recommended rate of appreciation firms in the pilot I just encourage people to Target comments at both of these um out so who'd like to start Nicole start and I'm banking my comments now because I don't um so I think it's really important that we figure out what the goal is for this program before we get started to me the two stated goals are at odds providing down payment assistance suggests we want middle-income people to be part of our community and we believe their ability to own homes here adds value to our city

[145:00] having permanent deed restrictions and limits on appreciation makes me feel like I'm saying middle-income households are second-tier members of our community and having a higher appreciation for middle-income house households than people in our low-income affordable homeownership program seems deeply unfair to the low-income folks to me our goal should either be about acquiring deed restricted housing or enabling middle-income people to be homeowners in our community as the program is stated now I don't believe it can achieve either if people aren't achieving market rate appreciation their chances of moving to another home in Boulder seem minimal because wage increases are not keeping up with housing cost increases many Working Families who bought homes here 40 or 50 years ago have since sold their homes at Market rates so they could move into and afford a retirement community here in Boulder but what happens to people who can't appreciate at market rate when they are no longer able to live independently mapping out the costs that families have to pay every month especially if they

[146:00] have child care costs and student loans the numbers don't work out for me and it doesn't sit well with me to put any of our City's affordability Solutions on the backs of people who can't afford homes here to me wealthy homeowners and out of town buyers and restricted growth policies and low wages have caused these problems that we're facing and I don't like restricting the wealth generation of middle-income families who are trying to be homeowners in our community we also don't seem to have enough stock at the levels that work for the family budgets for many of the people that I'd like to see take advantage of this program with this program it seems like middle-income people are going to be subsidizing each other rather than wealthier people who have more subsidizing middle-income people so I would like to point number two I would really like to let people appreciate at market rate and I understand that that's at odds with the the permanent affordability but what if we gave people 15 of the purchase price and then when they sell the home they give us 15 of that sale value when they

[147:03] leave it won't necessarily keep homes affordable but it seems a much more it seems much more fair and in line with our Equity values I'd like to see lower and middle income people have the same opportunity to build wealth that many of us who bought homes here already have as Mark alluded to I think we can find better uses for these funds for middle-income families especially if we have a diverse group of middle-income people who are involved in helping us find Solutions and one thing that I'm struggling with and some of you may be as well is that I don't know if I would limit appreciation of my own home to ensure the city has a supply of affordable homes in the future and if I won't do it for myself I'm not sure it's right for me to ask this from others who have less wealth than I do so if we move forward with this pilot I think it's absolutely essential that we talk to a diverse range of households who are renting and making 120 Ami before we get started just to make sure that we're not going to do more harm than good thank you

[148:01] good luck to go next and then Mark thanks Aaron um well so the voters mandated that we give this a try and pilot this so I'm going to say yes I'm going to stick with the voters this is a pilot I think we owe it to try this and see what works I think there's a commitment to throttle and adapt to the changing conditions the needs of those customers and residents who are looking to do this um you know this was not meant to be a silver bullet um it works for some but not all I appreciate the spreadsheet you put together and it sort of shows case in point that it would work for some and not others what it really shows is the real stressor is the child care Factor so maybe let's have a conversation about child care but that's independent about creating a scaffolded approach to get more people into our housing market which this does um and again if we've only gotten a handful over the last two years what's a handful times two I mean we're

[149:00] we're not reaching for the Stars here but if we can impact a few families to buy into our market then I think that it's worth us following through with the commitment we made to the voters to give this pilot a try and if it doesn't work we pull the ripcord and and I think that's a fair commitment to make but if it is successful I'd hate for us to Scuttle it before we've given it a chance to to work we have 800 000 that we can give this a try can work on a few and we have no takers we either know this is a bad project or it needs massive tweaking so I think we owe the the pilot chance for success and not sort of Think Tank our way through this we got to just sort of act on this you know the covet definitely held us up but it's time for us to get the ball rolling um I I um only other point I'd make is um you know this is for perhaps people wanting to move away from renting and paying someone else's equity and being able to then buy into their own and so I think that scaffolding is worth a try um so that's my my point number one uh two I

[150:00] think the option two is a good place to start again as was committed we can throttle that if we realize the next home or the market shifted maybe we need to change that number for the subsequent home buyer so adaptability is King here and and I think we we just commit to that and make adjusting adjustments accordingly uh yes and yes uh but I do have a couple of comments um the first is I happen to uh like Aaron's comment about perhaps making the second buyer Ami adjusted as opposed to um as in Tara's example having somebody buy a home for their kids giving them money and um I I think we need to make sure that that these homes are made available for the people who most need them um just one comment uh Nicole took to your your comment about the differing appreciation rates our affordable housing is very very deeply subsidized

[151:03] um through City funds through uh Equity that's raised for light tech programs by the federal government I mean the the left level of subsidy is extremely high much higher than what we're providing here and so I I don't know that there is um that I'm dissatisfied with saying on our affordable housing projects this is the trade this is the trade where you're going to get to live in Boulder you're going to live in a beautifully designed Community but we need to keep these homes permanently affordable and two percent is is what the deal is and we've had we've heard comments I've gotten emails from people who said if I had known this 20 years ago I I wouldn't have you know I would have bought in Louisville but it's hard for me to believe that somebody didn't understand the implications of what they were entering into but I I agree with Matt

[152:03] it's a pilot we we see how it works and we adjust I don't want us to have a misapprehension as to the kind of housing we're going to be putting people in 675 thousand dollars doesn't buy what it used to I used to be able to buy a rather nice home in Table Mesa for that money um today or last week there were 78 listings in the MLS for homes 675 000 or less only two of them were single family homes out of the 78. 62 of the 78 were under 100 under a thousand square feet and only six of them were three bedrooms so in in terms of providing um family housing I don't think this is going to necessarily meet our objectives but I'm happy to try it because it's been authorized by the voters it's a pilot we'll figure it out as we go along

[153:01] I'm always in favor of trying things on a uh on a pilot basis on a trial basis when you can make the Amendments you need to make as experience dictates so thank you Bob then Rachel I'm gonna call myself after that okay um we've been working on this since uh June 1 2016. that's when this idea was first half by our former mayor Sam Weaver and we've been working on this for almost seven years now um and City staff have includes consultation all sorts of experts has tweaked this and modified it and approved it along the way so I really complement City staffer the persistence over the last seven years um anyone who is opposed to launching this pilot I challenge them to come up with a better idea um uh Nicole mentioned a shared appreciation program we actually have one of those programs it's called the H2O program and Jay can tell you how

[154:00] many people participate in that program it is exactly what you described Nicole we've had that for many many years and this is another tool in the toolbox so it's kind of it's not an either or it's it's that program which we've had for many years and this program on top of that exact program does have some limitations in it and some um buyers don't want to share their appreciation and are unhappy the fact that it's capped at a hundred thousand dollars and so this is a a supplement to that not replace it for that um as far as the 4.2 percent it's a swag where I think we're all guessing here about what what rate is high enough to entice people to um participate in this but not so high as to make that house ultimately unaffordable to the subsequent buyers no one knows that that's the right number I compliment staff for taking the average 15 year 10 or 15 year average on on the other program and adding two percent to it there's only one way to find out it's either going to be overly popular and I'm going to have people lined up outside our door and then we'll say gosh we should have picked the number a little bit lower than 4.2 and we can for

[155:00] South Twin houses I guess that 4.2 was a little bit too low and maybe you should not have to go higher number so we're all guessing here no one has a has a crystal ball um this is a first of its kind of program in the country and so we're the Pioneers here and we're guessing that four four is the right number uh there's only one way to find out and that is to launch it at four and see where we go and we can always adjust the number of subsequent buyers and then finally with respect to um I think a few of you have already raised this this point and I think we have to keep Faith with our voters well let me just read a small portion of the ballometer this is about limitature 2i in 2019 so so three and a half years ago we asked the voters this question shall city of Boulder debt be increased by an amount not to exceed 10 million dollars without raising taxes to provide for a housing assistance program and this is to Nicole's point about what does this do to provide for a housing assistance program that will include permanently affordable deed restrictions and make loans to

[156:01] middle-income households to purchase homes sold in Boulder that was the two-part question we asked them deed restriction and to make it available people five and aluminum homes and almost 70 percent of the voters said yes please go out and spend up to 10 million dollars to do that I don't know how we cannot do that we haven't moved forward since that was approved in 2019 because of covet and that was a good reason to pause that for a couple years but we are out of good reasons and I think if we don't watch this program we're going to have 70 percent of Voters asking us why are you guys not doing it we told you to do thanks Rachel myself Lauren than Tara um thanks for that Bob I was going to make a similar point about the the voters and things for your uh work on this all these years as well um yeah I would I would caution us not to be tempted to move goal posts when they were established by the voters and this is on our work plan so you know this is this is like massaging something

[157:00] that's pretty pretty near the end zone not not a 70-yard line because that doesn't exist but a two-yard line um so I I favor option two and I like um council member Wallach I agree with uh Mega brackett's recommendation to look at maybe keeping income qualifications relevant at resale and maybe looking at going up to like 200 or whatever we need to um to have it make sense because we as opposed to affordable housing options we don't have a lot of middle income which is the whole reason that we're looking at this program like it is um it is it's hard to live in Boulder for you know anybody under a certain wealth category but it is I think exceptionally difficult when you can't afford market rate and you have no you know you're you're too much for um the affordable programs and we just don't have stock for that and this will commit some stock that will you know

[158:00] even if it is to tears worry a parent buying it that home is still going to remain affordable um or for its lifetime and that's that's to the good to to get some homes on the market that that anyone could buy I think it's better if we keep it available to to people who really need it though that's all I got thanks I'm excited to roll this out thanks Rachel I'll call myself I'll be quick I would like to see us proceed with this the voters approved it it's an Innovative idea that I think is worth trying and we certainly have not solved affordability to Middle income households the need is very great in that sector of our community so I'd love to see the see us give this a try and then in terms of the recommended rate of appreciation I'm just going to throw out there four percent is this this is a balance of um picking the numbers a balance of allowing people additional appreciation but then seeing the cost escalate over time and getting further Out Of Reach for people at lower Amis so I'm going to throw out a four as a place to strike

[159:02] that balance and I've not wedded to that if people don't like that idea that's fine but I would like to see us come back to exploring the idea of continuing to have Ami restrictions for subsequent buyers and totally get that they will need to be higher numbers but I would still like to see those Amis those income qualification for subsequent buyers so I would send that off to you very smart people to go run some numbers and come back with a proposal but I would I would like to see that rather than just relying on people's Goodwill or life circumstances that's all I got so Lauren thank you as many have said this has been voter approved and although I have some concerns I am open I am open to running the pilot program um I do take issue with um having an appreciation rate that is different for the middle income home ownership program than the affordable homeownership program

[160:01] because to me it says that if you have the ability to own a more expensive home you get a better appreciation rate um I still understand why we would have a set appreciation rate and I could see four percent making sense I'm gonna support Aaron's motion there but I would like to see that for the affordable housing program as well and not have because one of the concerns I hear is people not um understanding the variability and I think having a set rate would actually make education excuse me education about this program um easier and you know what people can expect to achieve from it more straightforward and I would also I guess like to see a continued Ami for second homeowners as well sort

[161:03] of an approval rate of some kind thank you Tara I absolutely disagree with four percent we must go with 4.2 no we'll be kidding I don't care joking I don't care which percentage 404.2 is fine I do though as a voter who voted for this I would have if you would have said in the question on the ballot are you going to be okay with there's you know anybody being able to buy it second time I probably would have said no so I would very much like to see what Aaron proposed some even if we have to change it at least have something that controls you know the next buyer and making sure that they fit in that income break needless to say we're desperate for middle-income housing absolutely desperate and it's a pilot program and the voters approved it and to me income

