June 22, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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

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[3:29] foreign [Music] good evening everyone and welcome to the June 20 22nd 2023 special meeting of the

[4:00] Boulder City Council we're going to get started with a short special meeting and then move to a study session facilitated by council member Mark Wallach and we're going to get started on our meeting with an announcement so the 2023 boards and commissions media recruitment period is now open from May 29th to July 2nd 2023. we are accepting applications for the following eight boards or commissions the beverage licensing Authority the Boulder Junction access District parking and also travel demand management the downtown management commission the landmarks board the University Hill commercial area management commission the open space Board of Trustees that's a new opening as well as the environmental Advisory Board also new opening find you can find a boarding commission descriptions and vacancies online at www.bouldercolorado.gov forward slash commissions and if you have any questions or need assistance please contact the city clerk's office at city clerk's office at bouldercolorado.gov or call 303-441-4222 [Music]

[5:01] and that concludes our announcement so I will go ahead and call our meeting to order and Elisha if you could do the roll call please everyone we will start tonight as usual with council member Benjamin present mayor Brockett president council member Focus present friend here Joseph president spear present mayor Pro Tim Wallick right here councilmember weiner present and Yates here mayor we have our quorum thanks so much and now I'd like to ask for a motion to amend the agenda to make a few changes and that is to add item 1A which is declaration honoring judge Linda Cook's years of service to be presented by council member folkerts to add 2B which is an introduction for

[6:00] treating consideration of a motion to order published by title only and adopt by emergency measure ordinance 8583 imposing a moratorium on the police oversight panel in the city Boulder and setting forth related details and item 2C which is consideration of emotion to appoint two council members to serve as ad hoc Liaisons to the better public meetings project they moved second we have a motion a second could I get a show of hands all in favor that's right that passes unanimously the agenda has been amended so if we can then move on to our new item 1A which is our declaration honoring judge Cook's years of service so Lauren if you could take it away please thank you Aaron in 2001 judge Linda cook joined the boulder Municipal Court as a relief judge judge cook was appointed to be the presiding judge in 2002. judge cook has

[7:02] been a Transformer transformational and inspirational leader during her long tenure at the boulder Municipal Court during her judicial career judge cook continually sought to identify and Implement data-driven and evidence-based practices for the various populations served by the court she was not afraid to pursue innovations that were emerging nationally thus enabling the boulder Municipal Court to join the ranks of early adopters of structural improvements to the criminal justice system early in her career she partnered with the University of Colorado Boulder to refer Quality of Life Cases committed by CU students to its restorative justice program this partnership now in its 18th year has resulted in hundreds of Cu students understanding the impacts of their offenses on community members and repairing the harm caused by those violations through meaningful community

[8:00] service and other sanctions in an effort to forestall Quality of Life violations judge cook partnered with the CU Boulder office of off-campus Housing and neighborhood relations to develop the curriculum for their Community Living class this class proactively educates CU students about potential violations in an effort to prevent them from occurring initially as a court-ordered sanction it is now offered to CU students moving off campus both by CU Boulder and local landlords underlying many of the violations committed by young adults is the misuse of substances judge cook worked collaboratively with the 20th Judicial District to migrate minor in possession violations which were previously filed in the county court to the boulder Municipal Court in tandem with that initiative she worked with CU Boulder to screen for and identify interventions

[9:01] specifically tailored to the young adult age group since 2011 the court and cu's health promotion Services have been using nationally validated harm reduction programming to address these violations in 2016 based upon a recommendation from former City attorney Tom Carr judge cook attended the community Justice Summit holded hosted by the center for justice innovation that conference opened her eyes to the possibilities presented for working with people experiencing homelessness later that year the the court hired its first homeless Navigator with the assistance of Hands-On navigation services and in partnership with the Boulder Police Department's homelessness Outreach team unhoused individuals were able to successfully transverse the journey from living on the streets to permanently Supportive Housing

[10:01] the Court's homeless Navigator who largely operated on an Outreach basis became the model for Outreach Services among the many homeless service providers now operating in Boulder County in collaboration with the faith community and non-profits there are now numerous sites where unhoused individuals can not only access clothing in a meal they can also be seen by a medical or mental health provider have their animals seen by a veterinarian apply for public benefits and identification documents and complete coordinated entry in 2019 judge cook applied for and received a technical Advanced Grant to study the possibility of implementing a community Court based on positive feedback from this endeavor judge cook applied for a community Court Grant from the U.S department of Justice's Bureau of Justice assistance in 2020 the boulder Municipal Court was one of the few sites awarded such a grant

[11:00] the boulder municipal courts commun Community Court program is the only Community Court program that is operating on a mobile basis as such it is being studied as a model for the center for justice innovation in 2018 judge cook traveled to Washington DC to join a group of 11 other Municipal Court judges from across the country to explore the possibility of creating a national Municipal Court Alliance the initiative was funded by the MacArthur Foundation and hosted by the national league of cities as their designated leader judge cook has continued to work with this cohort group and others to grow this organization in all that she has done judge cook has been Guided by the principles of collaboration and procedural fairness she understands the value of allowing people who appear before her to work with her to have the opportunity to give

[12:01] voice to their individual perspectives even more than her leadership she is appreciated for her ability to focus on the individual before her and make them feel respected and heard throughout her 22-year career with the city judge cook has made a deep friendship with so many of us that work for the city her colleagues around the state and the nation and the Boulder Community her grace and fortitude have touched us all we the city council of Boulder Colorado recognize honor and appreciate the service and significant contributions to the city and Community made by judge cook thank you so much judge cook for your service to our community thank you so much for that Lauren and judge cook I wonder if you might say a few words well it's um first of all thank you for

[13:00] that it's very overwhelming um it this is I have been so fortunate to have been supported by many City councils throughout my career and by all the collaborations from people both at CU in the city and out you know in the community none of this would have happened with me alone it it fires everybody and so I've been very fortunate to have the support for um for going forward with those Innovations and the collaborative the collaboration necessary so thank you so much well things are all from us to you uh judge just so much appreciate your many years of service to the community and you will be dearly missed although we're grateful that you're willing to come back and assist from from time to time and we are looking to your looking forward to your final Court update here in a few minutes as well

[14:01] so thank you so much for that and we'll talk again shortly thank you thank you okay Alicia if we can move to our consent agenda please yes sir thank you so nice consent agenda is item two on the agenda and it consists of items 2A through 2C very good I wonder if I might start by uh calling out 2C which is about appointments to the better public meeting project and Sarah Huntley are you available to talk about what that is and and who we are considering for appointment appointments I sure am good evening council member mayor members of council Sarah Huntley the director of communication and engagement I just wanted to say a few words about this better public meetings project that I referenced in hotline posts in the last couple of weeks we have been honored to be selected as one of three pilot cities to work with the national civic league and specifically a new center they're standing up around

[15:00] democracy Innovations to really examine the decision-making space so official public meetings not engagements that happens prior to that but meetings and decisions that are made in front of council specifically how we might be able to learn from lots of things that are happening all over the country try some new things hear from our community about what works and doesn't work and really try to forge a path forward that's Innovative and exciting and more engaging for everybody who participates in these meetings one of the suggestions that we staff members who have been working on this shiv have had is to make sure that council is kept up to date about the work there are going to be a few asks where really getting input from Council Members would be helpful and so we had requested that we have to ad hoc appointees from Council to kind of help advise us and to fill in some of the gaps where we think a council perspective would be really valuable we

[16:01] have a couple of council members who expressed some interest but it looks like we're coming down to a recommendation that we have two council members in particular Matt Benjamin and Rachel friend who could get appointed for this phase of the work and what I want to just explain is how we anticipate this project rolling out we think there's going to be a flurry of consultation with the council appointees over the next couple of weeks because there is going to be a set an assessment push that happens in July August and maybe even a little bit into September where our partners with national civic league will be doing some interviews with some representative community members some council members and then also pushing out a general tool that allows anybody in the Boulder Community to give their feedback on what's worked and what hasn't worked and that activity is going to be happening this summer and into early fall then I would anticipate that there's going to be a little bit of

[17:00] a lull where our NCL Partners assess all of the information that they've received and then they will come back to us in late fall early winter with recommendations of some things we might try and pilot and so one way of looking at this was thinking about well who's going to be on Council in 2024 when the pilots work another way of looking at it that NCL has suggested has been to have one council member who's been on Council and seen engagement during covet and post covid but then also have someone who was on Council and saw engagement pre-covered because the pandemic has such been such a pivot point for the Public's expectations from these meetings what's even possible with technology and so that was a recommendation they made so the staff is suggesting that we appoint Matt Benjamin and Rachel friend when Rachel Cycles off Council we should have a few months to kind of get our have everybody get their feet beneath them and then we could make

[18:00] a decision then as to who might pick up um the council liaison specific position as we move into piloting phase thanks for that Sarah and Matt and Rachel you're all willing to be appointed I'm excited for it yeah this is this is gonna be great work we've heard plenty from all sides about our meetings and such so from either behind or in front of the dice so it's work that needs to be done well I appreciate your willingness we'll we'll vote on the appointment here in a minute when we get to voting on The consent agenda so that's good on 2C I wonder we did have 15 minutes pegged for 2B if anyone wanted to speak to that Bob thanks Aaron um I I I'm going to be voting against 2B but I I felt I owed it to my colleagues to um to explain why if you give me just a second let me just call it my notes uh

[19:01] and let's just take a couple minutes I appreciate you indulging me um the police oversight panel has not um asked for a moratorium from Council um in fact when the deputy City attorney wcd manager rather suggested to the panel that requesting a council of moratorium would be a safer way for them to stop working several panel members rejected the idea saying they wanted to send a signal to Council of some of the panel members described the unilateral Works stoppage as a sit-in or a strike regardless of whether the panel uh doesn't take on new cases as a result of their own unilateral work stoppage or under a console moratorium the panel has said that that it will still work on the 10 cases that is already accepted which I'm happy about and that this is work which the deputy City attorney says is expected to take through September to complete uh Council expects to adopt revisions to the police oversight panels enabling ordinance in early October so the ordinance changes would roughly

[20:01] coincide with the exhaustion of the police oversights there's going to be police oversight panel's existing funnel of 10 cases but by imposing a moratorium on taking new cases this summer which cases would presumably be handled in the fall the panel will have little or nothing in its on its plate once the moratorium Council moratorium ends on October 20th which is the date which is being proposed the stated reason for the work stoppage and the moratorium is so that two of the panel's 11 members can serve on a Community Committee that is working on changes to the police oversight panels enabling ordinance but that work is well underway and is being managed by an independent consultant who is scheduled to present her preliminary recommendations to Council on July 27th while input from the panel is welcomed as the consultant wraps up her work this summer it's hard to imagine that the efforts to provide that input will distract the panel from accepting cases that in fact won't work on until the fall in any event I I have to ask what happens if the

[21:00] police oversight panel is important the police oversight panel ordinance change is recommended by the independent consultant later this month and ultimately adopted by Council in the fall are not accepted susceptible to some or all the members of the police oversight panel we we already know that some of the changes currently requested by the panel are unlikely to be approved by Council will the panel then unilaterally continue their work stoppage indefinitely until they receive what they want if that unilateral work stoppage continues beyond the end of any Council imposed moratorium will the panel then be in violation of the law which will might draw yet another code of conduct complaint which will need to be investigated by independent Council so finally I'm concerned about the present that this Council moratorium sets especially in response to panels refusal to work but the city has about 20 boards and commissions in addition to the police oversight panel unlike the police oversight panel members who do in fact get paid for this service the residents who serve on these 20 boards and commissions are unpaid and from time to time some of those board members are unhappy about one

[22:01] thing or another by capitulating to the police oversight panel's refusal to work is Council signaling to the 20 other boards that it's okay if they go out on strike if their demands are not met what would happen if for example residents serving on the planning board stop processing site review applications or the landmarks board stop preserving historic buildings or the beverage licensing Authority stop Prosecuting liquor law violations I understand that the primary motivation for Council to Grant a moratorium to the police oversight panel is to avoid having to appoint a special counsel to investigate the panel's unilateral work stoppage however last week the deputy City attorney advised us that there is no urgency in appointing a special counselor to deal with this work stoppage code of conduct complaint we could literally wait on that appointment for another couple of months pass the revisions the police oversight panel enabling orders and assuming that the panel then got back to work the complaint would become mood and we'd be dismissed without the need for an investigations for those Reasons I'm going to vote

[23:01] against the moratorium tonight thanks Bob I've got Mark next um yeah I'm kind of of the same point of view it's unclear to me you know are we doing this for the benefit of the oversight panel uh which doesn't seem to wish us to do this um or for our the benefit of the city council um as Bob mentioned I don't think we would permit this on the part of any other board or commission and it sends a rather bizarre message you can go on strike you can refuse to perform the role for which you will uh um uh appointed uh you can leave important work undone but not to worry there will be no consequence for doing so um I I am very uncomfortable with that I don't find there is a great rationale for the direction which we're likely to

[24:02] take and frankly I would just let it lay and and uh move forward on the uh the stat the ordinance revision and it becomes a mood at that time that we passed the the revision um Bob raises a good point are we now making the revision of the ordinance uh subject to um the police oversight panels approval um as opposed to our approval it's unclear to me so I I'm also going to vote against it thanks Mark anyone else uh Genie I did have a question and I was a bit concerned by this new process that all of a sudden that we can change the rules because ultimately even though I disagree with all these code of

[25:02] conduct violation but it seems like all the sudden there is a special process when before there was no special process so I was a bit confused by that but I would like to maybe ask Bob and Mark a question and it could be because I missed a little bit of the conversation based on what I heard from the two of you this is not something that is being requested by all members and it seemed it's just maybe two members I I see that some of you are frozen on my screen I hope you can hear me but I wanted to get a sense a better sense of whether this is something that was requested by all members or is it something because two members are pushing and now we're making that decision because of them ultimately uh through my knowledge um the members of the police oversight panel are not pushing for this

[26:02] um they specifically rejected um coming to council and saying you know this would be better we would be better off of the moratorium and freezing everything in place what do you think about that um they want the imprimatur of being on strike okay I'm I'm good with that but I I'm not sure why we are um going taking these steps to say no no you're not on strike you know the decision that you've made is is not one uh that we recognize all's good because we're giving you a moratorium and it seems a little bit backwards to me Judy do you mind if I respond a little bit as well and it's all calling you after that the just that uh we did get emails from the two co-chairs who I to to put a fine point on it I think Les requested this and more stated that that they felt like it was that since Council

[27:02] had brought it Forward they thought it was a good action for us to take and I have I will mention that I've spoken to additional panel members who had a similar perspective so it's less of a request and more that we're hearing from multiple panel members that this is an action that they would welcome for whatever that distinction is worth um and then I've got Rachel here may I call it with you for a moment mayor I'm sure are you aware of of what changed in their thinking um to go from though we don't want to do this we don't want to request this from Council to a point where you know it's not really a bad idea why don't you do that I don't know that I can fully speak for for panel members to talk about an exact Chain of Thought over over the last few weeks but um I will say that there is some distinction between uh requesting something uh officially and welcoming us

[28:02] taking an action okay thank you of course Rachel and then we'll come back to Jeannie awesome um I mean I think Bob makes a good point about precedent setting and other boards and maybe Ripple effects so um I just I'm wondering if uh someone I don't know if it's City attorney or a colleague can is there is there a Counterpoint to the letting it lie like if if we just don't appoint a special counsel and um and then we get through this and they essentially are on strike or or you know sort of a an unstated moratorium what what is the downside to doing it that way if there is a potential downside to setting precedent of like you know if you uh I don't know like I I wouldn't want another board to uh kind of Hold Us hostage like you know

[29:02] and that that could feel not not uh not a good precedent to set so is there a downside to to Bob's suggestion here or or and I don't know if that's City attorney or um or I think maybe mayor Brackett you you um asked for us to have this discussion so what what we get a good Counterpoint and I think we probably owe it to the public who's only heard Bob's suggestion here like what why would we do it in another way maybe I could call on City attorney Aaron Poe who had raised your hand thank you good evening Council Aaron Poe Deputy City attorney this is an unprecedented matter uh we have not had a board take action like this um it was not the recommended course of action for them um and now we're in the circumstance where we are offering Services by ordinance that at some point will not be delivered and so that's the basis for the option of the moratorium and I think council member Yates and Wallach bring

[30:01] up valid concerns um this is not an ideal option it's not a a fix-all for this situation um the ordinance could take longer to draft than expected which would you know end up having the longer delay in the services performed in police oversight um so it's it's not offered as a as a cure-all or a fix-all um but to cure the legal defect of what is offered by ordinance versus what we can actually deliver on right now and pouches has got your title wrong Deputy City attorney Aaron Pho thank you and Judy I've you had asked a question before I wanted to make sure that that you had your question answered and you were finished with that line of inquiry did you have anything more on that not at this time thank you so much thanks I've got Bob stand up yeah thanks I just wanted to follow up in Chinese question too which I thought was a very good question

[31:01] um you know last week we talked about this and and I was curious as to you know what the reasons were and and what people's you know what were they stating about this and what advice the WC attorney had provided at that meeting which I think was me early May a little month and a half ago and I was advised by uh the city manager and my colleagues that rather than asking the police oversight panel to explain themselves or tell whether they wanted a moratorium or not um or the reasons for it that I should simply watch the video um so I did it was three and a half hours long um many of you probably watched it from end to end as well and um in that video at least the thing I was told to watch um they were very clear that they did not want to ask Council some of them were quite um Direct in um I even wrote down some quotes I'm not going to repeat them here now about our public record about why they didn't want Council to Grant a moratorium so not only did they not request it several of them outright refused it and said that they would be quite put off if we granted a moratorium

[32:00] and so that's what we were told to to rely on in um in making our decision tonight and that's what I am relying on making our decision tonight I appreciate the fact that Aaron has had um some offline conversations with some members of the panel and is representing what it is they said to them but none of us I mean I'm sure that what Aaron is representing is true but that's not um evidence before us that's not the record before us the record before us is what we were told to look at and I looked at that and and it was quite clear to me that with the exception of the one panel member who voted against the work stoppage um many probably most of the panel members quite frankly did not want a council moratorium okay uh Lauren thank you Aaron I had a follow-up question sort of based on what Rachel was talking about with precedent um do we four boards like planning board or historic preservation or landmarks board

[33:02] if say two members moved away from the city and we were didn't have quorum um well what would happen in that case is there would we be unable to move things forward or are there ways in which the city might go forward without um Aaron Poe do you want to answer that yes thank you I know the planning board has a mechanism where they can call back former planning board members to have a quorum other boards and it's close to have been you know been a occurrence in the past we would have to go to council for an emergency ordinance to appoint someone so that the board could could do its work and make its you know approve or hear whatever case was needed otherwise without a quorum they could not do their work under the ordinance

[34:02] and there isn't a fallback mechanism other than appointing new members for how that might be dealt with correct not for most boards thank you Matt I appreciate that it's actually this is an interesting conversation to be having I'm glad that we're having it sort of again but a little bit more nuanced and I appreciate the points made before this and I guess I'm trying to just really pin down you know really the the pros and cons here and and to be clear if I remember from our last meeting we still have to just we we have discretion on when we don't have to appoint a special counsel now we can wait a little bit the question is how long can we wait can we wait until the new ordinance is is created and passed and effectively nullifies the need for such complaint or is that complaints anchored in space and time to where no matter what we do later we still have to

[35:00] reconcile um that thing so that's a question I have because I'm trying to understand the pros and cons here if we go through this process of a moratorium versus we don't need to and we can just continue the work I'm trying to sort of get a sense let's maybe a question for City attorney on that one foreign you know I think a reasonable amount of time we have to appoint a special counsel so there's no deadline in the ordinance it isn't 60 30 you know 15 days uh I don't think that would allow us to postpone it indefinitely um but I think a reasonable amount of time and of course it would be up to a court to determine what reasonable was in these circumstances um I think probably waiting until October might be too long okay I appreciate that I'll just say that the precedent piece weighs a bit I think uh on that front and it's it's worth noting that that that's a real it's a weird precedent we've put

[36:00] ourselves in the other the other point I'll just make a note of is there's a very unfortunate situation that's occurred that this panel will not get to weigh in on we had a use of force that resulted in death and this panel will not get to touch that and so the circumstance of all of this um I think is tragic because the nature of this oversight panel is to do exactly those most extreme cases and um they put themselves in their position not to review probably one of the more um important ones that are out there so um I think that's just unfortunate that we're in that situation um all in all I got a bunch of hints but maybe I let Aaron Poe go next thank you I just wanted to clarify that no complaint to my knowledge has been received the shooting death so that is not in queue to be heard in theory it could come in they could be back to work and they would hear it and also tonight we're not asking for appointment of special counsel for the code of conduct just consideration of

[37:00] the moratorium thanks for the clarifications Tara and then Rachel would it be appropriate to ask Aaron why um the two co-chairs asked for the order moratorium or to have them tell us or is that not appropriate which Aaron you talking to Aaron not Aaron Aaron Aaron Brockett I think that's me I you know so the the co-chairs each sent us emails and so I I think I'd refer Council to those emails because that was their official statement on the matter um I don't have them right in front of me so I wouldn't want to try to summarize them right this second if that's all right Tara but welcome you to look them up quickly if you'd like to um Rachel I will say that I I um came in very prepared to just uh you know vote Yes and and uh move on like I we have have had a lot of uh police oversight panel discussions in

[38:01] the last six months so um I want to put that out there and I think um you know Bob made a made a pitch that probably landed with my uh legal side like I am I don't want to set bad and unnecessary precedent you know at this job but that's I don't think it benefits um the city our boards um anyone so I that just made me uh it gave me some pause so what I would ask is I think we have this schedule to pass an emergency so is this an emergency can we come back to it in you know we all love to keep re-looking at this like so can we this is something we can look at in July or August and and see where where we've gotten with the work if we might be close to done if this is really something that we have to um vote on tonight I got Nicole and then I'll call him myself yeah I'm um I kind of made my feelings

[39:00] clear last week and uh don't feel like I need to repeat that but I think that passing on it and punching would be a mistake um I feel like sitting in this place of uncertainty is a really hard thing for any group of people and so I would prefer that we figure this out tonight whatever it is just just figure it out so that there's some certainty and we can move forward thanks and I'll call myself and then Mark and just say um just reiterate just a little bit of what I said last week but the I think the the purpose of this is to remove the threat of um legal action and and complaints from the police oversight panel members while they're doing the work of revising the ordinance and um you know I've heard that that's saying that okay we don't have a fixed timetable for a pointing of special counsel but at the same time Aaron post talking about that it may the reasonable amount of time May well be less than the amount of time that it takes to revise the organ so I think that threat of

[40:00] legal action will still hang out there if we do not pass this and in fact it might prompt additional complaints or lawsuits and such so um so I I would love to just go ahead and get this done tonight so that we can move on and let the panel do their ordinance revision work and then we won't have to touch this again in until we're considering the ordinance revisions and I think I would like to see that outcome personally so maybe we can have a vote here in a minute and see what the majority feels like but um mark I would take a different view uh mayor I would let it sit or anywhere from 90 to 120 days I'm not overly concerned that we'll be flooded with a slew of litigation I think it's within our discretion to do that and I would just let it lie um and in 90 to 120 days we can see where we are with respect to the ordinance revision and what we need to

[41:01] do with respect to a moratorium but the the precedent of this really does distressed me a bit um and I would like to not create that precedent tonight Bob yeah um I I said my piece I just wanted to ask a question if it's okay with you Aaron go ahead it's a question of Staff probably for Nuria Nuria is it um possible that we could move forward the uh is the stated reason for for wanting to have a moratorium or Workshop ages so that the police oversight panel can um I guess work with us or or make some suggestions on revisions to um their neighboring ordinance and I don't know if we're going to make them happy or not but that's a different issue um I know that we're going to receive a report or update or something like that from from Farah at the end of next month which is great I look forward to that and then the the actual um ordinance first read and second reading uh uh for the actual changes

[42:00] don't happen until October is it possible that can be moved up until either August or September I know we have a very full calendar but you know to to um Aaron pose you know observation we we couldn't um let this special counsel appointment sit too long and so I'm wondering if we could shorten that period of time to Mark's Point let it sit but rather than having it sit for four months which is kind of what's uh what what would be the case that we don't do a more trim tonight is it possible that we can move that into August or even into September with a little bit of extra work Maria so I appreciate that council member and we'll say that August is not likely and I don't want to um I don't want to necessarily preclude that October I think we were trying to go for October 5th but the consultant and the working group uh really have a schedule of some engagement um they have a timetable by which to do this um I I don't want to speak for the consultant I'm happy to go back and

[43:01] speak to her but I can't imagine that it is going to be um a significantly accelerated time frame given the work and the engagement that we want to do with this and to be able to bring that ordinance um through the parties including CAO the rest of the panel um staff to take a look at that as well but I am certainly happy to look I just know that it won't be August and happy to consider September but I will also say that September is a very full calendar particularly with budget um as we um are entering that timetable uh and if we were able to do something we might have to look at a special meeting I'm happy to get back to council but I I think it is a a rush that is already on a timetable that is accelerating oh thanks Mary that's helpful I'm actually going to agree with with Aaron Nicole on on their point that we should just um vote Yes or no tonight I I do

[44:01] agree that having us hang out there for a long time sounds like probably till October uh probably is unacceptable we may draw another complaint against us for failing to respond to code conduct complaints so let's just decide tonight that's where I'm at I'm gonna vote no but if there's a majority that wants to go yes then that's fine very good so if folks are okay I'd like to go ahead and call for um or invite emotion on the consent agenda uh that would be the The Next Step Nicole I moved to approve the consent agenda with Matt and Rachel as the representatives to the um forgetting what it's called better better public meetings thank you Matt better public meetings great we have a second I'll I'll go ahead and second it uh Alicia I think we have a roll call yes sir we do and we'll start the roll call for the

[45:02] consent agenda with council member Benjamin yes mayor Brockett yes council member Folkers yes friend yes Joseph yes spear yes Wallach yes but no on the moratorium thank you sir Warner yes and Yates uh yes but no in the moratorium the consent agenda items a through C are hereby approved with denoted Nays for item 2B from council member Wallach and Yates okay well thanks everybody for talking that through continues to be a challenging issue um Bob you have an additional thought not on this item we talked about it a