[162:01] diversity has got to be one of the most important objectives that we have as a counselor that I have personally so that's my answer Judy thank you I mean I again I had a lot of questions but ultimately I second a lot of what I heard I would like to move forward even though from what I hear there's no model before this one this is a pilot and maybe this is an opportunity to learn and also again we're going to be Pioneers right and maybe other cities can ultimately use this model if it is successful but if it is not we'll come back to the drawing board and learn from it and I do agree with my colleagues um I agree with Nicole the rate difference between affordable housing and the middle income it feels a

[163:00] little bit off it it it does smell that you know if you can afford a more expensive house you get a higher rate you make more money and again it's almost like it breeds that inequity that we're trying to resolve so ultimately I hope that you look into that as well I don't know if I do agree with um my mayor can I say that openly sure okay um about the option to and going lower than four uh four percent or going to four percent instead of 4.2 again because we're trying to help community members to get into homes but at the same time we're putting these arbitrary caps that also limit the amount of equity they'll have in these properties knowing this is how you build generational wealth so I think that's a problem um ultimately I would have picked option three because that's what would give

[164:00] them that better chance at building that generational wealth because someone can buy a market rate and then at the end they come out with 1.5 million yet someone who's buying through this particular option only comes out with six seven hundred and twenty three thousand so again there is that it's a bit lopsided But ultimately I am a yes thank you great so let me summarize I've got majority support for moving forward with the pilot program and then we've got a couple of things on the the rate so I mentioned four we've had some support for 4.2 so I'm going to straw pull this one um so on the who would like the 4.2 rate as proposed by staff and I'll throw mine out next all right and we got majority support there so we'll go with the 4.2 rate as you all proposed and then I generally heard support for the idea of future income qualifications I'll do a straw

[165:01] poll on that how many people would like some form of future income qualification it's a majority anyway but like at like six of us you might have asked me probably um um because this is it gets to be really really complicated you mind if I asked Steph a question before we ask that question sure we've been getting ourselves into a very difficult position here yeah sure and of course we would look for staff analysis on the options before adopting anything specific but yes go ahead right so um I know that the The Proposal is to deed restrict the house and that's relatively easy to do you just you file something with the register of deeds and then that's done and the house can be sold by a certain amount and there's really no Administration by the city there because that deed restriction is self-explanatory and title companies and lawyers would see that but let me uh Jay and anybody else can ask that question if we were to then in addition to that say and by the way Mr Mrs Byer or Mr Mr buyer

[166:01] um whoever's the homeowner um you can only sell to somebody who's making a certain amount of money um and so they've got to be income qualified would that require some Administration I don't know who administrates that I guess it would be the city would there be required some Administration so when that buyer wanted to go sell their house somebody presumably us would have to come in be a party to that new transaction many many years down the road and do the same income qualification for the second and third and fourth of the fifth virus to make sure that they income qualified as we did for the purse and so we'd have to kind of some level of administration around that and I presumably that would also would diminish the enthusiasm of a buyer because not only are they not allowed to get a certain amount of money or only a certain amount of money for the house they'd also have to find a buyer that meet that income qualification are those two assumptions um that it would dampen the enthusiasm and we require ongoing City Administration Fair

[167:00] yes I would I would agree with both of those I mean that that's my main concern so we do have staff that can income and asset qualify and the reason it works well with the current program is that there's huge demand so for every home we typically have anywhere from 10 to 20 households that are interested with this program I think we might be challenged to find when that home comes up for resale in 15 years to have that same pool of applicants so people who are it'll slow down the transaction process as well if they have if buyers realize they find this house that they want to purchase then they realize they need to go to the city and get income and asset qualified they have to provide all their documentation in terms of how much do they earn what are all their assets so it's just it's an administrative burden not just for the city but for the future buyer as well it doesn't mean we can't do it it's certainly feasible it's just I think you

[168:00] is something to keep in mind I may ask a question wouldn't all that data be available from the primary lender we have our own program our own income and asset qualification process that's um but yeah typically they provide similar information to the lender but like tax returns and W-2s and that sort of thing I mean I would assume that that information would be available to us at very little burden administrative burden and frankly if you're correct in 15 years it's still a pilot we'll uh we'll adjust yeah I appreciate the question the answer I I would say it to me would be worth it I mean we do it for the low and moderate income affordable and people make it work out so but again like you say if we get crickets and nobody has any interest in applying to the program we can ask

[169:00] them why or can't ask them why if they don't apply but if um but we could do some focus groups or just remove it if nobody's interested so I would leave it as it stands but but while looking staff recommendations on how to approach it I was just hoping if we could make a clarification on the appreciation rate the 4.2 percent that had majority support is that two percent above the average the affordable home ownership program rate or is that a straight 4.2 percent that that that's the question for Council so what we're proposing is two percent above the current um uh appreciation rate that's applies to affordables so 4.2 is just the average of the last 10 years some Years it'll be higher some years will be lower so what I heard was interest in having a fixed appreciation rate I have interest in having a fixed

[170:00] appreciation rate I'm not sure if that is shared by other members of the council or not may I colloquy I I think I would be interested in in that as well if for no other reason than administrative convenience just knowing what the rate is and not having to do averages and do a look back for the last 10 years it's just easier set the rate whatever the rate is going to be um I think we should simply live with that again as a pilot thanks for surfacing that Lauren I will point out that the flexible rate allows the numbers to go up and down with the inflation which seems reasonable to me so it seems like a benefit to the flexible thing responsive to the CPI it's CPI or Ami whichever is lower is that correct so typically it's been Ami that controls it not inflation okay

[171:00] that's a good point uh well we can strap all this one like uh so so would people could go for a fixed rate or people could go for the two percent above the affordable rate so let will straw pull to Lawrence point the the fixed rate who would like to go the fixed rate it's like a four it's a close close right um so I guess we will go with this the staff recommendation of the two percent above that and um did anybody want to change their strap will vote on the future limits on Ami based on the combo no okay so if you all could look into that please and and we'd look forward to your recommendations on the best way to do something like that so thanks so much for the excellent and extraordinary work there are lots of facts and figures that you presented extremely well thanks for talking us through the conversation they're unconscious process questions I'm a little bit um confused about where

[172:00] we go preparing yep sure so it sounded like with the exception of the income qualification for the subsequent buyer a majority of council supported staff recommendation you know I think I heard Holly say that the program could be launched within a month it sounds like we're sending staff back to look at the income qualification for the second buyer and tell us whether it works or not are we asking staff to do that and then come back to Council in a month or two and then we'll have this discussion again and decide on that point or what are we doing please if you could outline next steps like in terms of what's coming next given the the direction that we were just specifying um we can very easily send you a proposal and you can still send us on our way to implement the pilot if you would like us to return with a specific proposal we can do that as well but I think we can I think we can provide what you're looking for and still move forward great yeah because I think we would need

[173:01] to hear something because we once you start people in the program their terms are fixed right okay well it's it's the subsequent buyer that it would apply to so not the first time but we probably want to give people an idea of what they're getting into when they get into it I agree so I'm a little confused are we saying because they said they could start this in a month so are we saying go ahead and start this a month or hold off until we understand what we're doing for the subsequent home buyer that's what I'm trying to understand I I'll just voice because is that I mean is that what you're I'm what are we asking okay great question so I got a couple people queued up but potentially we could ask you to get started while you're working on these details while putting out information the program to say there will be restrictions on future sales with the exact numbers still being worked out we didn't say that there will because remember they're going to give us a recommendation so there's possible they could be potentially right yes

[174:02] it's really just a matter of determining what is the appropriate Ami for that resale I got Nicole and Rachel weather you're gonna go out do some thinking talk to us again or just move forward but um this was a comment just applying to if we're going to do some thinking just even a little bit I wonder if there is enough support for getting some folks who are at this income level to weigh in on this program show them what it would look like get a sense of what their monthly costs are and whether it seems like this may fit for them just to get some ideas as we if we're having a little bit of input time anyway thanks for the suggestion I got Rachel and then we'll follow up on that um I don't know that I would uh pull people on on the whole program because all we're looking at I think taking back to staff is whether um you know impacts the the next home

[175:01] buyer so I don't know um how people's current income would factor into that but I just wanted to say in terms of whether to come back or not that um I'm not saying I I for sure want that income restriction if it's going to kill the program so I need to see staff's recommendation I think before I'd be comfortable saying that for sure we're going to have some kind of limit on it because um I think the staff analysis will be valuable so I don't think we should go out with this and and then you know say to people and you know after they're halfway through the process and we're gonna you know change your expectation in terms of resale so I would slow down by a month get the information we need Bring It Back make that decision and then go for it I don't you know it's been seven years like I think one to two months is okay I mean how do you think that's doable to come like get us uh an IP or something in four to six weeks I hate to put you on the spot yes absolutely that's doable

[176:01] so then this is what I would suggest is that we ask them to do just that put together some some suggestion a proposal that could they could check back in with us and we would then go out to begin the program after checking in with that and I think you know if there's a possibility of you know chatting with some folks in the meantime but I think that would be helpful but I think it would probably need to be focused around the Ami a future Ami restriction because I think we're we are do we do have strong interest moving forward with the program so can we work with that thank you thank you for your flexibility thanks for pinning things down folks all right we are now moving on to item 7A Alicia if we could please yes sir thank you item 7A is Matters from the city attorney it's the report from special investigator clay Douglas just give us a quick moment to get settled

[177:20] good evening mayor and members of council Aaron Poe Deputy City attorney the city is received and made public the investigation report from special counsel clay Douglas regarding the appointment of police oversight panel member Lisa Sweeney Miron as required by ordinance Mr Douglas made findings and recommendations next slide the goal tonight is to have discussion that gives the council agenda committee direction to schedule future agenda items as desired by Council next slide please as a part of his report Mr Douglas found

[178:03] that the selection committee did not adequately explore whether Miss Sweeney Marin demonstrated immediately prior to her appointment an absence of any real or perceived bias Prejudice or conflict of interest Mr Douglas recommended that Council consider requesting her resignation from the panel and if she refuses that Council consider removing her under Boulder Revised Code section 2-3-1 which allows Council to remove a board or commission member for any just cause next slide please the recommendations are not binding on Council Council may choose to follow the recommendations take no action or take other action as Council decides next slide please removal requires a vote of counsel

[179:00] similar to panel appointments the vote can be done on the consent agenda the just cause found by Mr Douglas in his report is the procedural irregularity of not exploring bias Prejudice in Conflict as a part of the public interview process no conduct complaints have been brought against Miss Sweeney Marin and the removal recommendation is not based on her performance as a panel member next slide please so these questions for Council are on the slide for your review this concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer questions thank you thanks Aaron if folks don't mind if I can ask a couple clarifying questions to kind of find consider our path forward so Aaron is the Deputy City attorney or to the city attorney's office so I understand that the this special counsel's recommendations are not binding right we do not have to take

[180:00] those but do you feel like it is incumbent upon us to um you know decide what to do with those recommendations in other words that we have to at least make a decision about what to do with them I believe that's correct even if the decision is we're not going to take further action to close the loop but the the ordinance requirements are that we receive the report and that we make it public and those have been complied with and so now it's council's discretion what to do next okay thanks for that so folks I'm going to well first of all from a facilitation standpoint I would like for us uh tonight so we're giving direction on scheduling so if we can not weigh in on the merits of the recommendation tonight but instead talk about when we might schedule a time when we would discuss the merits of the recommendation whether to follow up on that in terms of our scope for tonight and so one one potential path would be