[46:01] lot but I did I did want to congratulate um and thank um judge Khan for agreeing to serve as our intramunicipal judge after judge uh cook retires Nuri I'm wondering are we prepared tonight to talk about whatever process is for the permanent employment or is that something that's going to come to us um later in the summer that is something that's going to come later um we did not anticipate knowing that this meeting was full that we would talk about it tonight great well I will look forward to that and I just want to thank judge Khan for for um for agreeing to service our intro municipal judge thanks for that Bob we appreciate you bringing that up I'm also very grateful to oh and look judge Khan is here in person could you speak to us please hello thank you all and I'll be just really brief I just wanted to say what a privilege it's been to work with judge cook for these past 21 years and really appreciate everything she's done for our court and I appreciate all of you the support you've given our court for so long and I'm very excited about the the next stage for our court I really look forward to Leading our team and being a part of it and I look forward to meeting

[47:01] you all in person some of you have met the last couple of weeks had a chance to at least say hello to so I'm looking forward to getting to know you all a little bit better but thank you so much for the appointment thank you for stepping up judge Khan we're thrilled to have you in the role it's my pleasure thank you so much good all right well with that that finishes out our consent agenda so if we could move to our public hearing please Alicia yes sir thank you our public hearing is item three on tonight's agenda and 3A is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8577 rezoning approximately 1.01 acres of land located at 5405 spine Road an adjacent right-of-way from the industrial General to the business Community to zoning District as described in chapter 9-5 modular Zone systems of the BRC 1981 and setting forth related details this is referenced

[48:01] under case number lur 2022-00057 so we can go straight to Chandler come here great chandel you're up thank you um I understand someone over there will be driving the presentation all right um so as Alicia just mentioned this is the second reading of an ordinance which will rezone 5405 spine Road next slide please um we don't need to read this one because Alicia just read that so next slide please um so in terms of process this went to planning board on May 16th they voted 6-0 to recommend approval of the rezoning to city council the first reading of the ordinance was on June 1st and we are now at second reading next slide please um so the site is located at the northwest corner of spine and Lookout roads and is occupied by an existing 14 643 square foot building constructed in 1982 it's housed a variety of industrial

[49:00] and office uses over the past 40 years and currently contains an office use there is a Surface parking lot with 39 Parks uh parking spaces next slide please um so the site is located within the boundaries of the Gun Barrel Community Center plan uh this was adopted in 2002 and there was much public participation and the plan established the vision for redevelopment and much of the Gun Barrel commercial in the office area with the goal of emphasizing Urban Development patterns with a diverse mix of vibrant uses the plan provides direction for reviewing public improvements in private sector development proposals in the area on the land use designation assigned in the gun barrel Community Center plan for this site is community retail next slide please um so the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan land use designation was also updated following adoption of the Gun Barrel Community Center plan the existing land use designation on the site is community business

[50:00] um these are areas these areas are the focal point for commercial activity serving a sub Community or a collection of neighborhoods they are designated to serve the daily convenience shopping and personal service needs of nearby residents and workers and support the goal of walkable communities next slide please um so the existing Zoning for the site is IG industrial General that's defined as general industrial areas where a wide range of light industrial uses and some complementary residential uses maybe allowed in appropriate locations so the existing Zoning for the site is not consistent with the underlying land use designation next slide please um so this shot shows the surrounding context the immediate surroundings primarily industrial but there have been a variety of recent rezonings as well so there are retail uses nearby along with some new residential The Gun Barrel

[51:00] Shopping Center in king supers is just to the southeast of the site several restaurants have also popped up in the last several years next slide please um so this slide just shows all the properties that are surrounded in yellow are properties that have been rezoned um following adoption of the Gun Barrel Community Center plan um so you can see I won't um read through all of them but you can see that there are several sites um that have been rezoned from industrial General to community business zoning high density residential and Regional business sounds consistent with the underlying language designation and the gccp next slide please um so the key issue for discussion tonight which is the same key issue that was discussed at the planning board hearing is is the rezoning request consistent with the required review criteria for rezoning next slide please so these criteria are found in section 9219 e of the boulder Revised Code

[52:02] um it says the city the city council shall Grant a rezoning application only if the proposed rezoning is consistent with the policies and goals of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and for an application not incidental to a general revision of the zoning map meets one of the following criteria so first we're going to discuss consistency with the bvcp policies next slide please um staff finds that the proposed rezoning is on balance consistent with the Boulder Valley comp plan goals and policies in particular policy 2.19 neighborhood centers which supports evolution of these centers to become mixed-use places in accordance with area planning efforts and is also tied to the community business land use designation policy 2.09 neighborhoods is building blocks policy 2.24 commitment to a walkable and accessible City in policy 5.01 revitalizing commercial and industrial areas next slide please

[53:02] um so the remaining review criteria the applicant must demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the rezoning meets one of the following criteria so in this case the applicant has shown that the proposed rezoning is necessary to come into compliance with the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan map specifically as mentioned above the Boulder Valley comp plan land use designation for the site is community business whereas the existing zoning is industrial General The bc2 Zone district has been determined by planning staff to be consistent with the community business land use designation therefore we find that the proposed rezoning will bring the psych into compliance with the underlying land use map next slide please oh I guess I just kind of read um everything that was going to be on this next slide but this is just the definition of the community business Zone so in terms of the review process um this is quasi-judicial um planning board makes recommendations city council is the ultimate decision

[54:00] Authority in terms of the public notice process written notice was sent out to Property Owners within 600 feet of the site as well as posted on the property um staff has received no comments or questions from the public on this application next slide please I'm so in conclusion staff finds that the proposed rezoning application does meet the resulting criteria of section 9219e of the boulder Revised Code and finds the proposed rezoning request to be in compliance with the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and the gun barrel Community Center plan next slide please this is the suggested motion language which is a motion to adopt ordinance 8577 rezoning approximately 1.01 acres of land located at 5405 spine Road and adjacent rights away from the industrial General to the business Community to zoning District as described in chapter 95 modular zone system BRC 1981 setting forth related details uh next slide now I can answer any questions thank you

[55:01] thanks for that Chandler anyone have questions for Chandler seeing no questions then we can go to the public hearing and we have one person signed up they will get three minutes to speak so are we ready to bring uh Lynn Siegel online for for her testimony yes sir I she should be able to unmute herself and speak now trying to talk but you were talking um I don't exactly know what I want to say on this issue quite frankly you know but there is one thing I think I should know better from the presentation what exactly is happening here and I don't

[56:02] and I'm the public and I'm supposed to be advising you because you're advising how the city operates so I think that's your responsibility it's not mine it's also following nine City boards and trying to read an awful lot of stuff that I don't have a clear idea of what's Happening Here I could have read all the stuff behind this understand it I think that I want more of a business Community than Industrial side here but maybe I don't because all the industrial spaces in Boulder are getting pushed out east further and further and further as we have less and less land because everything is about the housing God the housing God

[57:00] that the city of Boulder doesn't seem to understand is also the creation of jobs and the creation of a jobs housing imbalance and does not agree with the Bola Valley comp plan so I think you people ought to have a lot deeper consideration before you just vote for something like this because maybe we need that as Industrial since there's no place to stick our industrial anymore and you know what my favorite retail hop hat janitorial supply where you get those little green things that you scrape your dishes off with for really cheap at now I have to ride my bike all the way to Gun Barrel to get them because it's not on Pearl Street anymore that's a problem for me I don't like to take an hour and a half of my time to go to Gun Barrel on my bike

[58:00] when I've got nine City boards to follow I don't have a lot of time to you know just throw around so I don't like to see businesses and Retail just exiting my immediate area and I think that's probably what you're trying to do here is get more business here unless industrial right but we need industrial too don't we because we've stuck housing in every industrial site done thank you Lynn so I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council does anyone have any discussion or perhaps a motion I'll make a motion to uh make a motion to adopt uh an ordinance if that's okay

[59:00] with anybody go for it all right I'll make an option to uh adopt ordinance 8577 rezoning approximately 1.01 acres of land located at 5405 spine Road and adjacent rights of way from the industrial General IG to the business Commercial to bc2 zoning District as described in chapter 9-5 modular zone system BRC 1981 and setting fourth related details second we've got a motion in a second Alicia could we have a vote please yes sir we'll start the vote for item 5A with you mayor Brockett yes council member faulkers yes friend yes Joseph yes spear yes

[60:01] mayor Pro Tim Wallach yes council member weiner yes Yates yes and Benjamin yes ordinance 8577 is hereby adopted unanimously very good thanks everyone for that I will now go ahead and gavel our special meeting closed and hand the reins over to council member Mark Wallach to do our study session thank you so much mayor um good evening and welcome to tonight's study session of the Boulder City Council I am mayor Pro tem Wallach and thank you for joining us as this is our final meeting before our summer break I am sure that all questions will be pertinent and all comments will be focused we have on tonight's agenda three items our first item will be the Municipal

[61:02] Court quarterly update our second item is the Boulder County Clerk's presentation 2023 and Beyond election review which will include an update on ranked Choice voting and staff's presentation regarding potential ballot items and lastly our last item is information regarding the 2024 city of Boulder energy conservation code uh development project uh before we go into our work items I would like to outline how the meeting will be conducted we'll review staff's presentations for each of the items and then we'll have a time for questions at the end of the presentation we will conduct our Council discussion with staff if you have questions please wait for staff to complete that presentation and we will now turn to our city manager Nuria Rivera vandamide they introduce our first item thank you so much council member and our mayor Pro tem I should say uh and I'm

[62:01] going to try to keep all my comments short today but I will sneak in just a note of gratitude uh to judge cook as she gives her last official Municipal Court quarterly update it has been a privilege to work alongside her and see the work that the community that the municipal court is doing and in particular the great work the community court is really doing so judge cook I leave that to you thank you thank you for those kind words Maria and um it's so great to have you as our city manager given that the Austin Community Court is one of our role models for this initiative so that's been very beneficial um I was told earlier that there were points in time when my voice broke up so if that happens please flag that for me I'll turn off my video because that can help um with me tonight uh first of all good evening mayor and members of council um with me tonight is Nia Nguyen he's our lead Navigator um Nia worked at the boulder shelter for

[63:01] the homeless in a variety of capacities for four years when we hired Megan Newton to replace our first navigator we also hired Nia to work alongside her he left us briefly to coordinate the be their team but came back as our lead Navigator when Megan moved over to HHS he is a hard worker and has an incredible understanding of the topic of homelessness in general as well as the of the various individuals experiencing homelessness in our community um do we have the presentation um can we have that up and judge you are breaking up just a little bit so turning off your video is probably a good call okay so um you can go to the next slide and um the reason I'm uh discussing this tonight is I just want to give you a deeper understanding of the work that these Navigators provide um it can be very confusing when we also have the be their team we have

[64:01] ambassadors we have case managers with other entities so I really wanted to uh dial that in for you next slide please so this slide you've seen before in some of my other presentations um it's just here to remind you that while the net Court Navigators will assist anyone their primary area of focus is the unsheltered unhoused individuals with the highest level of Acuity which is the the bottom line circled on this graphic all right next slide please I broke this navigation worked down into phases based on some system mapping work that our peers in Austin did their work is depicted in slides included at the end of this PowerPoint and while I don't intend to discuss those slides I thought you might be interested in having them as a reference for the future um incidentally that work that was done in Austin was founded funded by their downtown Austin Alliance in 2018 and

[65:00] then in 2019 they followed it up with um mapping of the behavioral health systems for people experiencing homelessness next slide please so this slide depicts the Outreach phase Outreach may be done by any one of several service providers but only be there and shelter staff are allowed to do CE or coordinated entry screens um what's important to remember here is that anyone May disengage at any step along the way of any of these phases we're going to talk about in which case we're coming back here to this slide and attempting Outreach all over again next slide this is the same slide at the two circles in green indicate where our Navigators play a role in Outreach Outreach is not their primary job function as it is for be there but they will engage in Outreach and referral if the need presents itself um Nia do you have any idea what percentage of the individuals refuse to

[66:00] engage with you and Nick are other navigator on your first attempt yeah first off good evening councils and thank you for having me here tonight um and to answer judge Cook's questions uh it's about 20 to 25 of individuals who will refuse to engage with us um on our first attempt of making contact with them do you have any estimate of the percentage of people who are impaired or distracted by substance use or mental health issues yeah yeah sorry about that veg cook but it's about 60 to 70 percent of individuals who are either impaired or distracted by substance when we make contact with them and um do you have an idea of the average number of times it takes before somebody agrees to engage with you yes this uh really depends on the client but on average it takes three to four tries before they really trust us and sit down and do anything with us all right thank you um next slide please

[67:00] so this slide um is an attempt to provide some metrics for this Outreach phase on the center column is the exact metric that we're providing numbers on as you would expect given their respective roles be there has more contacts with more individuals um than our Navigators during this space and you saw some of this data in different format in your safe and managed spaces um update a few months ago next slide please okay so the next phase is client engagement and if you go to the next slide um client engagement typically falls into lead three large categories defined by the circles at the top and then at the bottom I have the uh the entities that mostly um participate in those various uh Columns of tasks next slide please uh but um again if you look at the areas highlighted in that glowing lime green borders you will see that our Navigators

[68:01] are primarily working during the engagement phase to assist with service needs for those who are unhoused and unsheltered so accessing public benefits accessing Wellness appointments and very significantly helping them keep appointments in the criminal justice system and that's not just in our court been in all of the courts where they may have cases here in Boulder County um do you have any idea of the percent of people who refuse shelter after going through coordinated entry yeah um I do not have the percentage of fall Community as a whole but ninety percent of the clients that work with us in the community Court program will not access the voter shelter all right thank you next slide please again um another slide showing metrics for the various service needs our Navigators help to provide and this is where you begin to see the shift in roles The

[69:00] Navigators are much more involved than be there in assisting people with service needs especially those needs that are associated with the criminal justice system involvement although again there still is a little bit of overlap um I do want to call out one difference be um on the be their side you will see a reference to referrals by and large and um on the Navigator side you'll see completions and that's because an individual must complete the task associated with their service to earn dismissal of a community Court eligible case and in fact The Navigators are often accompanying the person to the appointment if it's medical or dental or mental mental health or whatever so um well uh be their tracks referrals we are tracking referrals completed not about how long would you say it takes when you go to a physical or Behavioral Health appointment with an individual um on average it takes us about two and a half hours to do that

[70:00] okay and how about attending court on average for that it's about three and a half hours okay so it's a fair amount of time that gets eaten up with these uh with helping people navigate these systems by accompanying them um can you tell us um about the work that you did with one client Nia to help him complete his out of custody competency evaluation yeah um a couple of years ago we had a client who was older to do out of custody competency restoration and due to covid um all of his restoration meeting were being done over the phone and the client has no phone no laptops and he has pretty severe memory issues so what happened was I ended up going out to look for him every time he has an appointment and I would bring him back to the Chester Center we would let him use one of our hearing room there uh we would tone a movie on for him on on one of our computers and let him watch as he wait for his appointment and uh the the wait time

[71:01] usually about an hour and a half to two hours long and when it's time for the appointment I just come out with a phone and uh we call the restoration worker together um and I said do that all right thank you not you just froze also so you may want to turn your video off um I thought that was a very uh creative approach that neot took to make sure that this individual was able to keep his competency appointments once he was restored to competency he was able then to go forward and um see his felony charges through to the end all right let's next slide so we're now going to talk about the Free Housing stage next slide um so here's sort of the main categories of what needs to happen um in the pre-housing stage of Engagement it's focused primarily on the

[72:00] tasks needed to get a person onto the wait list and document ready for housing next slide please so again those glowing green shapes are functions that our Navigators help to perform and we along with other service providers are very involved in the Free Housing phase of Engagement so one of the other main service providers at this stage is focus re-entry um but there are a couple of others too the uh there is an asterisk next to that um box on the left that or on the right that's marked skill building videos they are funded by our community Court Grant and should be done by the end of September but some of the topics that we're going to have are for instance how to get ready for housing once you're on the list what steps to expect once you've been matched with a voucher how to set boundaries with your unhoused friends once you move in and um how to secure meals and food and so

[73:02] forth um uh a couple more questions um of our highest utilizers say our top 45 utilizers across multiple um parts of the system what percentage of those would you say have done that the ice the DAT um about 63 percent of the highest utilizers have done the vs for that but only about 13 of them are actually on our Regional Housing list so the only 13 that means they originally did the the survey that was needed to get them onto the housing list but then they haven't stayed in touch enough to remain on the list is that about right that's correct what what's the average bi score for unhoused people in Boulder County um so the average score for an unhoused individual in Boulder County is eight um the maximum score for vs for that is 17. and what's the average VI score for Municipal Court clients uh for Municipal

[74:00] Court client it is 13. okay so that again confirms that we're working with really high Acuity clients next slide please so um another set of metrics um you can see in the center what the metric is um and as we progress into these pre-housing tasks the role of the Outreach workers such as be there really drops off and um the role of the Court Navigator really picks up let's go to the next slide next phase is housing so if you can go to the next slide this is uh an attempt to capture the many steps that occur once a person on the waitlist is matched to housing it may not be all inclusive but it's pretty comprehensive and if you'll go to the next slide please um again we use the lime green squares to depict the phases where our Navigators are involved um and not what would you say is the

[75:01] percentage of people that you work with that lack the uh the skill to navigate these systems and these particular housing tasks on their own um so I don't have any data on this but if I have to estimate I would say about 70 to 80 percent of folks lack the skill to navigate these systems um if not higher than that all right thank you Nia and then um so if we uh go to the next slide um you can see the typical amount of time that's spent by The Navigators at each of these on various phases in the housing process Nia can you talk a little bit about what a move-in day looks like and who is involved yeah it's uh usually an extensive list of people who involve in move-in day uh it's the housing the housing case manager the Navigator the hot obese team for transportation the property manager and the client themselves um what will happen is the property manager will reach out to us and let us know when they're available for lease signing and move in so we usually have

[76:00] to go out and find the clients after after the property manager let us know um and we let them know when the move-in date is and on the day of the move-in we go to the client wherever they're staying and we helped load their properties into the truck or van that we have that day we bring them to their apartment we do a quick walk-through of the apartment to make sure everything is proper uh we go through all the rules and policies with the client and property manager then we signed a lease and after that we usually have to call Excel to have the electricity turn on um and um sometimes clients need help with Furnishing the apartment um some property have the Furnitures ready for them but uh most property do not and we usually have to reach out to an organization called home ahead and they will help with any clients moving into the appointment for the first time with furnitures thank you um if we can go to the next slide we're going to discuss now the housing

[77:00] retention phase and you can go to the next slide um once someone has moved into housing the work of the Navigator is not necessarily done permanent Supportive Housing or psh as it's known comes with an average of one visit per week by a housing case manager for many of our high Acuity of clients this is not enough particularly in the early phases of being housed but our Navigators in concert with many of the other service agency partners that you see listed there work together to develop a plan for regular check-ins on whatever schedule is appropriate for the individual client and on average that's about three times per week eventually is building home comes fully online The Navigators may be able to step back from some of this work but if you'll go to the next slide again you can see this is where our Navigators play a role I'm wondering now if you could give an example where some joint The Joint check-in model was very helpful in supporting somebody

[78:03] with a lot of needs yeah we have a client who moved into an apartment in Longmont earlier this year and uh it was us uh the community Court b-hub Focus re-entry heart and mental health partner all worked with this client and we all knew that she would be someone who would struggle to keep her housing she has lost her housing four times previously um and so we would set up a bi-weekly meeting to talk about her specifically and we check in on her about four times a week and because she stayed in Longmont and she was such a social person she was really struggling with um not being able um to hang out with all of her friends that were here in Boulder and she didn't really have any support group in Longmont um and so she got really depressed and she started drinking a lot she's binge drinking quite a bit and she stopped eating completely so there was a day when me and the hot officers was there

[79:01] to check in on her and we found her in her apartment lying in her bed and not able to get up and she was vomiting a lot of blood that day there were quite a bit of blood but next real bad so we had to call for the paramedic and ask them for a transport to Boulder so we can get her on an emergency hold um and so she was in there for quite a bit of time a few days and then she got transitioned over to the trt program with mental health partners she's doing better now she's very happy that we were there to help her one thing uh one thing to note that is one of the paramedic Personnel told us that if we didn't um if we weren't there that day she might have she might have died that day she's doing a lot better and she just wants to finish the program and returned to her apartment thank you neonat all right we're going to shift gears now and um I just want to follow up on something that was asked about at a

[80:00] previous council meeting so if you can go to the next slide has to do with camping cases and you can go to the following one um I know that this came up in the uh discussion about safe and managed spaces when council member Yates asked a question about outcomes in camping cases and Dr Reinhardt from the police department attempted to answer the question but I do want to um emphasize for you that it's the court records management system that contains this data not the police they have the filings part but we have the outcome part but since you were curious I provided the answers here and I've also added a comparison to 2019 outcomes when we could impose alternative sanctions that were facilitated by The Navigators but only if people came to the court to court in the courthouse because we were not doing community Court we were not out in the community at that time and so there's some pretty significant aspects to this data that I want to call out first the difference between the percentage of cases that resulted in jail sentences similar these cases are

[81:01] generally comprised of people who don't show up for court they get arrested on bench warrants they plead guilty and they receive jail sentences second if you assume that most of the ten percent of cases from 20 to 23 that are are still open if you assume that they ultimately result in dismissal or go past retention then the numbers for eventual dismissal um also end up being um pretty similar so the 32 plus the 10 percent would be similar to the 42 percent plus the two percent on the bottom lines but the really notable difference is that we've been able to convert cases where people were showing up for court pleading guilty getting a suspended fine to cases where they are now getting an alternative sanction that requires engagement so as a result we're actually getting a higher level of accountability for these violations than we had before we implemented Community Court and again key to this really I

[82:01] think is the fact that we're doing community court on an Outreach basis at different sites rather than depending on the defendants to walk through the courthouse store and next slide that's it all right that uh I think that is my cue um does council have any questions of uh in yet and by the way thank you very much for that presentation it was uh extremely informative and uh I want to at least have my colleagues ask whatever questions they need to ask any hands Nicole yeah thank you so much um thank you for the presentation that that was really informative um one of the questions that I was wondering about is in terms of folks who work their way into housing through Community Court

[83:00] do we see any difference in terms of long-term Success Through compared to those that are not coming in through Community Court because it's a now it's a higher needs population and the support they're getting is more intense so just wondering if there's if we have that data yet and I understand if we don't um I don't think we have that data yet but it's something that we're working hard to keep track of well yeah that'll be really interesting and um yeah thank you all right anyone else with questions going once twice let's open it up for comments Nicole your first stop thank you um I this just just sort of a general comment in judge cook since it's your last evening with us I figured I would just say it here but um you know I've heard from a number of people just the way that uh not just this community court but also the work that you've done with restorative

[84:00] justice at the University what a difference it has made um I think in terms of working with complicated systems and trying to get them to work better for the people involved I just I just want to say thank you I think you know you've really changed lives you've helped do some transformation of systems in your decades with the city and it's kind of what we all hope we can do as public servants and I just want to sincerely thank you for everything that you've done for the city so and thank you for sending us out with us a wonderful presentation as well thank you all right Aaron then Juni yeah well I'll start by saying also thanks that was very informative and uh not it was great to have you here with us today and some of those stories that you were telling were really inspiring about how you know City staff are really going above and beyond to help folks who are really struggling get into a better place in their lives so that was just very impressive and uh makes me proud of

[85:02] our city organization that we're doing work like that so thanks for being here and talking us through that and then uh judge coach just wanted to Echo Nicole's thanks and you know you've been a transformative leader in the municipal court for over 20 years and you've made such a difference in so many people's lives and we're just you know deeply deeply grateful for all of that work so thank you for being with us uh one last time and talking about the the all the difference that you're making that the court is making in our community thank you thank you Judy the floor is yours followed by Bob followed by Rachel thank you so much Mark and I think it's the same for me I just wanted to thank judge cook for the great and thoughtful presentation and thank you for all the work you have done in Boulder and also just hearing your presentation tonight it's it's truly inspiring to know that you have done such great work in

[86:00] supporting our most vulnerable members of the population and also for bringing that to give those personal stories so thank you so much and it means a lot and thank you for your service thank you Bob well I'd like to add my thanks as well judge cook you you've been a great uh example to us a mentor to many of us and we're all going to miss you we wish you well in your retirement and thank you also for for bringing along judge Khan It's very very easy and smooth transition that you should be very proud of of um of your success or at least your interim successor um I also want Council to know that in addition to all the work the judge cook does to help vulnerable populations and obviously it would be easy for a judge to Simply sit on the bench in a black robe and hand down sentences but judge cook is is far more than than that um but but I also want folks to know that what judge cook has done here in

[87:01] Boulder has been recognized at the national level as well judge cook is one of the founders of a National Organization of Municipal judges and she has been a leader and mentor to many missile judges around the country in Sharing Boulder's best practices with other cities and so it's not just the great work the judge cook is doing here in Boulder but also the great work that's being done in other communities around the country tree uh under judge Cook's leadership so thank you your honor thank you Bob I appreciate your recognition of that Rachel piggybacking on what Bob just said You know despite the uh judge cook your busyness and um you know National status you um have always been generous in giving your time to us as council members I think you spent like two hours with me onboarding when I started and showing me around and I'm sure that you did that for uh all of us uh and really gave us a perspective and and you've been always sort of unflinching and in

[88:01] your on you know uh your bird's eye view and on the ground perspective of what's really happening in Boulder and you've um shared I think what we needed to hear so thank you for that and um I I just want to also appreciate I think one of the first times we crossed paths was at a homeless Memorial probably five years ago and I remember uh you just getting a lot of hugs from people that had gone through your court system and as a a fellow attorney being pretty impressed that like a lot of people don't don't maybe want to hug the person who was sentencing them so that I thought that spoke volumes so thank you and I'm wishing you uh happiness and success in in your next endeavors thank you so much all right Matt followed by Tara thanks Mark and I you know these are great opportunities for us um to really gush uh over people who in many ways do work that I would say is greater and more impactful than any one