[181:01] to put something on on the agenda for a future meeting that would give us the different options of paths that we might take so for example we could have something on a consent agenda that says um you know we have a potential for a motion to remove Ms Sweeney Moran from the panel to ask for her recommendation or to take no action to not follow the council's recommendations so we could get something on an agenda that gave us those Alternatives say these are three Alternatives that we could consider so I'll put that out there as a possibility for a future meeting Junior by the way I am pointing a lot because I have a headache um that's fine my question if we are not discussing the Merit of the recommendations and I see you hear Miss Aaron thank you for being here and we will discuss it at a later time while the special counsel be

[182:00] available then or is it going to be always through Miss full special counsel is limited to the investigation so you could request his presence to answer questions but advising Counsel on next steps would come back to the city attorney's office okay thank you so you said we can potentially ask him question on his investigation there's no prohibition against it if that's the will of counsel that could be arranged thank you I would say would it if we had specific questions in mind could those be asked you know through email like so that we have those questions and answers available to us ahead of time or whatever I'm open to that but I think part of it is I think I how do I put it it's great to have you

[183:00] speak here to be here but you um I would imagine there are certain things you wouldn't be able to speak to or maybe you would but ultimately I would rather hear it through the council because again this is a contentious issue community members are feeling a certain way by on either side by the decision or the recommendation I think hearing from the special counsel himself would actually lend some extra credibility to the process so that's part of the thinking here and if I can respond to that I agree the reason special counsel was appointed was because a possible conflict or perception of conflict with the city attorney's office so we have not investigated his investigation however he is retained under illegal Services agreement so there is an attorney client confidentiality about his work so One path forward could be that if you give us questions for him we could forward that and then respond to you uh in a confidential report to maintain the

[184:01] confidentiality of those Communications you might it might be good to surface issues publicly that weren't asking for confidential advice but right yeah thank you I guess so that could potentially be possible through email or in person yes I hate to speak for Mr Douglas um but but I think we can certainly make that request he signed his legal services and and asked him to be available she if you were here wouldn't you I mean the council can't speak for itself but I for me I think it would be great to have him again we're discussing a very contentious issue and if we have to make a decision based on his recommendation but getting some extra Clarity I'm happy to send the question because it wouldn't be a gotcha but to share the questions with him but having him here to respond would be helpful as opposed to get it through it an extra medium who's Miss Aaron thank you I'd like to make one

[185:02] possible correction under his Legal Services agreement there was there was a scope part of the scope is prosecution of any complaint however I'm not sure that him actually coming in and appearing is part of his scope so that's something that we would want to check to make sure that that's something he's agreed to already in that legal services agreement we put the request out yes Council will be comfortable with getting that question out to the special counsel VES most seeing some nods and looks but I think I got a majority of nods to at least um check with him if he'd be willing certainly okay so I mentioned a possible scheduling path forward I'd like to get people's thoughts whether it's a counter proposal or not or you know whatever

[186:05] could you repeat your proposal Aaron sure it would be to put on consent uh an agenda item that would have three alternative actions that we could take one would be to remove Ms Sweeney Moran from the panel one would be to ask for her resignation and the other would be to say that we would like to take no action in response to the findings I'd like to clarify something before I make a proposal either way but um so we're having this discussion because a vote is required in order for us to move forward it cannot be a straw poll is that correct no the vote is required for for removal otherwise there could just be counsel Direction via a straw poll all right I would like to

[187:02] say that we could give Council Direction with a straw poll tonight instead of having a vote on a later date okay proposal there yeah Matt uh we'll consider that one this is a clarifying question um if we're asking do we want to remove versus seeking resignation only and then the other do no action two of those three options are are decisions that we execute in that moment that asking for resignation isn't because then we need a response and so then my question is what's the process from there is it answer right there on the spot or then do we have a period in which we wait for a response and come back to then if it's accepted and there's a resignation we move forward if not then we come back to those other two options of do nothing or remove I'm just sort of wondering the other two are self-explanatory that middle option seems like there's more process that is unknown and just to make sure I

[188:01] understand the middle process of asking for resignation so in a way it would depend on how you wanted to go about it uh that could be something you decide or give direction to each other tonight to do that it could be direction to staff to please draft a request for resignation and send it um and you in in such a request you could specify we would like to know by such and such a date and if you don't hear back or you get a no then you could proceed with scheduling next steps so you can set you can set the timeline on that option I wasn't sure if you were raising your hand or not okay Nicole so I appreciate uh Lauren's suggestion because I think you know this is hard we've got a lot of folks who showed up tonight gave up their evenings to be

[189:00] with us and um pushing it out another couple weeks or longer just just feels like a hard ask for the community and I also appreciated dooney's suggestion of trying to get some clarity from the special investigator as well so um anyway I think I'm probably leaning a little bit more toward Lauren's suggestion tonight um holding out that we could still get the special investigator here to answer some questions if we were going to vote at a later date Rachel and Mark couple questions um we received I think a request from um Lisa's attorney to refer this to the back to pop for consideration I'm not saying your do or don't want to do that but under the scenario that you've set out Aaron that wouldn't be captured right so I'm just wanted to clarify if yours is maybe limiting other possible

[190:00] creative options so I guess I'm suggesting that the the consent item T Up 3 potential kind of motion slash path forward but we would not be restricted to those three really I mean somebody could make a different motion to take a different path at that time you just have to have something on consent to base up the agenda item on so I might um I might just broaden it because I don't know what I'm going to hear in the next week or two that I might uh maybe you know maybe something behind door five that I haven't thought about um and there are there was more than one recommendation we may agreed apart or you know some but not all of the recommendations so just want to make sure that our our motion captures that um and then a question for Aaron Poe if we were to reject the recommendation or you know just decide to you know do nothing with it does the finding of conflict of interest somehow disappear from the public record

[191:02] no the the ordinance requires this report it's been received it's been made public Council can choose not to follow the recommendations that's there's no Prohibition in the ordinance it is merely a recommendation it would still be out there for others to consider such as the police oversight panel themselves in how that they are also able to suggest removal of members okay I guess I'm I'm maybe just thinking more broadly I have I have and and you can like throw something at the screen if I'm overstepping because I know that this is you know legally semi-dicey but I have concerns about if if uh there's a finding against a panel member of uh conflict of interest that would uh call into question impartiality in um panels that she was a part of but if if we reject the recommendation but that's still on the record and can be pointed to I would have ongoing concerns

[192:02] so I'm just trying to understand like does any there's any action we take we can't understanding we can't appeal this finding we can choose to ignore it but that there's no we don't have an option to take it off the Record is that right or somehow nobody has the option to say it's bad or something it that's correct you can you can I guess I wouldn't term it as reject because you have taken it in you're considering it tonight um I want to clarify though that the code of conduct complaints are not against the panel member they are against the appointment process so what is out there right now are complaints against the appointment process the special counsel in his report acknowledge that there is a requirement of recusal by a panel member if there is a question a reasonable question about their impartiality so that is now out there as part of the public record so that maybe a factor you want to consider because the next round

[193:01] of complaints could be against a panel member okay thanks now my questions I got Mark and then Bob Lauren did I understand that you're looking to give some direction this evening um okay I would I would like to give us the opportunity to avoid voting on this at a future date I actually could support that I I think one of the things the community needs at this point is certainty we need we need to resolve this whatever it is we're going to do we've heard the pros we've heard the cons we have a voluminous amount of testimonials for and against and I just think it at some point you need to get to resolution whatever that resolution is going to look like and having it ah can kicking the can down the road and

[194:02] not grappling with the the tough decision I don't know if that's serving anybody very well other than perhaps us because we we get to go a couple of weeks without you know being agitated um but I I do think there's a value at some point to saying you know we're put in the position of deciding we're we're deciding this is what we're deciding and and that's it um because we have other business to transact a lot of other business to transact and I just think we need to move forward do you mind if I ask a clarifying question based on that Mark of the um of the recommendations of the possible options for us to take which of those could we take kind of kind of fully resolved tonight versus having to revisit this later could not remove tonight be quires more than a straw poll that would have to be an official vote you could

[195:02] request resignation via a straw poll you could choose to end the process and allow the appointment to stand those do not require a vote since I was following with Mark and then I'll go to Cheney I I'm a little confused I'm sorry Jenny no please could not a straw poll say it's not effective we're not removing anybody but it is Our intention to do so or it is Our intention to ask for resignation uh or it is Our intention to not act at all I'm not I don't understand why we cannot give that direction even if it's not an act of uh decisive removal I I think I was unclear and I apologize the actual Act of removal cannot happen without the vote so it would have to be on a consent agenda but you can certainly give

[196:01] direction tonight to say put it on the consent agenda okay now I'm clear thank you thank you I have a question because I feel like in this part of the reason why I was like I wanted to hear from or special counsel because you only give us two three options but I still feel based on what Rachel said there is a fourth option well I suppose that would be doing nothing but can we send it back to the pop to make that decision whether that she should resign or not as opposed to us doing that based on what I hear tonight from community members that's what yes go ahead you could ask you could refer it and say we would like to ask the police oversight panel to consider removal under their Authority Under the police panel ordinances they could say no and then it might be back here

[197:02] but but that isn't that is one additional removal option thank you yeah thanks Aaron I just want to go I know we're trying to Grapple with the process here so I try to stick it stick to process here and I want to go back to your original proposal of three different choices I I think I I think Matt was right I think that um that's not really three choice I mean it is three choices but then one of those choices is out of our hands and then it would still have to come back to us if the answer was no there's no response so I do like um the errands I don't know the suggestion but her observation that one thing we could do we could even do it tonight is take a straw poll ask for a resignation and then in parallel schedule this for uh you know uh for the disposition and a future meeting maybe as soon as May 4 and and then we would presumably hear back or not as the case may be on what we request tonight and

[198:00] then we're really down to two questions uh obviously if there's a resignation then it becomes mood but if there's no resignation or no response then it really comes down to two questions because I think three questions ask sometime in the future potentially prolongs this for quite a long time and so I I think I'd like to to to move this along if we could so that's I guess where I would be I to two questions at maybe the next meeting and and maybe a request in the interim I got uh Lauren to complicate things a little bit more I can think of another option which is this complaint is largely around the appointment process and so to me and through this there's also come up the issue of the ordinance itself and so there is another option which would be to sort of revoke all of these appointments update the ordinance and reappoint again with ordinance language

[199:01] that we feel like we can more solid you know that takes away some of the issues that we're facing right now put the whole thing on hold I'm just saying it is another option so whether that's a attractive option or not um but I guess well but to Rachel's point from before I guess if I can say that the the if we put something on the consent agenda it could include the option of other action so so we were not not pinned down to exactly those because like you say it could be about asking again I I will just say I I like Genie's idea about asking talking to the special counsel like I I think that was a really good idea and so I'm going to continue to advocate for putting this um you know a menu of options on uh consent agenda uh the I would advocate for it being the next possible meeting

[200:00] which would be May 4th and then asking for the special counsel to be there so that we could ask questions um about what they got into so I I do like the idea about Rachel well I I think that Lisa has has been pretty public in in saying she's not resigning so I I'm I don't know why we would straw poll when we've already been told and she may have also emailed us that like I'm not resigning so that just seems like a take that one off the table for a struggle tonight because I'm not worried about that's not how I will be voting because I I believe she's she's been I'm pretty clear on that so I'm not worried about Matt's scenario where we have to kick it back to her and ask her to resign because that just seems futile to me um but uh I I don't know what the value is in in straw polling stuff tonight like I have um pretty serious concerns about and I guess just back it up maybe a little bit I I was someone

[201:00] um Bob and Aaron may remember me there like I was advocating pretty um strongly for formation of the police oversight panel I believed in the work I think it's critical um and I I don't think I want us to pause that work so I would be real concerned about that and I also have um pretty grave concerns about if we leave someone on the panel um who has this you know public um tag of of somebody has suggested that she had a conflict of interest is that will that impact the the panels work so like I kind of wanted none of the above I I so anyhow I'm not ready to to um get into that tonight because I feel like I'm still doing research and trying to understand what the ramifications are but um so I guess I'm saying I'm against a straw poll tonight I'm I'm happy to have the investigator come although I will caution you know as an attorney and someone who who's at Boulder City Council often I'm not sure like if we bring someone in who's already being um