[89:01] of us sitting on Council um and and you certainly exemplify that um and I think any one of us on Council would love to be able to leave a lasting impression on our community the way you have judge Koken and um it's just a testament to everything you have done and it's also great to sort of see in these reports and and how you've transformed certainly our local justice system at the municipal court level it's a breath of fresh air because of all the hard things we hear at the state level and nationally with regards to courts and the justice system in that sense and to see such great work here gives us hope that there are there are these nuggets of places where where good is being done for the right reasons um and helping people so I I appreciate that a lot and I really hope um you great Endeavors on on your next Journey so so thanks for all that great work and uh appreciate you setting up uh judge Khan for some great success thank you Matt Bearer well judge cook I want to personally

[90:02] thank you for helping me a non-lawyer understand all that I could possibly need to understand on the courts and how things work and all the time you put into teaching me all the Articles you sent I have reading materials till the end of time and but I would want to say that besides all the accolades you're truly a great person and also fun and you know that's one of my highest values so I appreciate everything that you are to us and to Boulder obviously I'm not the only person that considers your friend you kind of thought I was and now I see you have all these other friends so that's fine we'll share you but I do hope that we keep in touch for a really long time and I'm gonna I'm gonna miss talking to you thank you likewise and we'll just have to find reasons to connect any other comments

[91:01] if not judge cook yeah thank you very much for that presentation and thank you so much for your long service and I hope the next step in your journey is going to be a fruitful one and uh and enjoyable um be well take care thank you all right with that we're going to move to our next item which is the Boulder County Clerk presentation 2023 and Beyond election review and support presentation regarding uh potential ballot items for that I am going to turn again uh to our city manager uh to introduce the matter and take it from there thank you so much mayor Pro tem we have an amazing team that is working on elections and that starts with a woman who needs no introduction to you all our fabulous Court Clerk Elisha Johnson and I will say too that our CFO will later on be giving a presentation on the

[92:01] petition items but I'm going to toss it to you Alicia to uh frame as ever she would like and to introduce our Boulder County guest oh thank you Nuri that was such a gracious introduction I so appreciate it good evening again mayor mayor Pro tem and members of council I'm Elisha Johnson serving the city as your city clerk and Records manager it is my honor and privilege to introduce this evening our esteemed my esteemed counterpart in the county are Boulder County Clerk Molly Fitzpatrick I have worked with Molly and her team these past two and a half years as your city clerk and admire the job that she has to do as I am the election official for the city she managed the elections for multiple cities and the county Molly and her team have been amazing Partners as we prepare to introduce ranked Choice voting to our voters this

[93:01] year she is here tonight to provide counsel with updates on that work and where we are headed Beyond 2023. let me be the first to thank her for the time she is giving us tonight and the partnership that we have developed together thank you so much Alicia I really appreciate that warm introduction and it's certainly been uh such so enjoyable to work with you and the rest of the Boulder City staff on all elections related matters and especially this big one that voters will be facing this fall so big thank you to you and the team we enjoy the partnership as well um I believe I have about 10 minutes which I appreciate and then we'll dive into q a um and I will be talking about ranked Choice voting but I also wanted to um take the opportunity just to kind of go over what we've been up to the last year or so and what the next year and a half will look like and also provide

[94:00] some key information uh key updates statistics fun facts just so you have in your back pocket and of course talk about ranked Choice voting but there's also a lot going on in elections besides uh just ranked Choice voting but um we will just go ahead and dive in and I'm going to share my screen let's see let's see Alicia could you confirm verbally that you can um see this I've lost yeah so you can see it perfectly thank you perfect all righty so um let's see here like I said some key facts uh for you all about Boulder County voters right now we have 228 000 active registered voters in 2014 we had 184 000 active registered voters so the

[95:01] county has grown not that that's a surprise to anyone um the majority of our voters in Boulder County are unaffiliated we have uh 47 unaffiliated uh followed by the Democratic party and then the Republican Party um this data in the following slides can be found on our maps and data section on our website so lots of good fun data to to dig through there later uh usually I say this is a fun fact I don't know if this is a fun fact for this audience but uh Boulder County voters uh Longmont actually just surpassed Boulder about a year ago with more registered voters in the city of Boulder so a little interesting tidbit there but you can see the breakdown of all of the active voters by City on our website but this is just a snapshot and then here's a high level voter turnout slide between General and coordinated elections again on our website I know that it kind of takes a

[96:01] minute to orient yourself to this graph of course as we all know that we have the higher turnout in the presidential and midterm elections and lower in the coordinated elections and I know we are all very passionate about local elections and how much they impact community members in Boulder County we're all doing the best we can to educate voters that there are elections in these odd years as well and to make sure folks know what's on the ballot and the great thing about Colorado is that you know you get about every election so it's a good reminder but we still want to of course see those numbers in those coordinated elections go go way up as I mentioned I wanted to just provide a little bit of what we've been up to since the last election or what we implemented in the last election um we did offer Spanish language ballots for the very first time in the 2022 general election and so if a person came into a vote Center and wanted to vote a Spanish ballot we were able to produce

[97:00] that for them on top of that the state actually offered a Statewide hotline that offered language assistance over the phone to voters in a lot of different languages so that was a great new offering and we are looking forward to continuing that this year as well we also launched a know your voting rights effort and this effort was designed to really Center the experiences of Voters who have historically faced discrimination or challenges with voting and so um this effort this campaign is designed to really Center those experiences and make sure that those voters know that um you know they absolutely have a right to vote here's where you go for resources here's how you escalate if you have any sort of issue with voting and so we really want to affirm proactively affirm the rights of all voters in

[98:01] Boulder County we know that we have a diverse demographic here we want to make sure that we're proactively affirming their right to vote and that they know that we're a resource here we want everyone to participate we will continue this in 2023 you all were wonderful in letting us put up these posters in City buildings would love to continue that partnership I'm in promotion of this as well in 2022 we also increased our partnership and we're so thankful to the emergency family assistance association in Boulder um we did host a early day event with effa that went off really well and we're continuing to look at how we can partner with effa so really across the board in in 2022 and looking ahead to this year we're looking at how we can continue to implement elections with an equity lens and um this these fun facts and other updates and Nuggets are captured in our post-election data report and so you can

[99:00] find that on our website we do produce that um after the election so we can always look for kind of what's been going on um there at a high level we have four back-to-back elections starting this fall we have the 2023 coordinated election of course coming up um and so we are in the full swing of things we go to print on our voter instructions in August um ballot content is due in September to our office and then we re we start printing and mailing ballots um actually in September so uh it is going to be a busy year as we're implementing and executing this coordinated election we will concurrently be planning the March presidential primary uh we anticipate that date is going to be March 5th the governor has not yet determined that that or is not yet vocalized that that's absolutely going to be the date but we do expect that it will be um super Tuesday and then we have the Statewide primary

[100:01] on June 25th and then the general election on uh next November of course so uh four back-to-back elections starting this fall from 2023 key updates um we launched a program in partnership with Saint vain Valley school district and the Boulder Valley School District um called excuse me high school voter registration awareness week we created this holiday or this week A couple of years ago really to promote student Civic engagement and awareness on opportunities to register and vote we had another great year this year bvsd is always a wonderful partner um got lots of students registered and educated on how they can participate we also had a great year at the legislature we successfully passed a funding modernization bill this was huge because our the way that elections were funded was wildly um outdated and we were under resourced in many ways and so this helps catch up a

[101:01] little bit um now we have more support from the state um than we did in years previous as mentioned we will offer Spanish language voting again this year at in-person vote centers we are installing more drop boxes in the county and then of course as everyone knows we will be implementing ranked Choice voting for the first time for the city of Boulder okay so ranked Choice voting overview uh just for a little bit of context for those um I know most folks on this call know about this but the voters decided in 2020 to elect the mayor using ranked Choice voting as soon as that ballot measure passed we quickly got to work with the Colorado legislature to pass a bill that requires the secretary of state to adopt rules and guidelines for the conduct of RCB elections since then um both the city of Boulder and Broomfield county have decided to either had already

[102:01] decided or decided to conduct RCV this fall so we're coordinating with them um on a lot of this work as well um and a lot of what we've been doing this year is I'll go over that in a second but um just preparing um in coordination with the city Incarnation with Broomfield in the state of how this is going to actually play out and what it's going to look like it is a very big undertaking and it does impact every facet of our elections we have been looking at ballot design what are our print procedures how do we process the ballots we've upgraded our voting system we're in the thick of that right now how are we conducting public testing of the ballots how are we conducting testing of the equipment how do we result report the results and of course how do we educate voters this is a big change in how they're going to be voting and so we've been working really closely with the city to

[103:01] determine how to educate the voters on this big change and then of course post-election audit as well so at a high level what we've been doing so far this year first I would say we have been securing we started securing our resources last year and the beginning of this year to help Drive the planning and the implementation and the execution of the work um the secretary of state did produce rules earlier this year that we reviewed commented on and started really um you know updating our own procedures and documentation and plans around um like I mentioned we have upgraded our or we're in the process of upgrading our voting system right now um to install the new trusted build which is the new um software for ranked Choice voting and of course communication planning has been a big part of that as well so

[104:00] that's what we've been up to um in terms of the implementation um looking ahead for the rest of the year um it's about you know really finalizing those procedures because we're in the thick of testing right now and we'll be finalizing the procedures before we mail out ballots in September and of course thinking through how we're going to test differently um for our public logic and accuracy test how we're going to audit the contest as well and how we're going to report the results from a Communications standpoint I think I've covered a lot of this but um you know we feel that we've put a lot of great plans in place to really hit the ground running um from this point forward with educating voters um on these changes we've developed in partnership with the city uh city and county content for the website we'll begin um social media posts and we know that the city of Boulder has the

[105:01] um June I believe newsletter that's coming up and so there's going to be some information included in there and then we've also been working on our voter instructions since those go to print pretty soon um again this is going to be a big change so we're really trying to promote this or think this through every angle that we can um you know our plans include social media um press tv voter emails um insert you know we're thinking through how we translate all of this education and Outreach to voters um even you know we're also thinking of how we're training our judges uh because voters are going to walk into the vote centers um with lots of questions so again we're really putting this layer of ranked Choice voting on everything that we do and including in all of our current Communications and adding on new layers of communication specifically about ranked Choice voting um I'm a little over time so I just want to highlight that you know uh other

[106:00] things that we're working on in addition to um implementing the elections just is really centered around security um you know we've had great partnership with the Department of Homeland Security as you all know election officials and offices are facing threats and so working through some of those suggestions from them of how we Shore up our physical security spaces um how we respond to incidents um working to implement our cyber security program and how we're preparing for emergency response as well um myths and disinformation does continue to be a challenge and so we just continue to say to everyone you know if you hear something that it doesn't sound right or feels inaccurate please reach out to our office so we can work to escalate that to our appropriate contacts and hopefully get issues resolved before they spin out of control so with that being said I will leave it on this slide it's always one thing we like to say you know just go update check your voter registration make sure it's current always include your email

[107:00] address so we can get folks on our email list as well and then with everything that I've just gone over most of this is completely open to the public and so we would love for City Council Members to come to our about processing center tour this year we will be talking about ranked Choice voting and any other community members as well and with that I will stop sharing my screen and take any questions that folks have um knowing through that really quickly want to respect everyone's time so great I don't think uh Matt Benjamin is first up and then our mayor next Market Molly thanks for being with us and I'll first apologize because I I talked way up Elisha's skills at bringing great food to our Council meetings so uh I I'm sorry I said hey I'll see you in person got you excited for uh the great food we get to eat to join us so sorry it's virtual that was

[108:00] on me call me next week will do um so I appreciate the presentation and also how quickly you and your team have really gone after that so uh I thank you for that and I my questions are are kind of maybe maybe a little more in the weeds not surprising since since I've I've been knee-deep in the RCV stuff for a while um so question on on ballot um have you or have you is it your discretion or was that discretion of of um our secretary of state with regards to the maximum number of mayoral candidates that you would fit on a ballot um I I think in some previous conversations I don't know the rules like if 20 people were running for mayor we probably would not be putting all 20 on a ballot there would be some down selection so is there some rule that says hey this is the maximum and if there's 20 but only you know only seven making have you figured that out because I'm just curious about how ballots can sort of inflate and and concern about just how many pages you guys are getting out there yeah the we're we're really looking at

[109:02] um how we're going to lay out this contest right now there's a lot of different layout considerations both from the what can you fit what can the voting system support um what can the actual ballot card support um what's the best for scanning what's the best for voters so there's a lot of different ballot layout design considerations generally speaking I believe the voting system does have um you know we're required if there's three to do RCV and I do believe that there is um a limit to um I want to say that there's a limit to how much we can put on there but I would need to validate that um but that is something that I would want to validate with our you know voting systems team and um SOS okay I appreciate it just you mentioned misinformation and some of that comes in the form of oh well these these ballots will just become infinitely long and so I wanted to sort of help set that up that they actually do have some