[202:01] pretty castigated I would say in the court of public opinion um yeah I worry about the what what who we're gonna get next so just to be mindful of like you know email might be a little bit better because um that's a this is this is a harsh Arena to step into if you haven't signed up for that thanks so let's see if I can move this forward so we have a suggestion for uh oh Aaron sorry go ahead one other option that we can check into would be doing two by twos with the special counsel which is not public but you would have face-to-face time to talk so just putting that out there is another option that would also protect confidentiality I I think maybe the interest is in more getting sticking to things that that are can be public knowledge so without asking for confidential information those your suggestions yeah no thank you

[203:03] for that I appreciate it um I understand your response But ultimately again because this is a contingency issue for the community and I think doing the two by twos may actually give community members other Notions and there might be more comments about how the process is unfair so unless he cannot meet publicly with us you see what I mean and that's the only option But ultimately the idea is that it would be an open my questions might be questions that community members have as well as part of this process right why weren't for instance all the panel members interviewed you might have that answer but ultimately the special counsel might have that answer and it might be something that is very simple as to why right but I don't know that response and

[204:02] ultimately when a community members actually asked me that question before the meeting it did kind of make me think right so I think just having and it would be best as well instead of me saying oh yeah I've met with him in a two by two here's the answer but you heard it from the special counsel not just for me so that's my thought thank you I appreciate the suggest so um I'm going to try to move this forward here so we have a proposal from Lauren to to take a straw poll tonight on the on what action take I'm going to straw pull the straw poll idea how many people would like to uh decider action via straw poll this evening oh and it's an intention this is not the action this is how many people would like us to consider a straw poll tonight to take an action tonight yeah I got I got three four oh that's over there on four okay

[205:02] all right that's still still not five okay I hear you so that I I had a a proposal on the table to start um and so you know about getting something on consent with a menu of options for us menu of actions for us to consider um I would say the May 4th meeting so I was going to straw poll how many people would like to proceed with that approach the May 4th yeah that's what you're asking for so what what you're saying Aaron is that basically on the May 4th consent agenda there will be an item that has the options that were presented by the investigator and possibly I heard somebody say there will be an other option there as well and then when we vote on that item we would basically be voting for which of the options we're choosing correct and that would happen

[206:00] on May 4th and we would have potentially the special investigator there at that meeting as well in time for some discussion and questions there that is correct can I also clarify yep are we still opening that meeting if um Clay is not available on that date or is his presence dictating our schedule Tara colloquying off of that colloquy um are we then saying that presenting questions to him via email and then maybe putting them up on the screen is not good enough if let's say he can't come or doesn't want to so so I guess I'll make a proposal here which would be that we request his presence and if it is not possible that we would email public questions and ask for public answers on the record but still have a May 4th meeting if that so yeah so straw poll moving

[207:02] forward with that approach I got okay it's a majority anyway so we will come back to this on May 4th and I would like to thank all the community members who have weighed in today and stuck it out with us through to this late hour we appreciate your passion and conviction on the issue letting us know fairly soon about the Clay's availability um and whether we need to do this via email versus public conversation absolutely I will reach out to him tomorrow and he may need to think on it if I could ask a clarifying question if he was to appear on May 4th would he be given the questions in advance or or not necessarily my only concern is if there are issues

[208:01] that our attorney client and confidentiality that we ask live I'm worried about that sort of I can't answer things so my deference because of those sensitivities is to have them written so that they can be vetted and whether or not they're available to the public or part of attorney client privilege and I think it'd be good to have them out ahead of time but we could reserve the right to ask a follow-up question and if he then at that point said that's confidential then so be it is that all right with folks one last question pursuant to Rachel's comments are we still going to consider a resignation request as we've been it seems to me pretty much informed that that's not on the table so I I I'm ambivalent with whether it's one of the listed options or not because one of the options would be to take another action so I don't think we're deciding tonight okay fundamentally

[209:00] thank you wow all right thanks everybody it's a difficult topic and Aaron thank you for taking the lead on this it's always good to have another errand on the dice is if we need another one I want to meet okay so if we can go to 8A now please we got um fortunately we've got a nice easy one to finish this up with five minutes five minutes all right sir thank you item 8A on tonight's agenda is Matters from the mayor and members of council is a discussion of recommended City position on state Bill 23-213 related to land news thank you Alicia and I'll say I'm sure this will be a quick conversation as we move forward but um our chief policy advisor Carl Castillo has really um been leading this effort but it is a multi-disciplinary conversation as you see some of the folks here so Carl I will send it to you

[210:02] okay um I appreciate that you pronounced my last name better than I do um okay let me share the slideshow here okay so um good evening um Council um I am the chief policy advisor for the city manager's office as Maria said and I want to mention to start off with that I am joined by a diverse group of uh senior staff members and they are going to be available to help answer any questions that you have I also just want to uh express my deep gratitude for the cross-departmental effort that's been necessary to try to understand this bill I mean it's been planning housing Transportation utilities city attorney's office and of course the city manager's office so in my time I've never seen that much effort and that much coordination so just a little bit of

[211:01] background and my sincere appreciation for everybody who's been involved in that um so I'm going to stick to just the recommendations that the intergovernmental Affairs committee has made but I think you all need some context so one of the questions just a reminder what's this bill about well I made this word cloud the first word cloud I've ever put together and uh involved in Excel spreadsheet and tabulating the number of times each one of these words was uh appeared in the original bill I don't know how it represents in the most recent version but uh if you look at it by that measure housing and affordable and affordability certainly stand out um again just for context um this started as a discussion with you in February 9th where you updated the policy statement to indicate in

[212:00] anticipation of a bill like this that you would support it in principle and you provided some parameters Senate Bill 23 213 was introduced in the Senate on March 22nd uh Council of intergovernmental Affairs committee reviewed the bill and adopted a recommendation of support while seeking amendments uh that was on April 5th uh April 18th it passed the Senate local government housing committee with amendments that was a late night on Tuesday um and so today your charge is to have a discussion about the committee's recommendations um now I did say here that it's scheduled to be heard in Appropriations but I've heard that it's going to be delayed until Monday so you can strike that last part of it but the very last item is the recognition that things are going to be moving quickly the general assembly has to adjourn by May 8th and so one way or

[213:01] another there will be a resolution to the bill by then um this is just a depiction of the nine recommendations that were made I'm not going to read through them I'm going to I'm going to walk through them one by one but again and for purposes of the public the committee said that they would they recommended supporting the bill and they recommended seeking these nine amendments to the bill and they had a rationale for each one of them I won't go into those unless you ask me to go into them um as I talk about these recommendations I wanted to give a little bit of a context so the first one has to do with water infrastructure can I just real quickly just from process perspective so you'll go through your whole presentation right and then we'll ask questions at the end I think that would be best yeah unless there's any objection that might that would be my preference I think it would remind us along with the last questions at the end okay great uh so by way of background the bill recognized that some

[214:02] development may be limited because of water infrastructure challenges water supply water infrastructure so it originally was introduced to allow a city to apply for an exemption or an extension and we'll we'll leave it at that and and the department of local Affairs could reject that application in recognition of that the committee said that they had concerns that there needed to be more assistance and perhaps more resources for cities to make such a difficult application the bill was admended however in a substantial way that has addressed the concerns of our water rights attorney and water utilities folks immediately requires a notification of deficiencies or anticipated deficiencies so with that it gets a check mark which basically means that is staff's interpretation that the committee's concerns and requests was were met you all of course can revisit that

[215:01] um but that that's what I wanted to just indicate we will be putting check marks where we think the request was met the context for the next uh request for amendments has to do with the accessory dwelling units um the bill as introduced would allow adus within to be built as a use by right and existing residential areas and initially required adus to be allowed the greater of 800 square feet or 50 percent of the size of primary residents primary residences and well I won't go into the concerns there but I'll just mention that it also prohibits prohibits additional off-street parking requirements and prohibits owner occupancy requirements so the integriminal Affairs committee was concerned that right now the city has the ability to allow for a larger Adu in exchange for a commitment of affordability and did not want that to be taken away so they asked for either

[216:02] the ability to allow for larger sizes contingent upon an affordability commitment or for parking additional parking to be allowed in exchange for um or actually I should say uh the lack of need of requiring a parking in other words in some situations it would make it easier for somebody who's trying to build an affordable housing not to be required to build an additional parking space so um this request was met in our interpretation because now the the bill has been drafted revised to specify that um a lease in the area between 500 square feet and 800 square feet cities have to approve adus but they can certainly go beyond that and they can continue they could make it contingent upon whatever requirements they want including uh necessitating affordable affordability requirements

[217:02] the next category of requests have to do with middle housing originally the bill would have acquired that where we have single-family zoning that there'll be allowed multiplexes allowing up to six units and it applied to all single family residential zones that last part is pretty important because that has since been changed so whereas middle housing would have been required Citywide in all single family residential zones now it's been amended so that it has to be the greater of the total area of land in which single unit detached drawings are allowed as a use by right within the city that is a key Corridor and that's a concept that I'll talk about a little bit but basically there are some Transit corridors that are going to be designated as key corridors by the Department of Transportation that's what's being proposed so it would limit the middle family middle housing

[218:02] requirement to the key corridors or to 30 percent of the total land area of land in which single unit detached warrants are allowed as a use by right within Boulder kind of a strange concept I'm going to leave it there for now you can certainly ask questions um but the the request that the committee made was to reduce the the requirement to allow up to six units to three to four and in fact the amendment the bill was amended to reduce the number of units required from six to four so that gets a check another amendment that was made was had to do with making sure that yes the city will be required to allow for additional units but that this the committee was concerned that they wanted to be able to maintain the character of the neighborhood so that even though a structure a residence may have more people in it or more units from the exterior from a bulk and height and

[219:02] floor area perspective it would be the same so if you know the best example perhaps is the compatible development regulations that I know are very important to our community we wanted to make sure that there was nothing that would preempt them and require us to allow for developments that are go beyond what we'd otherwise would allow for a single family homes and the bill was amended to allow just that so all the all the requirements that have to do would form in bulk in the bill essentially we're saying as long as you don't make them any more stringent than you make them for single family units then then that's fine you just can't make it more stringent um another request was made about parking so again the bill was originally introduced to restrict cities from requiring any additional parking in

[220:00] exchange for going up to a multiplex um the committee recognized that there may be situations where we reach a certain threshold in additional units where additional parking should be required so they they ask that the bill be amended to allow for additional parking in some situations and the bill was amended to strike the prohibition on no new parking to instead say that for every additional unit a city can require up to half a parking space so basically if there's two new units a full parking space could be required so that was met moving on towards another question or another request that was made this this requires us to understand the concept of key corridor it means different things in different parts of the state but for Boulder it would essentially mean that within a a quarter mile of an urban brt

[221:00] where brt currently goes so in our case that would be the flat iron flyer or other frequent bus service then that's defined as bus that spot bus services well actually I'll go into the definitions here in a bit the saturated Department of Transportation will be required to create a map depicting what the area would be within a quarter mile of of these Transit routes and there's a process they would exclude certain Parcels uh and be focused on Parcels that currently allow single-family residents residences or more um originally the bill was written in such a way that these decisions both the the range of a quarter mile and the density that would be required within this area would be left up to rule making that part has now been revised in the amendment to specify that the the bill itself is saying that the dwelling unit requirement would be 25 dwelling units per acre