[110:01] constraints built into that so so I appreciate you looking back at that um the other one has to do with kind of pre and post surveys other communities that have embarked on this journey to sort of Reform their elections have surveyed voters before and then survey voters afterwards and so I didn't know if there was a coordination between you at the county or at our city level um or or a broader coordination where we're surveying Broomfield and Boulder voters pre and post so we really get a sense of how people are feeling about it what's maybe left in terms of Education where we maybe missed where we can do better um but overall just sort of tell the story of of how that works so I didn't know if there was planned for that type of um understanding of of where voters are before and then maybe after the election yeah there's not been anything formal discussed um we are going to be doing extensive Outreach and Communications and events and so um we do plan to get feedback and solicit feedback that way um so we'll have some anecdotal

[111:00] um information but there won't be anything at least on our end we're not doing anything formal right now um to solicit that input um but we will be saying you know kind of doing a debrief post-election and so would welcome any feedback from this group in terms of what you're hearing from voters um and you know voters should email us as well letting us know here's what you know from our experience really met the mark in terms of the Outreach here's what could we could be doing differently um I think you know we are looking at Best Practices with the city of Boulder with Broomfield you know reaching out to other states to get their experiences but um in terms of that direct feedback from voters it's going to be informal and anecdotal right now while we get our underneath us and we'll certainly take um feedback as we get it into future planning and I understand certainly how how busy you guys are so that's certainly a task that is lower on the on the priority list I totally understand that would you be open to the city you know working

[112:00] with you to take some of your load off but would you be open to participating if the city where to initiate that kind of thing um and and make you know obviously make sure it's not on you and I I'm just throwing that out there as I hated my colleagues so make sure Elisha doesn't reach through and and give me a an upside the head as I maybe obligate her to a survey but nonetheless I just sort of curious if you'd be open to that if we sort of worked together on that and took some of that burden uh understanding you know how much work you guys got to do to get uh to and through in past November absolutely we'll take all the information that we can get to make our elections in our process more inclusive more voter-centric more voter friendly we welcome that feedback if I may uh jump in there real quick Molly and man if that's okay I just wanted to say John and I have talked about surveying after the election unfortunately what our biggest concern right now is education because it is a totally new different type of voting system and so we are talking about after the election possibly working with comms

[113:00] to maybe set up some sort of survey that we can send out with specific questions on how the election went you know was it easy to follow and that sort of thing so it is on our radar okay that's great thank you that's all for my questions appreciate it Molly thanks for being with us thank you excuse me mayor Brockett and then Nicole well Molly thanks for being with us tonight good to see you and I want to offer a little bit of an apology but a very big thank you because we put a big work item on your plate by adopting uh ranked Choice voting because that was our voters that did that um but really appreciate you stepping up and um getting this done this is not an easy task so very appreciative there my question is about right so we know in ranked Choice voting if you have more than two candidates and none of them get more than 50 on the first round then you go to a second round you drop off the lowest candidate vote getter and then do the second round Etc et cetera et cetera how is that going to end up getting reported out

[114:00] um after the election you know there's a lot of complexity there so do you do you all know yet how that's going to end up getting in what you publicly report that's a great question um there are options and right now we are evaluating those options um and thinking through different impacts of you know all the different ways that it could look but we do know that we want to prioritize providing as much transparency to the public as what's happening as the ballots are being uploaded and results are being counted and there's different tools that we're looking at to help support that at a very basic level we can produce a report we're looking at how we can layer on more transparency to really demonstrate what's happening as the rounds progress so I'm not prepared to commit or speak to exactly which path we're going down right now but I can tell you those are really our guiding values as we make this determination is

[115:02] providing the greatest amount of transparency to the public as early as possible and so I would be happy to come back you know at a later time once we have some of those details so certified and let Council know how that's going to look yeah that makes sense so I trust you I'll make fantastic decisions and you know maybe that's something you could inform us about through an emailed report you know as you figure that out something like that that might be a possibility but thanks that's all Nicole you are up next thank you and um thanks Molly for this presentation as well as just for all these years of work to get us to this point appreciate it um my question is just around the uh sort of post-election day um processing of ballots and I was just wondering in places that have made this switch to transition to ranked Choice voting have they seen a larger number of ballots that needed to be cured or anything else to kind of suggest like

[116:00] places where um additional education efforts might be helpful or anything like that good question so in terms of curing a ballot um the opportunity to carry a ballot really occurs before um the ballot is separated from its envelope um and so that's if a voter has a signature discrepancy um or didn't you know Mark a signature and so um at that point in the process the ballot has not been separated from its envelope and that voter still has the right to cure their ballot and they have until eight days post-election day to do that and still have their ballot tabulated but what I believe you're referring to and correct me if I'm wrong um Nicole is if there's adjudication more adjudication errors um on a ranked Choice voting contest than a non-rcv contest and so um you know adjudication and improperly marked ballots are a big part of our

[117:00] process generally we have a so if a voter doesn't follow their voter instructions for whatever reason and makes an error on their ballot and you know marks it out in some weird way and tries to correct it what happens is that ballot will go to a bipartisan team of Judges a Republican and a Democrat who will look at that ballot to determine voter intent and so for intent um and and they'll work through that together to enfranchise the voter as much as possible I don't know off the top of my head um what the experience has been with RCV contest in other states but what I do know is that the voter intent guide will you know produce information on how to how our judges should be looking at that and they will be following that and we'll um hopefully be able to you know provide that information after the election at least if how it you know implement or impacted Boulder County but I don't know what other states what that was like but um as I talk to other states I'll be

[118:00] sure to ask that question because it's a good one when we were working on the ballot measure we looked a little bit at that and um other states have done it more recently but when we were looking at 2020 one thing that was noticed is the complaints that came on with regards to sort of that adjudicating part were that people realized that they've only filled in one when they had the opportunity to fill in multiple and then they were wanting to fix that that was a common complaint that I know was done in other places um I mean I say common didn't happen a lot but that was the of the complaints that was the one that sort of stuck out um when we were doing our research so I don't know if that helps answer your question a little bit there Nicole um and I appreciate you Molly for letting me sort of add a little bit of that but that was what we heard uh um thanks and Molly um thank you and thank you also for teaching me new vocabulary word and the difference I appreciate that good to know um but but I think what would be really interesting to see is um post-election do we see a difference in the

[119:00] adjudication rates 2023 versus 2021 for example um or you know even 2020 so just something that can help us understand do we have places where you know we as a city can kind of continue doing do we need to continue doing more education over the next couple years before our next right choice voting um election I I personally would find that really helpful for us on Council to be able to help our community make this transition yeah and we'll definitely you know one of the things I don't think I spoke to this but it is on the slide is we are going to produce a a mock ballot um later this summer to start you know showing that to people um and showing this is what a properly marked ballot looks like here's what improv you know so just so folks could really um start getting used to it because it does look different and then on top of that the voter instructions um we'll include that as well um I know that a lot of folks don't necessarily read their voter instructions so that's why we layer on all the other Outreach as well um but would love your help in promoting that uh mock ballot that we'll have

[120:02] um to voters so they can start getting a preview of it and also just to jump in there and call the queen as well we also have set up on our website our ranked Choice voting website and we're working on that now we have an interactive um sort of like a practice ballot for people to actually be able to go in and kind of play with and We've ran it by the county clerk's office and that team and they approved it and I think John he's on the call as well he um we're on the final stages of that and we've also included that web page with specific information in our in our I would say are preliminary setup of information that we're going to be handing out to voters at various areas in the city and also um we're going to be at festivals and different things like that but they'll have that opportunity in person to kind of play with the ballot as well can I call a quick question off of what you just said Elisha well will this be

[121:01] translated as well into Spanish uh as the the ballot is now Molly um uh which part like the voter um like one thing that we're the RCB instructions and education that's being done yeah that's what we're looking at right now is how we train like what we translate how we translate it and how we get it out um we are going to have a website um about RCV that is also translated into Spanish um and so we're looking at um you know all the different things that we've because we're still developing we've got a really good plan um but we're developing out what that looks like and and how we translate it but that would be a key component is making sure that our materials are accessible in that way in the Spanish language in the absence of further questions let me open this up for comments from Council if anyone has comments

[122:00] there seemed to be no comments one twice very good oh I threw my hand at Mark I just wanted to say thank you to Molly for being with us and spending uh your time with us this evening it's always good to see you you have a great information yeah thank you so much I think we all share that sentiment thank you so much for appearing before us and being so clear and informative um and on that I think we will move to our next item uh the next item in this item right in item two which is the uh conversation on potential ballot items and for that uh Cara is gonna kick us off okay thank you Marianne good evening Council Cara Skinner Chief Financial Officer um and as the presentation is being brought up um this is an update that we talked about back in May when we had our first discussion with regard to ballot measures and tonight it really is an update um and I'll just keep talking uh we're

[123:02] gonna I'm gonna first uh kick it off back to Alicia and she's going to give you an update uh we can go to the next slide thank you she's going to give you an update on the community sponsor to City petitions and then it will kick back to me and I will provide you an update on the uh really the polling with regard to the potential extension of the 0.15 sales and use tax and then I will kick it over to Wendy Schwartz from housing and Human Services who will provide you a little follow-up information as requested in May with regard to the potential future behavioral health tax and uh potential uses of that so that is the agenda for the second segment and I will kick it over to Alicia Johnson our city clerk all right thank you so very much Cara the only if you would go to the next side please next slide as we know we received two citizen

[124:01] initiative petitions in the city clerk's office um the first one we will cover um with this slide is the safe zones for kids it's a petition requesting to amend the BRC chapter 8-3-21 prohibiting items adding the particular chapter as cited below which would be an additional detector C um on March 1st 2023 the petition was approved for circulation by me and on they elected on that I'm sorry on that particular day they elected to utilize both the online petitioning system and paper petitions on June 15 2023 I certified the petition sufficient with a total of 3784 valid signatures those signatures were gathered both online and in person and as you see here by the figures as they are broken down 3 301 of those were

[125:00] obtained by the paper petitions and 483 were attained by the boulder direct democracy online system this petition would not have been deemed sufficient without the 483 valid signatures utilized through the bddl next slide Emily the second petition that came to the city clerk's office for um validation was the extension of the existing 0.15 sales use tax to support Arts culture and Heritage this petition was seeking to renew and extend the 0.15 sales tax use to actually fund the arts and culture initiatives now that petition was submitted for review and was approved by circulation by me on May the 4th of 2023 they also elected to utilize the online petitioning system and paper petitions and June 15th their petition was

[126:00] certified sufficient with a total of 3560 valid signatures again both gathered both online and in person you'll see that 3 153 signatures were retained by paper petitions and 407 through the bddo system and again this petition would not have been deemed sufficient without the utilization of the bddl I'm gonna turn it back over to Cara thanks Felicia next slide so going to the um potential ballot measure uh regarding the expiring 0.15 sales and use tax next slide and thank you Emily for advancing slides as directed by Council we did engage a expert polling firm probolsky research and they are going to perform a statistically significant survey for us and the survey um you know as intended is to provide really valuable information to council as they contemplate placing a ballot measure on

[127:01] on this November's election and so really wanting to ask thoughtful questions that will provide really good information for Council to consider the survey will be statistically significant it'll be both phone and online the phone survey will be both landline and mobile and the online survey will be accessed By Invitation through a text message or via email the poll will be in English and Spanish we are expecting to be beginning the poll next week so end of July or end of June into early July um and what are we testing we're only testing the um 0.15 sales and use tax extension um back in May when we talked about potential ballot measures there were two other measures that Council considered that night um Council compensation changes as well as a potential behavioral health tax and

[128:01] their the determination that night was that uh did not want to consider either of those items for this November's election but there might be potential interest for a future election and so we heard direction to poll on those but in discussion with our um with probolsky research they recommended we hold on those two items and not have it be part of this polling um and really that was informed by um if that those two questions or one of them would be on a future election in fact a uh even your election the voter profile is very different than the voter profile for this November odd year election and so they want to ask questions that are really relevant for this voter profile um so we'll be testing only the 0.15 sales tax extension and the survey is really going to focus on gauging overall

[129:01] sentiment and then sentiment regarding specific city services and those city services really are focused on uh general fund funded Services since this is an expiring general fund general purpose tax um as well as some uh you know recent Community and Council priorities it's going to be an opportunity for voters to share their priorities it will specifically test ballot language and that ballot language that will be tested is really taken from the prior ballot that was approved by voters 20 years ago with some updates to reflect current Service delivery and that testing of the ballot language will first begin with what is sort of considered an uninformed test and then the survey respondents will be provided some additional information in the form of questions and then the ballot language will be retested so it's sort of considered and and provides

[130:02] information to council about the results in an uninformed and then with uh more information or informed and then last we plan to test a 20-year extension versus a no Sunset we did discuss back in May maybe 20 years 30 years and no Sunset and and the um on the vice of our Consultants they say the the results would likely not be very different between 20 years and 30 years and so um recommended we just test 20 years versus no sunset they also recommended um in the no sense no sunset uh ballot language testing to say until future voter action because frankly any tax could be modified by Future voter action but then it sort of informs them of that

[131:00] um so we're working through that and [Music] I think that's the end of this next slide oh yeah next steps so as noted June July we're going to watch the poll we are scheduled to come back to you on July 20th for first reading of ballot measures we we are anticipating putting multiple versions on the consent calendar for Council consideration and then that evening we're also anticipating presenting the polling results if we get the result um in advance of July 20th but very likely after the agenda item materials are due we would send out those polling results to council via hotline so you can see those in advance of the meeting and then in August we have both a second reading and then a placeholder for a potential third reading if needed and then just a reminder as Molly noted that information is due to the county by