[222:00] so rather than leaving it up to a rule making the bill specifies the number so the committee took this information and they said that what they would request is a change that would allow the city to determine where along the corridor where along the key corridors that additional density had to be added and the bill was in fact amended to do just that so now what it requires is that a city a lot rezone the lands and the parcels within the corridor these key corridors is such a way that on average the zoning allows for 25 percent of that if you this is difficult for me to actually communicate but um on average that area has to equal 25 percent uh dwelling units per acre so we can talk more about that as needed but essentially that allows for our city

[223:00] to decide well you know sure this key Corridor goes in this area but in fact we know that's far from commercial areas so we wouldn't want to put the increased density there or you know these bus stops are rarely frequented so it provides flexibility for the community for for Council to determine where to locate that increased density um the seventh request was to the seventh and eighth requests were basically asking for some clarifications on what was meant by fixed rail by brt by local high frequency Transit we had some questions about what each one um was the mean and the bill was amended to clarify what brt is what commuter bus brt is what Urban brt is and urban brt is the one that would apply to us um yeah I'll leave it at that what's up

[224:00] well you know so this also speaks towards things that were that either we have or plan to have in the next five years so the train will probably not fit into that unfortunately um it did clarify as well that you know so you know what is a high frequency bus route it's one that um during certain times of the day uh stops at least within 15 minutes or more frequently so um that was clarified and because of that it gets a check mark so here's the last one that does not get a check mark and a significant one of course um so what the bill would do is prohibit cities from using familial relationships as a standard for determining occupancy limits and the net result of that is that we could still rely on other things such as the number of rooms or number of the floor area or other health and safety

[225:02] standards you know it's basically basically there's if there's other ways to measure what endangers health and safety that could be another way that the cities could limit the number of people in homes the main thing that it's trying to do is say that it cannot be pegged towards familial relationships um so that was the so so the committee was concerned um about about the changes that this would impose and the control that would be taken away from the Council on how to address occupancy limits and so they said uh replace that current limitation by saying that it would be either a that cities could provide for a minimum of family members plus two so family members plus two unprivated or assuming it's not a family four to five unrelated ensure that the definition of family members is broadened scope as well so this was not a request that was met

[226:01] there was no amendment that spoke towards this at all so that gets an X um and with that fortunately I am done and so staff has no no recommendations for you we've really wanted to just tee this up for you we are happy just to before you start having your conversation about where to go with this uh answer any clarifying questions that you may have um but otherwise we're hoping that this is a conversation that all of you can have thanks Carl and appreciate your detailed presentation I know you've worked really hard on the details of this uh for a while so much appreciation with that I got Lauren and then Rachel and Tara for question questions questions yeah I want to thank you and the rest of city city staff for working really hard on this um I appreciate that we were able to bring a lot of the changes that we wanted to see forward and get them addressed so that's great um my clarifying question is around Number issue number six

[227:03] um which we have so along those Transit corridors Within a quarter mile we have the minimum of 25 dwelling units per acre and then that is along 25 or that is for 25 of the parcels or is that you can readjust that so it would be a hundred dwelling units for 25 percent do you get what I'm saying like I do and I also recognize that when I try to explain it the first time I didn't do so eloquently so I'm going to ask Chris uh if he could weigh in on that sure I'm happy to um Christmas check in the city manager's office um and part of this is between the between the committee's conversation and tonight and it was Tuesday night the bill was pretty significantly amended as it relates to key corridors and middle housing and essentially those used to be

[228:00] two separate legislative sections they've now been combined together and how you calculate how much middle housing would be required and how you calculate how much multi-family housing would be allowed or required in key corridors is now in the same section so how you calculate it what percentage has all kind of changed in in the way that the bill Works um uh but essentially for within key corridors for multi-family housing that would have to be a minimum of 25 dwelling units per acre you have two choices for how you essentially determine how much of your city needs to be zoned to allow that sort of development um and uh then based on whatever that answer is of how much land area would need to be zoned for that you have a choice as a community where you locate that within the corridor or near the corridor so you could steer That Into You know kind of centers or or nodes

[229:02] so a community would still have that flexibility to place where that density is located does that answer your question I try to fall out there because because again we're talking about two different concepts one of them is the increased density that's required in key corridors and then there's a separate concept as Chris was speaking about about middle housing and middle housing being defined up to allowing up to four cruxes um the density part the it must average 25 percent in total along all the parcels along the community that's based on a parcel basis so in other words if you have 10 Parcels 2.5 of them would have to be um either either you break up among all of them or you have ADD have additional density in other parts of them just so that on the average you would look at all those parcels and say on average the

[230:00] density of those of all those Parcels is 25 units dwelling units per acre across all 10 Parcels or across 2.5 um that's actually a really good point and I recognize I I think it I I know it's just in the uh the 25 percent okay thank you yes and that's that's a big difference thank you for for catching it Rachel I just got to to spinning my chair I forgot it's even up here um that's the problem with covet isolating um so two questions one is about the plexus like the four Plex duplex Triplex quad Plex side slide and you said that they they changed it to or I think quad quad plexes and 30 of our otherwise single family home zoned Lots did I get that right

[231:02] is one of the options yeah Rachel this is Chris the um the middle housing is now up to four units rather than up to six and then to determine how much of your city would have to have middle housing again it starts with looking at your key corridors and then there are two ways to calculate how much land area um uh of the city would need to allow middle housing uh and so we'd need to kind of look is it is it the the area that's based on the key corridors or they have a different calculation based on the amount of essentially single unit zoning that's in your city um then based on that you have to have a certain amount that would allow middle housing does that thank you make sense yeah that's what I thought I I think that's I think yes it makes sense

[232:00] um and let's say that I don't love it and I'd prefer to see a hundred percent of lots eligible for duplex not Triplex but duplex say and I haven't you know about half a council hasn't had a chance to to weigh in yet can and is this a space where I could say I'd I'd rather us now advocate for duplex at 100 over I'll take that 30 with quad plexus so this is all happening in the context of a tremendous negotiation happening at the Capitol right what's happening is the bill is being rolled back that's not that that's intentional that was that was part of the strategy all along by the sponsor it's a recognition of like here's the big plan and then you know what's going to work for everybody so in response to your your question uh council member friend um I am certain that the rollback from 100 to 30 percent of the total land while it might create more challenges or why well while it may not be something

[233:01] that this the majority of discounts would want it's probably what was necessary to secure a vote or more so I I guess what I would encourage you not to spend too much time thinking about how you know perhaps you might have wanted the bill to be as strong as it was originally um well I'm not even saying as strong I'm saying different rather than okay four over part of the city I'd rather have two over the whole city say like is that I mean the math is is not exactly apples are equal but um I guess is can I ask for us to advocate for things like that tonight if I I don't I may not have Council majority for it just wondering right right and certainly uh you and Council were going to come come up with any recognition you'd like I think the one caution I might say is if we're going Beyond it's one thing for us to say roll back things but it's perhaps a little bit more

[234:00] challenging especially for conditioning or support upon a request that we're making if we're introducing perhaps a new concept or a new approach so I think that may be the challenge doesn't mean we can't do it but I do think that's a new approach at looking at middle housing that could be challenging interesting okay well and you you led right into my next question beautifully so thank you for that my other one is why did we choose to sort of support um without requiring or having our support contingent on what we wanted why is everyone looking at meals so uh Rachel this is this was my impetus and it was that uh we we have had a seat at the table in this process because we've been willing to have a level of support and so the uh taking the approach of being overall supportive while also seeking to have some amendments made I think preserved the maximum amount of Leverage for us as as

[235:00] an organization I think the the being listened to um by being at the table I think has been more effective than kind of making demands so and and also uh so I think that's kind of the fundamental on it okay and and but is it is it also true um that kind of no one's else at all there's nobody else at the table kind of like nobody else is even saying support with anything right like we would we would kind of still be the only ones at the table even if we said like support if amended so as a city I think you mean are there any other cities that are supporting yeah there are in fact it's important to give credit to uh Senator Moreno and the governor's office that they are having land use expert meetings uh twice a week with a variety of Landis professionals we are invited to that I think I know that we are the only ones that as a city are expected to or on our way to supporting it with whether without amendments um and we're the only ones that adopted

[236:01] a policy statement that would put us in that direction but individually there's a lot of cities that are have Representatives at the table I will also say that we we've been told that we've been the most productive one there so I guess a lot of people are are just there to to show to indicate you know flaws um whereas you know they have appreciated that we've said it doesn't work because of this but if you try this that might work out better um but I just wanted to clarify because I think I heard two different things from you and Aaron there have other cities formally supported or not has anyone else done that yeah as far as I know there's been no other city that supported this um Lauren did you ever call a queen very good yeah I mean I guess part of why the intergovernmental Affairs committee like another facet to why we adopted I think this um the support with amendments

[237:01] um is because I you know in General Counsel had sort of signaled support for this and trying to determine which one of these things is completely a deal breaker to our support I think would have been um probably beyond the scope of just the intergovernmental Affairs committee and would have to be something that we would look at as a whole Council because there's not it's a harder calculation to make if we if not getting one Amendment would cause us to withdraw our support than to just say like we would like these amendments well put I've got Tara in the Nicole Carl can you again explain uh something you explained to Rachel which I still don't understand are you saying that as long as we hit 30 percent that we don't have to have um single-family neighborhoods let's say

[238:01] have four plexes so Chris Chris said it's probably valuable for both of us to give it give it a shot to explain it because it is kind of challenging um they did roll it back so it was 100 and now they say you can take the greater of either all of the all the area within your key corridor and how if that equals the order of this is all the area in the key Corridor or 30 of your total land within the city that is zoned for single family uh residents or that allows at least single family residences whichever is greater so that's a very clunky way to design it but another way of looking at it is you know if your key Corridor equal 30 of the land in your city then it would basically say put it all there but a lot of cities don't have enough key Corridor key corridors so that they

[239:00] would have to go beyond the the area so I can't really defend the logic about how they chose that and I've recognize that it's difficult to wrap your mind around but it's essentially saying it's a smaller percentage try to put most of in the key Corridor whatever you can't put in there and still reach the 30 percent of the total City puts it put outside your key court or is that I only care about this city so my question to you is do we have the 30 between the key Carters and the let's say the East Boulder sub-community plan do we get there so we uh today tried to take the bill language and see how it applies to Boulder this is very rough analysis and I will just disclaimer I am I'm pretty confident that that we may have you know included certain Parcels that shouldn't have been or excluded Parcels that should have been the bill the way the bill is currently drafted in its uh with

[240:03] the current amendments there's still some confusion on our part or lack of clarity on what what's in and what's out to do the math but based on the rough calculation that we did for Middle housing so the area that would have to require up to uh fourplexes we think roughly half of the parcels in those key Corridor areas currently have zoning that would allow uh middle housing so it's about half the 30 is just a mat is just part of the math to determine the geographic area so um uh let me try I'll try and explain it without getting super in the weeds here um you have two ways of determining how much of your city needs to be zoned for Middle housing it's either one

[241:01] add up all of your key corridors so it's a quarter mile buffer off your key corridors add up all of that land area that's number number one or thirty percent of the area of your city that's zoned for single unit housing that's number number two whichever number is greater one or two is the number you go with to determine how much of your city needs to be zoned for that for us the amount of land area contained within the buffers of key corridors is the greater number because we have so many key corridors that have bus service that hits at least 15 minute service at one point in time I misspoke I do care about other cities sorry other cities take that back Nicole glad you clarified that Tara I just want to mention at the Dr Cog meeting last night they were working on a story map for this bill to try to map

[242:00] out exactly how different areas would be affected and it's not fully finished yet Doug Rex promised us he'd send us a note as soon as it was but what they're what they're trying to do Tara is exactly what you asked for to kind of map onto these municipalities and areas what are we talking about when we're talking about key corridors right where are those how much space does that take up and that kind of thing so it may that that may be a helpful thing and I'm happy to to kind of share I can ask when that's gonna be more finalized and share that out I know we're moving fast though so it's not going to help us much tonight that's great Nicole if you could send that to us when you have that'd be really interesting uh thanks for that and just to colloquy and um since you're talking about map we had an orig staff produced original map that was really helpful so maybe that is this pre-work heading towards delivering something like that for us to then visualize that I just if we're talking Maps what you did before was great so I'd love to see an updated one with this if that's not all doable but except but it's just along those

[243:00] lines but to uh Tara's point if we're using key corridors and that's the greater number does that then intrinsically exclude some of our single family neighborhoods from being forced or or having a requirement to need to put in duplexes triplexes and quad plexus because the the key corridors is the greater does it creates some exclusions in our community that then aren't bound to the this new law is that is that a way of interpreting that versus it being wholesale over all single family zoning we actually have a way where some single family areas are are no longer part of the requirement to be producing or have middle middle housing in it is that correct that's correct okay did you ever yeah I'll call you have another question yes I do have some questions thank you and I've actually got some questions for

[244:00] Natalie and Brad and Kurt so I don't know if you all feel like standing up yet I can ask you questions first or I can ask Carl first totally up to you if you feel like stretching go ahead and stand up [Music] evening Brad Miller director of planning and development services thanks Brad and my question is just around you know as as we're thinking about this bill and and trying to understand what these sorts of changes would look like in our community in my mind what I Envision is the East Boulder sub community plan some of the areas along North Broadway that are you know being built out a little bit more kind of these areas along Transit corridors and and I guess my question is what would what would this bill do that's different from what we're already kind of doing with these um developments if that makes sense like well yeah is that correct to be imagining that in my mind but that's what this bill would do is more more

[245:00] eastboulder sub-community plans long Transit corridors or am I off I think it'd be beneficial for all of us to weigh in on this a little bit but my my answer to that would be that the geographies would change so we we know already that we've got refined planning processes uh in many cases that speak to densification in places such as the one she mentioned East Boulder and such as we did the overlay relative to key corridors assuming that remains the greater of and the bill moves forward as currently proposed we would overlay those and we would find no doubt that many of those areas do cause correspond it may prompt other types of planning processes than as we make a decision about where those other preferred areas for the 30 percent or more because that would be council's prerogative of course um and go into a deeper planning process and in fact we have as a department

[246:00] preliminarily contemplated what we think is some of the direction the council is going towards looking at additional sub-community planning and potentially building capacity for that and again invite anybody else to add to that Natalie Stiffler interim director of Transportation um I think I agree with everything that Brad said the only thing that I think we've given feedback on kind of informally as staff around the key corridors and the level of service that really should be present for some of the things we're talking about like these folders of community plan when you envision kind of the future along those corridors there's a lot of expected Transit service and the Threshold at which they're currently proposing for Transit service I think from like our professional opinion just isn't enough service to really propagate the kind of demand and like livability that you want to see along these corridors

[247:00] um so that would just be I think the only thing I would add things and I actually have a transportation question Natalie you just want to stay sorry to sit down again um do we need to be advocating for transportation funding as part of the semin if we're talking about kind of building up around these Transit corridors and the key corridors and things right I assume that ideally that's going to lead to a need for more bike paths more multi-use paths more Transit stuff like that I mean do you yeah so I I think I could say you know in in thinking about other states that have policy like this it's um there's usually it's like a funded mandate to an extent right there's um especially Transit funding available at a state level to support this type of um development and then the transportation that's available to help people move along these corridors and I think that's the difference potentially with this um but not to say that that couldn't come

[248:02] Kurt I I for you and hopefully this isn't an unfair one or putting you on the spot but I'm just curious as our director of Housing and Human Services I mean what do you think about some of the affordability measures and amendments that are being put in here how do you feel like that's going to land in Boulder yeah so again Kurt for an hour director of housing Human Services um yeah so it's it's uh it's actually you know it's definitely going in the direction of creating a larger variety of housing types particularly around you know changes in the single family areas where it would be impacted by that um I think it's probably going to impact other communities more than it will the city of Boulder because I think we're further aligned in our planning processes in this Direction I mean overall obviously the single family changes in single family zoning our pretty big steps for the city of Boulder

[249:00] as well I would also Advocate around the transportation as well I think if they're going to be pushing for further density along those areas reduced parking those aren't only going to work with increased Transportation so I don't know if this helps push the funding mandate that we just talked about but also services for the individuals who are living there are also going to have to increase and so you create the walkable communities and that sort of thing so it's while they're focused on the housing component it's going to impact other areas as well yeah I appreciate your your thoughts um okay Carl dear questions now you can stand up if you want to um so one of the open uh comments person was saying that you know the number of amendments reflects the messiness of that you know this wasn't really ready and that sort of thing when I look at

[250:02] this I mean this is this is pretty big legislation right it's and I guess my question is do the I mean is this more amendments than you would expect to see in a in a process like this with a bill this big is there anything different no I I would not say that 18 amendments to a bill of this size is is unusual at all um very often it's building the plane while you're flying it um you know that being said there's been quite a bit of um as as was mentioned in one of the memos that was sent to you this has been the subject of a process and consideration for a couple of years now and it relies on a lot of policies have been adopted in other states um that all being said Colorado is different and every legislator who represents every city and every constituent is learning where there's incongruencies and I expect it has

[251:01] passed one committee it still has to go into Appropriations and then Senate second reading the full body and then the third reading and then the house the exact same process at least in the committee level and at second reading amendments are not only possible but I would say totally expected and I think that's something that the sponsors are counting on is you know help us make sure that we're not missing something so I think people are busy reviewing this seeing how it I think what we're doing is the right thing which is how does it apply to us because if we try to think a bit of how it's going to apply to the state it's just impossible but if every city takes the opportunity to say how is it going to apply to us and give give us feedback to make it as good as possible for their City ideally this bill with them with amendments could work thank you and I just have one more question thanks everyone I know it's late um your word cloud I didn't see climate there which was really surprising to me and I was just wondering I mean is this

[252:00] not are the climate implications kind of not being talked about because in my mind that is one of the biggest things about this bill because we know that density leads to lower water use better energy use right um yeah so so it just it's surprising to me that I didn't see that in the word cloud and it was mentioned it just was like less than 10 times and I mean housing for example was over 400 400 times that I was mentioning so you know it just yeah yeah so just relative to some of the others okay yeah thank you okay can we move to discussion do we have any further questions all right seeing none let's let's move to discussion so here's what I'm going to suggest is I guess I might first check if people wanted to offer any additional potential amendments other than the one that we have left and then um and then we can see what council's will is to proceed with the overall recommendation so does does anybody want to suggest additional amendments other than the ones that we the inter governmental

[253:00] Affairs already committed considered I got Rachel and Nicole I don't know how to get there but everybody knows I love a duplex so I'm pretty disappointed that we've you know moved to oddplexes for you know uh some spots but we won't really move the needle um through this bill on those things so obviously we can still do that locally but I'm I would like to see us Advocate I'm hearing Carl say um you know we can't we can't go in the wrong direction on this um so I don't know if there's anybody has thoughts on how we could maybe add in um that in a way that isn't moving backwards um and then second I would like us to consider doing a um support with if amended I don't know the right terminology I think it's if amended instead of I don't know what the words are that we're using right now for think about our amendments okay and I'll come back to that suggestion a little later if that's all right but did on the duplexes did you have something specific that you wanted to well I I threw out

[254:00] like I'd rather see uh duplexes in 100 of of the spots as opposed to quad plexus and 30 percent um and I mean I think we already I think separately we're already getting to 25 units an acre if I followed correctly on the transit corridors so it's not gonna like take anything away from transit it's just going to add something in everywhere else unless I'm misunderstanding thanks for trying Lauren wants to respond this could definitely use wordsmithing but because when I do the math and correct me if I'm wrong I believe two units for a hundred percent would be more units than four units on thirty percent of the property and so maybe it's a minimum of you know four units over 30 but with the option to distribute as you see fit

[255:01] or maybe even an option for communities to choose one or the other like opt into as an option three you know duplexes and all single family as opposed to working through the math of of the quarters so if I could make a comment here the um if we're later going to consider support if amended I think to the extent that we moved back to an earlier point in the bill like going from 30 to 100 I think that's extremely unlikely at this point but if we had a suggestion of uh provide options uh you know for for cities to choose either you know quad plexes or a more limited area or duplexes over a larger area that I think would have a shot so I could support something like that I don't know um do you want to strepl that idea yep I think what Lauren mentioned was true is that there were some people who were not at the IGA who probably have an

[256:03] opinion about that right so I'm wondering if we before we straw polls should let them say their piece well so what I was thinking about was working through a couple proposed amendments if they exist and then getting to people's opinions on the overall package that we then have in front of us would that does that work for people from a process perspective is that all right Mark because I know you wanted to say something um okay so if well and can I before given that it's kind of mine and I don't know if Lauren even likes it but just to ask Carl is that feasible is that I mean if it's if it's got no no legs or no no chance of making any progress then I won't push for it but I would like to know Carl's opinion before I vote scrapple right um it's an interesting idea you know it allows flexibility and there could be some communities that would prefer that flexibility of having 100 duplexes versus 30 quad fluxes

[257:03] um the only reason I hesitate as the mayor said is it's one thing to say take something off the table or reduce it and it's a different thing qualitatively when we say change your approach and that's only important because if they can't or they won't and our support is is contingent upon that we basically are saying we're not supporting it but um I mean I think it's a good I think it's an interesting idea worth um worth offering and then it's just a question of how we communicate what this means for the city's support or contingent support as a case may be and do we have any option to say please consider as opposed to change well you know like if that one's more of a we don't want to contingent you make things contingent on it yeah I think it's a great idea because you know we're talking to an audience that's been very receptive to our ideas I mean it hasn't

[258:00] been you know we threaten you to you know vulnerable oppose unless you do this or that they have they have taken a lot of our ideas even ones that haven't been formally adopted and and included them because they think are they are good ideas and they recognize that we're a city that's generally speaking on their side so I don't think their needs to necessarily be a message of our support is contingent I think it could very well be just as effective in altering the bill to say we support and we really want the following you know that perhaps could go just as far we could even explain why we want what we what we want um again yeah so Rachel maybe this one be a support while seeking this amendment like here's a suggestion but we're not going to make it contingent please consider not yeah not change so given that I think the proposal is to offer an option for communities to have

[259:01] smaller percentage of land with more units or a larger percentage of land with fewer units required to capture that Rachel Lauren and this would be a consider the change so can I do a straw poll and who would be interested in this one okay all all in favor my God I got five so we can add that to the mix I it's fine you know you have to have worked um okay and any any other proposed additional changes Nicole well I just had a question around that um so we were basically looking for not um so initially it had been proposed to not have family be the indicator of occupancy and we said no we don't want

[260:03] to do it that way but that's not actually an amendment so do I need to say anything to bring that up that I have a question about that or well so the current amendment that we're seeking is to have a floor to occupancy rather than to remove all uh non-familial based occupancy I know what I want to say now if can we finish this big person um then I would like to suggest that um that that we go with the original um what was originally in the bill about not using familial relationship as a standard for occupancy in in the idea that we can rely on other things but not have it based on familial relationship and I am happy to go into my reasoning for why if now is the point to do that or I can wait well I think so at the amendment you're asking for is for us to remove our requested amendment in other words yes