[132:01] September 8th next slide so next um as we've talked about I mentioned earlier back in may we did talk about the potential for future behavioral health tax ballot measure and there was some uh requests from Council for some follow-up information so next slide just as a reminder what was discussed was a potential tax on three items Tobacco liquor and a potential additional increment of tax on marijuana and this is just a reminder of of the revenue estimates that we had put together that this type of tax might generate and then I'll go to next slide and hand it over to Wendy as she will give you that follow-up information thank you good evening Council Wendy

[133:01] Schwartz housing and Human Services based on Council Direction at the May 11th meeting we did do some work on refining examples of potential uses of funds under a behavioral health tax ballot measure and those examples are shown on this slide the ideas are based on efforts the city already has underway or maximizing plans of Community Partners working in Behavioral Health the first two items are related to the planned homeless Services day Center specifically on-site clinician Services as well as prescriber services on site for Behavioral Health medication management the next item is related to an interagency group here in the county the high utilizer team that has been working on solutions for people that have very heavy interaction across multiple services and systems there's a preliminary proposal from this group

[134:00] that covers supportive services including Behavioral Health Services that would also be a potential use for this city tax and council is going to hear more about the overall High utilizer team proposal via an information packet in August and finally Mental Health Partners which is our local behavioral health safety net service provider has received a state grant for Capital expenses for a space to consolidate and expand a variety of acute care services including services like intensive and residential substance use disorder treatment that we know are of great interest and demand locally and City behavioral health tax funds could leverage those funds to increase the size of service expansion with more beds more services and higher levels of care so happy to take any questions I think that is our cue Council

[135:02] um we could take the presentation down I think um I appreciate you uh touching on some of that uh new new uh work that that you've done Wendy um with the team on um the baby the potential use of the behavioral health tax a question I have is those those three um uses being it sort of the behavioral health clinician Behavioral Health medication management and sort of the a high utilizer behavioral health support um are those would would are those not being done at all unless this money is is secured or are they done just paid for differently um or are they going to be sort of uh applied to the day service center but just at a much lower level so can you explain like where they may or may not exist um without this sort of tax um in in going forward

[136:01] absolutely absolutely so with regards to the um services that are referenced at the day Center uh then those would there's going to be um on the the basic Behavioral Health Services um there's going to be some basic Services um planned through existing programs there um so there are some programs like uh one actually judge cook referenced early in her presentation called behap or the behavioral health assistance program um so that's a jail transition program and um I know that the staff planning the day Center have already had some discussions uh with those types of services interfacing with the day Services there's the building Home Retention team which includes behavioral health support which will be connected to the day Center and our staff in HHS all also is

[137:02] including those services in some additional applications for State funding we think that we can make some arrangements with mental health partners as was done with the CRC for possible Telehealth services and of course there's you know what is done across the community already in terms of referrals to Mental Health Partners um for for needed services in the in the community in terms of the medication Management on site I think that there's not a current specific plan that connects funding to to that service but that doesn't that doesn't mean that one can't be developed with another source of funding um it's it's just not there yet uh in reference to the high utilizer

[138:01] behavioral health support um that plan um we've got kind of some interesting timing issues with this discussion because that is a plan that's still really gelling in that group and as I referenced that's something that council's going to be hearing more about through an IP in August and so that you know the funding of that entire plan um you know which will go beyond just the behavioral health support is is something that's going to have to be investigated um if all of the partners agree to that plan okay if I can add to that Wendy I apologize um council member but I think Wendy spoke to that really well I'll note too that that plan and we're trying to be a little thoughtful to our partners because we're still vetting that and there's a lot of Partners involved in that work the County Mental Health Partners the DA's office

[139:00] um certainly a variety of Staff um from different departments there's just a lot of people and what they have learned are both not just what services can we give some of our most um chronic folks that are the most difficult to serve but through that what can we learn about the gaps in the systems that exist and what can that group really bring up to to deal with those gaps as we're doing and some of those will be legislative um thoughts some of those will be some additional types of funding and so the package we want to share with all of our partners because it will not just be a city of Boulder initiative this really is a multi-jurisdictional multi-agency public private partnership uh that is super thoughtful and thorough and that's why I think you'll get more information about that as we move forward but want to thank Wendy for really flagging that as a potential use because right now it has no funding and we're going to be

[140:00] really if we want to make a dent in some of the critical problems we're facing we're going to have to really think all of us not just the city of Boulder but all of us about funding this uh thank you for that context Marianne um those are all my questions I'll just sort of maybe just finish on a quite um with regards to just the county here is the sort of the elephant in the room with regards to their their discussion of potential Behavioral Health tag so we're we're adding fractions to what their capacity is so I I hope that we continue to keep them moving in in the right direction um as that serves our greatest needs and we can be complementary to that Bob you have questions no just uh well I kind of a question but just elicit a advertisement um for Alicia we talked about the two uh resident initiatives and uh the city initiated uh 0.15 uh sales tax what we did not talk about and I know we won't need to pull on this but I wanted just for completeness of record for anyone's watching we do have a fourth ballot

[141:00] measure initiated by the city and that's a charter cleanup Alicia can you refer to that as well yes sir thank you for the question Bob the charter cleanup is part of our internal Council requested type initiatives and those will be presented to council with the first reading of the ballot measures the cao's office is working on that now to draft those ordinances but our thought tonight was to bring you the update on just if the petitions were certified and if they were not certified but we are working on the charter cleanup and the other initiatives brought forth by the charter committee thank you Alicia I do not see any other questions do we have comments I do not see any further comments in which case uh thank you so much Wendy Cara uh Nuria I was uh very informative great presentation and uh

[142:01] uh I look forward to further work on all these matters um I guess uh we are moving on to our last item uh for the evening but I want to solicit interest in a uh five minute break if anybody would be interested show of hands one two three four one two three four five by a bare majority um uh we are going to have a break we're going to reconvene at 8 23. Elisha make sure to put that in the action summary as a 5-4 vote please you got it mayor foreign

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[144:18] thank you foreign [Music]

[145:41] thank you [Music] thank you [Music]

[146:29] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

[147:37] I will turn it over to you once again for introductions thank you so much mayor Pro tem and I'm super excited for the next item I know for some it is a dry one but for others it is really critical as we're trying to meet our climate goals in the city of Boulder so I'm going to send it over to our director of planning and development services Brad Mueller to kick us off and do some introductions of his own

[148:01] thanks Miriam uh I am in fact going to introduce a couple new faces to you um excited not only uh for this evening's discussion uh but in the case of Rob excited to round out uh actually Rob and Josh rounding out our building uh division Staffing we're in a much better place than we were not all that long ago uh Josh Hanson is going to be making the presentation this evening gosh is our energy code compliance examiner uh and joined us about six seven months ago he's hit the ground running um has just an incredible background in these uh matters and incredible passion we're lucky to have him with us and then I'd also like Council to welcome Rob the Adrians Rob is our new cheap building official I think you all know how we've uh struggled a bit to to get that position filled but Rob's jumped in now six weeks

[149:00] and um is um is doing a great job and we're happy to have him with us too uh we also have the folks from uh climate initiatives Carolyn Elam and uh Jonathan going to uh speak to items uh as as well as myself as questions so Rob I didn't know if you wanted to introduce Josh or go straight to Josh but I'll turn it up maybe you can introduce yourself and background real briefly okay yeah hi cool seems are frozen here yeah hi everyone thank you for your uh having us this evening uh I'm Rob Adrians as previously the Chief Building official up in Weld County so I've just jumped across I-25 to the other side here so I'm excited to be here um with that I'll just hand it off to Josh she'll be presented on our energy code thank you thank you rob uh what I'll do is I'll go ahead and share my screen now to put up my presentation all right let me

[150:04] Josh why you're pulling that up maybe we want to introduce Sally yes yep let me so uh wanted to go ahead and introduce our two of our Consultants that are actually on the call as well that are going to help us with this update um we've got Sally Blair with naresco and Robbie Schwartz with build tank uh also on the call and they're going to be helping us as we work through this process of updating our energy code so let me go ahead and follow your presentation one second where is it going let me close something real quick and pull it back up apologies for no worries Josh and let us know if you'd prefer that we handle it from well from a different way not a problem thank you let's see here Josh you might unshare and then try re-sharing just the presentation it's just showing your desktop oh I know I'm

[151:00] opening it up on another screen okay great yeah that's strange okay um let me it's not oh yeah hold on one second let me let me unshare and re-share I apologize for this we we use a lot more of teams so I'm uh oh all right one second all right let's go ahead and sure no not good you know it disconnected real quick my the PowerPoint was showing up on my screen it's over to my left that's not there

[152:01] gotta love technology okay then we will do the old-fashioned way so let me pull up my presentation and uh people go from there were you trying to get fancy dresses that's what's backfiring so no we're actually over here at Park Central on the second floor and I had my second monitor up in front of me and it just it basically just went down so um let's try this one more time if it doesn't work oh there we go all right okay there we go now we're up all right let's try this again please work all right so we got that there

[153:03] fortunately we're still seeing your desktop yeah apologies no I mean obviously I have one a quick email it to me or uh uh the clerks we can yeah I got it I was trying to use dual monitors so I could pull up some notes on one screen but I just won't use my Note screen so I don't really need it but all right let's do it with one screen oh okay let's do this point all right let me email it to you I apologize for this as you can see I'm pulling it up and it's going off my screen to the left here all right so our clerks team says they have it so okay

[154:00] okay perfect yes yes thank you so much yeah so that's that way you have your notes handy if you do need them thank you yep I do uh you may have to stop sharing it yes oh there we go great okay all righty so apologies for any technical inconvenience so I'm Josh Hanson the energy co-compliance principal examiner here at the city of Boulder and we wanted to go ahead and do a quick introduction um for our energy code development project um please uh Advance the slide uh and click through it um yeah all right there you go you're good and so the this this item really is an introduction a high level introduction to our 2024 Boulder energy conservation code development project um as many of you may be aware by 2030 we're targeting a reduction carbon emissions of 70 percent by 2035 looking to be a net zero when it comes to carbon

[155:00] emissions and then looking to be carbon posited by 2040 or in which case uh buildings are actually able to absorb more carbon dioxide than they produce and so before we really jump into this um this development this code development project I wanted to look back at kind of the history of how we got here um and and go from there please Advance the slide and then click through a couple more times keep going keep going and a couple more times one more one more and then one all right so let's start with the residential energy code map so before I really want to dive into this just so everyone's aware this the energy code really pertains to buildings residential and commercial buildings and so I know there's some other items that will come up as we discuss this but um the primary focus really on this is to look at residential and commercial buildings with respect to energy code and so as we jump into oh back right there perfect so as we jump into

[156:02] um the history of kind of how we got here we want to understand really what's the definition of a residential building just to make every make sure that everyone's on the same the same plane and so when we refer to a residential building we're talking about our one or two family dwelling as well as town homes and R3 or R4 occupancies and R3 and R4 occupancies R3 think of them as dormitories or sororities R4 is going to be basically in our three occupancy with some additional requirements like say an alcohol awareness facility something like that and so 2017 was really our first dive into our own energy code here at the city of Boulder and so what we really looked at doing first was um looking at some of the larger homes that were really coming through the city to make sure that they could um do the right thing and really have a lesser impact and so we made a requirement to have those at Net Zero um on the 2020 kobec so the most recent version that we're actually currently on we decided to tighten those reins a little bit and actually look at making houses that were equal to or greater than 3 000 square feet be Net Zero and

[157:01] so one thing to note on this is the majority of the homes that we've seen come through the city um that are great that the majority of them are going to be greater than 3 000 square feet so they're already at Net Zero and so um just wanted to touch on that so everyone can be aware of that also some other some other things that were introduced with the kobec this time around or the city of Boulder energy conservation code if you see kobak that's what we're referring to um is we had it in some performance backstops so these performance backstops are really items that you cannot trade away and so these items are typically your envelope items or the the exterior of the building so we're looking at the insulation values window values things of that nature and backstops basically meaning if our code says you have to do it you can't go to a lesser version of that which when we are modeling and doing energy models for this you're able usually to trade below and above on things so that's why we have these backstops in place that you can't go below those numbers um we also introduced solar ready and solar offset requirements for uh residential so solar ready we basically

[158:01] require 300 square feet on the roof to be available for um for future solar panels and then on the offset requirements what we have is anything that's heating outside of the building that really uses a fossil fuel as as its heating Source has to be fully offset through Renewables and then the last thing that we really introduced the 2020 covet was making EV ready requirements for uh on the single family side so next page please so here we wanted to really look at kind of where we came from with the commercial energy uh and where we're kind of going which is what we'll talk about in here in a little bit and so the first thing I wanted to find really is what is a commercial building um a commercial building uh please go ahead and click through a couple of them so commercial building is basically defined as any buildings that are not residential so we always love the building code definitions right so anything that's not residential uh book it again this also is actually going to include multi-family R2 occupancies which is becoming more common it seems like here in the state of Colorado and so