[261:01] thank you okay uh I mean I think we could just drop all this and we could get into a long debate on the substance if we really wanted to and I didn't I didn't want to get into a debate or anything I just wanted to offer a just a perspective okay if that's okay yes quick perspective so in the lgbtq community we Define family as being part of that Community are they family is the question that often comes up when when you're wanting to know where where somebody stands so you know I mean given given our values of equity I'm just I'm wondering why we wouldn't support this um removal of our objection to the uh or our request for an amendment especially when we're already looking at the definition of family as part of our occupancy things and and whether it aligns with with our current values so I I really like what was on the slide that we can find other ways if we want to try to minimize the number of folks in a home but just wanted to offer

[262:02] that as a perspective that that family definition some of us to find family based on social rather than blood relationships thanks for that Nicole just I don't know if anyone who wants a quick Counterpoint I really don't want to go on yeah just as a justification for why we took the position um we are already embarking on our own occupancy reforms and since we've sort of been clear with the community and staff that we're looking at setting our number at four or five it was a matter of being consistent with our support at the state bill so it's it would be I think detrimental to our efforts at the city level independent of the state law state thing passing if we are advocating for two separate occupancy plans one is no occupancy and the other is the one that we're sort of sticking with so the reason was just to sort of be consistent in our logic in our reasoning so it wasn't anything beyond that other than we're already we're already down this path when this bill showed up so we wanted to be consistent with those

[263:00] justifications okay so we gotta yeah is it about this what okay you want to quickly go back to the previous one and tell us what you wanted to think yes okay sorry I'll forget forever thank you so I personally like duplexes more than quad plexus however for the community I feel like it will be a more difficult thing to say let's change family let's change single family zoning to include duplexes that's a big stretch for a lot of people I feel like they're more used to density on the corridors and so what I like is irrelevant personally is my opinion about um do I think duplex some of the houses in my neighborhood are very large can they be split into two and nobody would notice absolutely but I think the bigger

[264:01] question for the community is and has been are you touching our single family zoning so I feel like this is a way to acknowledge that you know we represent the community and a lot of people like single family zoning the way it is and so this would be a way to get more housing which we're desperate for without offending a whole lot of people so that is how I feel about that got it thanks for reminding me okay moving on to occupancy okay so and there's not a world where I can support a bill that doesn't have occupancy limits and we as a community have had a vote on it we top bedrooms are for people which was even more stringent than no occupancy did It win I feel like we we should ask the governor please can you please put an occupancy we have a university town where neighborhoods are very affected if they wouldn't be occupancy in a world of unintended consequences you're welcome

[265:01] Matt yes there would be a lot of unintended consequences in those neighborhoods as the hill and Martin acres and Goss Grove and Aurora neighborhood I can't visualize it going well so I unless there's occupancy limits I can't I can't support this bill as it is without that so Governor polis please put in some opportunity is it about occupancy I mean if that because maybe a misunderstanding what it was it was it was and I know that they're tied together right I think what I'm specifically asking for is can we not Define based on family based on biological family can we have it can we I'm not saying no occupancy limits ever whatever this is specifically about that definition of family which to me was a really important one and so I'm wondering is there anything we can advocate for

[266:01] that lets us advocate for removing familial relationship anyway that's that I really appreciate the point Nicole the thing I would just say is that uh case law fair housing law has determined that if you have a they do Define it relatively narrow a biological family that you cannot restrict them from living together in any way so that um if familial status is removed as a basis for occupancy limits then you cannot have an occupancy limit other than the most Baseline ones provided by um you know the uh how many people constitute overcrowding for health and safety reasons to did I get any of that wrong that's that's the challenge there's not really another way to do it given our legal system so uh Nicole has a proposal on the table to amend our previous suggestion to remove the last requested Amendment on occupancy limits can we

[267:02] just do a straw poll for how many people are in favor of that amending Amendment we got two so that that does not move forward okay so those are the couple amendments that I heard proposals for so now what we've got on the table is uh the one last requested Amendment from the IGA which was to provide a floor on occupancy limits rather than to remove them and then while defining family very broadly including the kinds of communities that you were talking about Nicole um and then the other one is an option to potentially have a choice of smaller percent of the city with more units in plexes and versus larger percentages with fewer that's what's on the table so now if people can opine on whether we should move this forward and we can provide final Direction I just had one other one sorry sorry I thought Natalie and Brad brought

[268:02] up a great thing around transportation and sort of the amount of Transportation on these Corridor lines and suggesting maybe something around funding for increased transportation to ensure that with this these new car light areas that we have appropriate levels of transportation is that an amendment is that worthy of an amendment or something I would just say I don't think this bill is ever going to provide Transit funding but I mean I love you okay yeah I just wanted to check we can carry the intention to lobby for additional Transit funding forward I just don't I mean I guess we could always put it in the category of it would be nice if you do yeah sure okay yeah I would like to propose an amendment to ask for Transit funding along these key corridors to ensure that we have appropriate levels of Transit

[269:01] great uh Rachel it's a question are we going to come back to like which of these we might want to make contingent uh yes yes we are happy to act nicely for this but I wouldn't want to make it contingent okay so how's dropple us asking nicely for additional Transit funding along key corridors all right that's got majority support okay so now we've got we've got a package with three things on the table and so um Mark I know you were jumping before to offer an opinion before do you want to um yes thank you for your patience give an opinion just make sure your mic's on yeah um we have been very happy with our seat at the table and I'm going to suggest you that it's a very expensive chair that we bought the price of that seat at the table is to abandon our home rule Authority

[270:00] and you know one of the speakers tonight I think was Evan rabbit said you know what we are very protective of our home rule Authority until we're not and I find this abandonment to be something that is inappropriate I think it's way too high a price simply to schmooze with the governor and his staff um it's not about each and every provision of the bill some of which are good some of which I would have no problem with but they should be our Provisions they should be enacted in bills by this Council and we should not be making the state legislature our zoning Authority that's for us okay I I don't necessarily want quad plexes everywhere but if that's the will of the council and we rezone it that way that's on our decision not their decision where does that end if we make them effectively our

[271:00] zoning Authority we have several things in this town that actually hinder the construction of housing one is the height limit if the if the legislature wants to take aim at that and say you can't have that anymore um and you've already abandoned your home rule prerogatives um where does that go or you can build housing above the blue line it's technologically possible and we think you should build more housing there and if the answer to those is no they can't do that somebody needs to explain to me why because I don't think that's consistent with the very nature of a bill that is saying to the to the governor you can have our home rule Authority just be nice to us okay and I I love the governor by the way I would vote for him anytime but this is an overreach and it is not an accident that the rest of the state and every home rule jurisdiction says this is a

[272:01] step too far I was at the mile high flood district meeting today and I was astonished they they passed the resolution in opposition this is a mile high flood District not a a a home rule a city and of the 17 jurisdictions there 15 were in favor of that resolution and the two who weren't thought it didn't go far enough and we seem to believe that that we are the only jurisdiction that ought to be doing this nobody else seems to have stepped up and said you know this is great we we want the state to set our local land use policies only Boulder seems to think that that's a negotiable item and can be Bartered away for a political chit so I think this is the elephant in the room that we're not discussing which is the

[273:00] appropriateness of making the state putting the state in a position to control what we do with our land and I'm not I'm not in favor of that and I'm not going to support this legislation in any form because it does not recognize something that we have held near and dear on almost every occasion until now because we like to sit next to the governor it's a great chair love to be in the chair but the price is way too high thank you thank you Mark I got Bob it's probably appropriate that I go next because I'm going to say largely the same thing the mark did I'll try to be a little briefer some smart capture multiple my points first I'll just say something positive um which is I think that several of these amendments uh move this bill which I originally believed was very bad way less bad Bill but I'm still not going to support it any more than I did when we first voted on this before the bill was even drafted back on February 9th as Mark said the

[274:03] most precious local Authority is land use and since the founding of this state nearly 150 years ago cities in Colorado have traditionally had the right to control what gets Bill to where within its boundaries and this makes sense because Community Values vary from place to place cities like Denver welcome tall buildings here in Boulder we have building Heights at 55 feet some cities allow homes to be built right up the nearby Mountainside here in Boulder we have the blue line which prevents this now I realize that these things are not in this legislation but what we are proposing are Statewide changes in other areas that are just as precious to other cities cities in Colorado take a variety of positions on zoning density population growth affordable housing occupancy parking design and Mass

[275:02] people can choose the town they live in based in part on whether it's Lynn and use policies comport with their own personal values I believe that is inappropriate for the nine of us through the state to impose Boulders values on other cities so we'll be voting no on this regardless of how it is amended I got Rachel next in Matt and then but I'll just say we can maybe be brief in our comments as we're not here until I've already said most of what I was going to say I just want to say that I don't I have not experienced any invitations to sit next to the governor for personally supporting this so I I just want to maybe suggest to the community that that is speculative I'm not aware of it happening I mean um so I don't know where that's coming from I just wanted to correct that Rachel's not saying next to the government good yeah I agree that's erroneous on alkins

[276:01] um we we have clearly a housing crisis that is not just local it's regional state and National Global really um and part of what's exacerbated that crisis is a lack of holistic approach to housing it's really that simple we can sit here and do what we want but we're not we're not really making a dent and one can argue as much of the great work we're doing here in our city we're still falling behind the pressures of the housing crisis that are that are on us it's no discredit to any of the great work that Kurt and everybody else and the staff are doing we are doing immense work but we are doing so while we are ice skating uphill um so it is absolutely necessary that you know to Mark's point that opposition we see is exactly the proof that you need a large holistic strategy to tackle the housing crisis because if we leave

[277:00] everybody unto themselves it ain't going to get done this is the same with climate we could leave we could let California lead on climate but we need a holistic National Global uh initiative to tackle climate so these crises require these minimum thresholds for us to meet in order to meet the moment and set up future generations for Success so I I like where we're headed um I'd love to keep us going credit to Carl and the whole team and staff for really having a seat at the table and getting it to this place where we're shaping it into a positive direction and I think there's more amendments to come but but this is how we rise to the moment um and and I think we're in a great place to look in future Generations in the eyes and say we did our part and at least we tried so Boulder has always been and on the Forefront on environmental issues and that's why I see us out in front on this particular bill when no other community is I think we recognize that we're in a

[278:01] climate crisis and we have a limited amount of time to create a sustainable and resilient community that can handle more people and that is lowering emissions in the meantime the ipcc has indicated increasing housing density is a key tool to mitigate further disaster already other areas of country and around the world are facing human rights catastrophes due to the climate crisis we saw the next generation of leaders at the UAB dinner tonight and I see this bill not as the single tool to solve all of our housing and everything problems but really as a way to get future Generations a fighting chance to avoid the human rights crisis that we're experiencing in the midst of this climate crisis Nicole I'll just call myself it'd be quick uh agree Nicole that was very well said and Matt as well that we are in the midst of both the housing crisis and a climate crisis and this bill makes progress on both of those fronts and both of them are Regional and Statewide issues and of course with the climate as a national National and worldwide one as

[279:00] well so this is why I feel like we should be supporting this bill because it is moving us in a positive direction and working on those crises and I'll just make a point that local control versus State Control Ebbs and flows on different issues over the years there are some things that we would not want full local control on Rachel often speaks to this eloquently that if the state passed an assault weapons ban which they just didn't which I'm very frustrated about but that's another another topic but if they did manage to pass that we would not want local control passed back to the cities on that we would want that state level control on the on the gun violence prevention so I think this is a real positive step in the right direction and I'm proud that we are moving towards a position of support Lauren and then Tara yeah I agree strongly with what Matt Nicole and Aaron you just said and I just wanted to touch really quickly on this idea that that we're abandoning home rule Authority um you as you mentioned would have

[280:00] always been selective and um when we support home rule and when we don't and conflating this with our ability to keep our open space height limit and blue line does a disservice to our community and lowers sort of the overall level of discourse that we're having on these important issues because it's not true question I asked is if you think that's not so what's the principal basis on which it is not the fact that they haven't requested that yet once once you start down a path of seeding your rights to deal with your local zoning and land use issues where is the magic barrier that says the state cannot interfere with anything else where is it ah the slippery slope argument yeah

[281:04] you just you just I mean it's not on the table right now right nobody's threatening those things I don't know but but I'm curious what she has to say isn't right we want to I just don't want to be back and forth argument I guess I would say that it's always important to read the letter of what is being presented and think about that as what you are weighing in a position like this I don't believe in weighing what future decisions might be made off of the decision that you are making now because that's not the decision that's at hand Tara so coming around in between everybody right in the middle there I would say that we our housing crisis is just not just local I don't believe that we can just have local solutions that will work

[282:00] we have to include to me the rest of the state so that is why in general I did like this bill especially with the Amendments however like I said earlier without that occupancy amendment in there I can't support it so what is that called like simple support if amended yes support if amended that's me on occupancy all right so thanks everybody for your comments so what we have in front of us currently is the position the IGA committee has taken and recommended as they support while seeking amendments and I think for the two new ones that came up tonight people supported moving forward that so I want to check if there is support for moving forward with all three of our amendments with the support while seeking amendments as proposed by the educate committee so maybe need to take a vote so that'll I'm going to straw poll that are we comfortable with the iga's recommended position and moving forward that went that way

[283:00] I got Rachel's being a wavy hand Rachel do you want to well I I guess I I would like us to just be real concrete and you know let's say um the way this bill is getting whittled let's assume that occupancy is the last thing standing um are we taking a a supportive of uh no ceiling on occupancy we support that without amendment I think that's what we're saying uh if if we don't say if amended so I just think we should be real crisp on that we haven't advocated for that within the community so you know I haven't that just seems like a a an interesting bridge for us to cross we are down to one kind of meaningful Amendment so you know to the point of like it would be unwieldy to say which we you know which would be deal Killers for us I think we're just down to the one so I'm just inviting us to have a conversation uh on or just be critical or or just out

[284:04] loud to the community like are we we're really supporting without Amendment occupancy stealing being taken away and I think um that is I struggle as a representative of this community where we haven't had that conversation at all I don't I don't know that I'm representing the community's interests on that um I haven't seen evidence of of overwhelming you know support for uh no occupancy limits in in the city of Boulder well we are asking for that to be amended but at the moment the recommended position was to not make that our support of the overall direction of the bill contingent on that yeah but I mean we have we we got all of our other changes so that's the only other one that would be you know at the time that I I got to the table I probably would have said if amended to all of it and and just see what the leverage could bring and I assume we

[285:00] could revisit if if it's I don't know somehow catastrophic for us to to switch our position but it it just it just seems strange to me to to not um be a little bit more firm with that request if it's really what people want and maybe it's not what people want we just want to kind of you know tuck in uh behind behind you know the governor's doing it and there's nothing we could do about it but it seems like we could take the stronger position if that's really where people are uh well the the fact oh and by the way um Jenny did not call this out tonight but Junie is recusing herself because of her involvement with the state legislature from this discussion which is why junior has not been present for the discussion just to clarify that so um well Rachel there's not a majority support for moving forward unless you're participating so I guess you were in a position to ask for changes here

[286:01] I I would ask us to consider a a support if amended and if I heard if I heard Tara tonight it sounds like maybe she would get on board with that as well yeah Nicole can you just clarify the difference between support if amended and the way we're doing it now I don't know if that's a question for Carl but what does that mean to some extent it's it's semantics but it really just means sponsors we will support if you make this amendment and what I'm hearing just if I could help sounds like the occupancy limit is that one item that Mike Garner a majority in terms of like if we get the occupancy limits changed as asked then we will support and it sounds like the other two or more in the please consider category um but anyway I've gone beyond I was trying to I'm trying to help clarify what I think Council was heading towards

[287:00] but um functionally I'm not I'm not going to say it's going to make a huge difference here's here's one scenario when this goes to the house one of you could go testify and say on behalf of the city we support the bill or you you could say only if the following so clearly before uh house committee that could make a difference man can I maybe offer a clarifying question really to Rachel and everybody else is there's there's uh and I'm going to use uh Tara's favorite analogy is bites at the Apple here um but we have other opportunities in which amendments are going to be uh debated and delivered is that is that correct Carl and how many until you know May 8th when the session ends how many more of those opportunities do we have to amend this or will there be amendments that are being accepted and debated

[288:00] on this bill this is going to be thoroughly being worked on you know every hour between now and May 8th um in terms of opportunities for us to shape it I would say this is a in terms of like Council having time to discuss it May 4th I think things will have been already settled by then so in terms of council providing Direction on a position I would say this is it okay so what we're saying right here right now is we're just going to draw the line in the sand that it is that that if we don't get our way on occupancy we pull the ripcord on on on our support um okay that's that's what Rachel was saying yeah okay wow I was just gonna say I mean Carl we got like nine out of ten of the things we were asking for right like I mean that seems like a pretty good deal um and you know I'm I'm curious if you think there is a place for us to continue with the position that we are

[289:00] kind of moving forward with where we're still advocating for changing it but we're not saying that we won't support this giant bill because of that so just just wondering I think we could certainly either way we could advocate for it whether it's made only if or a please can we have this also we can certainly be there okay thank you I could take a struggle on a second by Bob's kind of thought and well I have a question actually because I'm a little bit confused about I understand the difference between uh what Rachel's asking and what others are asking but I want to understand what the what the um what the numbers are uh in other words are we are some of us saying that they could support the bill if the occupancy limit was four or five or are they saying they would would support the bill only if there was no reference to occupancy limit allowing cities to make those decisions on their own

[290:00] so I think the position that the IGA committee recommended was support the bill while asking for a change to the occupancy to have a still allow occupancy limits of or have a floor of four or five but still allow them and so that would if that's what if that's what's in the Bill of passes that would Trump what Boulder has right now because Boulder has as a three slash four limit and so are we saying out loud right now at this Council that we support the state changing Boulders current occupancy living even though we told our community that we actually wouldn't have that discussion until August or September is that what we're saying it's saying that that yeah if the in alignment with the thing proposals that we're bringing forward to the community of changing to four or five we could support the bill with that floor of four or five which is different than Boulder's current law correct

[291:00] okay thank you I got Lauren in first I think I remember when it was Carl um so I know that we signaled that we would support this and that we've been working closely with the governor's office to get a lot of these revisions made if we were to switch to an only support if revised does that burn political capital for us um at the Capitol I'm really hesitant to say anything that would limit the council from rich in the conclusion that you want to get to and that's such a subjective question so I I think I think you really should decide what you want to do all right let's try to figure that out so um yes yes sir Tara we were up you hate to say no to me don't you thank you for clarifying that Bob so I'm going to say that I said for Max in a previous

[292:02] vote and I'm going to stick to that four because five I don't think will work in the University areas either so thanks Bob so Rachel had a I think a proposal to change this to support if only and if and only if amended to implement these occupancy limit changes so how many people would like to take that approach as straw poll yeah yeah sorry one more so what happens if we don't do that then then where where are we at are we just do we stay with what the intergovernmental Affairs committee decided I would say that at that point the city would have no position which I think that would be burning political capital I think the expectation is that a decision be made tonight so so I still do the straw poll of how many people would like to take the approach of support only if amended

[293:00] I got I got two I got two who would prefer that approach so so we definitely we definitely don't have a majority for that approach um but Rachel and I'm going to turn to you here you kind of you're holding some cards so um unlikely positioned for me to be in I mean you know lock us supporting the whole bill I just think that um it's a it's a crummy outcome for Boulder if if the majority of council actually wants um to have some stealing on occupancy and we are telling the governor we kind of want it but like it's not a big deal um and that I I can I can see a scenario where that's the least controversial aspect of the bill and the only thing that passes um because it it is getting whittled down a bit and I don't think it has a ton of support and I think that would be a a really uh I would have I would struggle to um

[294:01] you know speak to the community as to why I said that was a an okay outcome for Boulder when uh very very few constituents have asked for that I I mean very very few uh I don't remember being on a campaign Trail or watching uh the 2021 election and hearing people say anything other than word for occupancy reform at you know at no point where and I think one person said tonight we'll Doug I don't want any occupancy uh you know limits like um and I understand there's health and safety in there so it's not a complete um you know it's not a free-for-all but that's I just don't feel like I'm representing Boulder if if I don't make that case again I will I will move to us I'm not going to block us because I love I really support the bill this it's just uh that'll be a really unfortunate outcome curious which is a clarifying question to Carl

[295:01] um up to this point you you and your team have kind of been working on multiple fronts on issues lobbying to various people and uh showing interest in one thing and talking to the next person so I mean you've been just working all angles on all these different issues we've settled effectively everything that we've been going after and occupancy is a stickler do you find that there could be that you're about 900 right now so so I might be asking a lot so I'm not going to set you up here but now that really this is the last remaining piece do you feel that there's a focus that you and your team can have not so you weren't focused on this but you're working on multiple fronts where you can actually make maybe more Headway because this is the only amendment left to work on do you feel that there's there's maybe greater momentum or propendency to to reach out and move these levers in ways that while you're working on the other fronts may be limited some of that work on specifically occupancy because the other things may have carried more water at the time now that they're resolved so I'm just sort of wondering if this is

[296:00] the only charge do you feel like you can kind of get a good head of steam to tackle or at least really make effort on the occupancy front in our remaining weeks yes yes I I do think that they would strongly consider our request and yeah thanks okay Nicole now let's try to wrap up um and I was just going to address Rachel's concern about you know if if the occupancy piece of the bill is the last man standing um I mean if we can move past this this kind of impasse just by saying if that is the case if it is the last man standing the only thing left in the bill then we don't support it I mean I feel like if that's the concern that's that's holding you back Rachel is that you know is that is that something that we could just say to move that forward sure I mean I think it's extremely unlikely that occupancies changes would be the only thing left in this hundred page bill I mean I think the whole thing might go down but uh but there will be more amendments but the chance of being

[297:01] left with just occupancy is essentially zero but we could say yeah that we wouldn't support if that were the only thing in the bill um and I also just want to clarify Rachel you mentioned that somebody one person said uh no occupancy limits even for health and safety and stuff like that if you were referring to me with that to avoid all the angry emails that I would get um I just want to say what I was talking about tonight was that I support not defining occupancy based on biological family and I understand it's related and I think it is a really critical point yeah yeah neither but anyway um so we have the proposal on the table before with the support while seeking amendments with the three amendments that we mentioned before I'm not going to re-list them so I'm going to I'm going to do a straw poll again and see Rachel if we if we can if you can live with this approach so people willing to move forward with that

[298:02] all right let's get five um thanks for your flexibility Rachel I'm going to be a big I Told You So if occupancy is one of the few things that that it's across the line on this with unfettered and that's the one thing we gave up local control on I think that's that's going to be it that's gonna Community will be pretty disappointed in the Reps if that happens Samara could you just summarize what it is that you just voted on and I just tried to not summarize it Carl okay let me be more formal what we just voted on and then people can would uh withdraw if they disagree with me is for uh Council to take a position of support on Senate Bill 23 213 while seeking amendments and those three amendments were to request additional funding for additional Transit on Transit corridors to allow for flexibility in multiplexes to either have a smaller percentage of land with more units or a larger

[299:01] percentage of land with fewer units and finally to provide a floor on occupancy limits of four or five or the exact languages described in your slides I get it all right anybody disagree all right well I think with that we are done with this super easy quick meeting I hope nobody's got stressed out by any of that so thanks so much uh Carl and you you all stayed really late with us here 11 o'clock and listen to us you know argue for the last long while and I apologize for keeping you late uh thanks everybody for all the work on this uh any final thoughts before I gavel is closed all right with that adjourn the meeting at 10 56 pm [Music]