[159:01] um R2 most people think of that as well are it's residential and so with a lot more of the codes that we're seeing more multi-families moving under the commercial Umbrella Just because the international building code or the IBC actually governs multi-family construction so that's why we're seeing this this change in Noob over into the commercial Spectrum so please click a couple more times and so with the 2014 kobec we really wanted to look at where we could start with our energy code and where we kind of look to move it in the future and so um the 2017 kobec was developed off of the 2012 energy code the international energy code and so looking at that the city decided to look at using one of the metrics that's used for the energy code which is this ashery 90.1-2010 standard and so instead of just taking the standard at face value which the requirement typically is to be at zero percent better or better than what's required we decided to say no

[160:00] that's not enough for what we're trying to do here in the city and we required a 30 savings above that Target um click again please and so one of the other items we actually introduced here also was the solar ready requirements for these commercial buildings uh please click again a couple of times and so the 2020 kobek what we did was we actually looked up the Annie on these these Energy savings requirements and we looked at requiring 20 to 25 percent savings which it's lower than 30 savings but we're also measuring it against a a 2016 Baseline versus a 2010 Baseline which is going to be a lot more stringent the other thing to note here is the mention of an eui savings so eui stands for energy use intensity and so think of this as a miles per gallon for a commercial building on the residential front you'll hear the term ERI which is energy rating index and so it's the same thing um there it's basically miles per gallon on a single family home uh please click I think about three more times and so some other things that were

[161:00] introduced in this code as well as we talked about previously with residentials we had performance backstops that were in place we also required uh solar to have a five percent energy offset for any commercial building so when the buildings are built and modeled of that energy usage a minimum of five percent has to be offset by active solar on site and then the last thing that we really upped the Annie on I want to say is we brought in uh electric vehicle capable ready and evse requirements under the 2020 Kovac and please click the next slide so here's a quick timeline on this um so we've already met with the planning board on the sixth of this month um we previously met with the environmental Advisory board on the 7th of this month and then currently we are meeting with a city council to get your feedback and um as we progress through this presentation I'm going to try and touch on um some of the feedback we got from the planning board as well as the environmental Advisory Board as we filter through this presentation so

[162:01] apologies in advance because I don't have my notes up in front of me um so but please feel free to click through the rest of the slide So currently we're meeting with the city council tonight to discuss this project the next steps really are going to be stakeholder engagement all right there stakeholder engagement and so we're going to look at uh engaging the community as well as different stakeholders to get their feedback on the process as we work through it um and on the different items for Energy Efficiency to make sure that it's in line with you know what the community and the stakeholders are thinking as well as what the city envisions for their future um and then lastly or not lastly but the next step really will be once we have the draft code is to bring it back to planning the environmental Advisory Board as well as city council and have them review and basically look to approve and then during the fourth quarter of this year we're really targeting to do the initial public reading of this energy code to get um to just move the project along really and get uh additional feedback and hopefully uh adoption and implementation

[163:01] so uh next slide please so here are the areas of focus that we're really going to look at in this presentation uh please do a couple more clicks um and so the first two areas of focus that I really want to look at are going to be dealing with our performance targets for our energy code so basically looking at you know making our buildings more energy efficient as we look to move to Net Zero Energy as well as Net Zero carbon and then part three four and five or excuse me part two is um an alternative pathway that we're considering looking at for residential compliance and then part three four and five really pull everything full circle as we talk about electrification natural gas offsets and then look at really embodied carbon reduction and overall carbon reduction in this process next slide please so the first item I really wanted to touch on here is our performance Target updates um and please feel free to click through

[164:01] all right keep going until you move to the next slide then you can back up all right perfect so the proposed code updates that we're going to be doing on this one really is for the residential buildings as we mentioned previously we already require anything greater than 3 000 square feet to be Net Zero Energy and we're considering leaving that at that um at that metric because the majority of the new new build homes that come in uh for permit that are greater than 3 000 square feet the majority of them are are already requiring this Net Zero Energy requirement for the homes that are less than three thousand square feet we're really looking to kind of revisit these targets and look at different Avenues really to um to make it available and make Energy Efficiency available for those that may not be able to build these three thousand square feet homes and it's kind of really really focused on that um the other piece too that's kind of goes hand in hand with this as well as our existing buildings because of Boulder having such a large existing building stock um we really want to look at incorporating more of that into our energy code to help

[165:02] um customers help the community help stakeholders really guide them um through through our code to kind of know really um what's what's going to be expected and kind of move that needle further along for the city's Vision on the commercial front We have basically three path lines through pathways through energy code excuse me the model Baseline path um is basically our first pathway and this one is you model a building um and it gives you a certain Energy savings and so we have to model our building that we're proposing and make sure that it is under that uh Baseline savings and so what we're looking on this path really is to consider updating this percentage reduction as we currently sit as I mentioned we're at 20 for all electric buildings and then if it's a mixed fuel building or a building that uses electricity as well as a natural gas then we require 25 reduction so we're evaluating those numbers to see you know do we leave them there and change the Baseline do we move the

[166:02] percentages and make them more you know a higher reduction requirement and be around the same Baseline and so on and so these are some of the things we're thinking through at this process the next item is our fixed Baseline path and so a sample of this really is on the the image here to the left and so the items that are in blue are the current um building types that we have available in our energy code that has a static Target so as you can see under the 2020 Kovac column there are numbers there and so those numbers are eui our energy use intensity Target as I mentioned and so this is very ecstatic very much a static number to where you could open the code book and go oh for a 10 000 square foot office building I need to be at a 23. and so you'd know that with modeling and that you'd have to get below a 23. the one thing that you may notice here too is that there's about I believe six items or six building types that are currently included in these performance targets um and I believe this probably was due to the fact that with this being a newer

[167:01] kind of Avenue that we've seen over the recent years there may not have been a ton of data that really was available at the time or that was powerful or from the city's perspective we may not have seen a ton of other building types really outside of this and we were looking to dip our toe into the water and really put some um put some pen to paper and figure out some building types that we could give you know more of a static Target versus a moving number which is really the model Baseline path and it pertains specifically to buildings so on this fixed Baseline path what we're looking to do is update the eui targets you know as you can see from 2017 to 2020 we've tightened the targets now it's not a ton because we want to do it gradually we have until about 20 30 to do this and so we want to make sure we understand the cost behind everything and make sure that you know we take you to the point of law of diminishing return to where we we can get you there but if we go any further it's really you're losing some value there and so we're looking to kind of weigh all these things as we look at this and as I mentioned we're going to update the eui targets as well as looking additional adding additional building types to this as well as you can see you know retail was example or

[168:01] low-rise apartments or even large apartments or large Apartments excuse me large offices you know we currently don't have those as you can see the question marks but these are some things that we're really going to be considering as we move forward next slide please and so the doe Zero Energy ready home option here is one that we're proposing as an alternative to um to the residential piece and so this program's been around for about um 10 years and I believe as of so as of today there's about between I want to say uh 25 to 30 000 homes that have been certified if not are in the process of being certified through this program and so some of the strengths for the Zero Energy ready home uh feel free to click through this till the next slide and then just back up one um so the deal is your energy ready home is really built on the backbone of um the energy star new homes program and so the reason for me thinking of this is kind of being an option as an opportunity is you know for the homes

[169:00] that are larger than 3 000 square feet they're already requiring Net Zero and so this program is great because it focuses on Energy Efficiency as you can see from the energy star requirements as well as the 2021 envelope backstop and the energy star Windows it also requires energy star appliances um but in Lou in inclusive of the EPA indoor air plus certification so the first uh let's see the first three items the energy star uh certification the envelope requirements and the windows really kind of pertain back to the energy star certification and the Energy Efficiency of the home the other aspect that's a little different from energy code really is the EPA indoor air plus certification so this is an additional certification that's required for this program the benefit here is that we're not only providing um the customers the community with these homes that are going to be energy efficient but healthy they're going to have a healthy indoor environment uh some of the some of the interesting aspects too to the Zero Energy ready home is that it requires the HVAC system to be entirely within thermal envelope

[170:00] some of the systems as some of you may be aware is maybe up in your attic it may be in your crawl space if you have a crawl space and so those have to be brought into condition space now of the home it also was one of the first programs to introduce this PV ready checklist um so it's one of the very first programs that had the the solar ready requirements hence the name Zero Energy ready and then it also introduced uh recently uh EV ready requirements as well as electric ready heat pump uh water heating and space heating requirements as well have been introduced to this program so with that being said the primary reason for looking at this really is not so much for the homes that are greater than the 3 000 square feet is this could still apply to those homes the difference would be is they still have to install solar to get to where they need to get to but for the folks that can't afford to maybe do that aspect of it this program has a ton of incentives that are available out there and so um the inflation reduction act that was passed last year has some um

[171:03] what incentives that are available through that program to help to help homeowners offset some of this additional cost or by the end of the project really convince them to consider putting on solar and getting to Net Zero themselves and kind of uh empowering them to do that um so next slide please so we just touched on the first two areas of focus which really dealt with our Energy Efficiency uh put two more times or three more times I think oh two more sorry back one um so we just touched on the first two areas that really deal with our Energy Efficiency and so the next the next three pieces are really going to look at more uh of the carbon aspect and kind of carbon reduction and so uh next slide please so click through our and then back one hour perfect so with with electrification what we're really looking to introduce and consider is for new construction or level four

[172:00] alterations we want to look at requiring all electric space and water heating as well as have electric ready requirements uh for other appliances like stoves for example um so for anyone that's wondering a level 4 alteration is basically the step before they want to scrape the site and and build it as new construction so that's why we lump that in up there a level three alteration is basically if you're doing over 50 percent of work in a building and it it extends over 50 percent of the building area that would trigger a level three alteration so to give you some context um so for level three what we would look to do is because they're not doing as much work as new construction or level four we'd really want to encourage electric ready on these types of buildings and and encourage them to install Breakers and panel space and the raceways to be able to to run this up on you know future installation of a electric uh piece of equipment and the way we consider incentivizing this is for an ER Target or an energy rating index or the the miles per gallon on a home instead of it being say uh ERI of 50 we would give an allowance of say a

[173:01] 55 on this to really help encourage and and make it less painful for them to to Really push the envelope and and do electric ready on this and so um just to make note of that as we kind of dive into this is you know there are currently two uh municipalities here in the state of Colorado that are well let's talk about the first one so crested but it's the first municipality in Colorado to require all electric um new construction and so following suit right behind them is actually Denver as many of you may be aware and starting January 1 of 2024 um no natural gas space or water heating will be allowed to be installed in multi-family or commercial construction now that being said there are exceptions so um that is the one key thing um of how they're kind of maneuvering around that currently but I want to make mention of that because you know we're looking at being one of the next municipalities to to hopefully look at adopting electrification as a a possibility in the future and so some other areas I wanted to really touch on

[174:00] as well because I know this has really hits home to here in Boulder is our EV charging requirements last week actually I think it was last week or a week before the model state code came out for solar ready and for electric ready requirements uh for the buildings here in Colorado and so uh the EV charging requirements are right there in that same standard we currently um we're we're in compliant about 90 the we're off I think we have a 10 requirement for our EV capable or EV ready excuse me and the state now requires 15 but from the the boards that we've already actually talked to um we were getting a lot of Echoes of we need to really consider upping the total on those and so that's something we really want to look at is really considering the EV charging requirements um and then also I wanted to mention that with respect to um kind of smaller Lots we're looking at really you know I think currently it requires uh 25 25 spaces or greater

[175:01] um or 25 spaces or less and so what we're really looking at doing is bringing that down to I think it was uh 10 spaces or or less to really kind of focus on um making these impacts and and being able to provide this this infrastructure and this this EV charging as we look towards the future and kind of our our goals and our vision with the city um and the last piece um is the e-bike charging and so as you become more and more aware of it probably here in the city is that e-bikes are everywhere now and so what we really want to do is take that into strong consideration especially say for multi-family or uh projects of that type and really kind of consider any EV bike charging uh requirements to help really um pave the way in that direction as well so next slide please keep going and back okay perfect and so for part four which is the other side of the coin so we'll say here so we just talked about electrification the next piece we want to look at is our solar offsets of

[176:00] natural gas and so uh what we're looking to propose is on the residential side really really want to provide more guidance on um on what would be required when we look when we talk about natural gas offsets currently we require any heating that's outside of the home or the dwelling unit that's a fossil fuel to be 100 offset by uh Renewables but the question comes up on what about electric resistance heating for a patio or you know some other type of outdoor Heating and so we're looking to really help provide some more guidance on that front we've also heard echoes from one of the the board meetings that to really consider looking at Natural Gas offsets even in the home not just outside of the home for single family and so that's something too that I want to say that we're we're going to be laying out and considering on the commercial front as we mentioned earlier um five percent energy offsets required through solar for just the energy use in the building what we're really considering and looking to push is if the building is going to be using mixed fuel say it's a laboratory where they have burners and things of that nature

[177:00] if it's going to have to be mixed fuel then we're looking wanting to require 100 offset of that natural gas use so we know that there are certain instances that it's inevitable that natural gas may have to be used and so in those instances we just want to make sure that it's be able to be fully 100 offset and the first thing that comes to mind in some aspects is like a commercial kitchen or something like that of that nature and so the last slide please or the next slide excuse me and so going stop Perfect all right so this last piece really is bringing us kind of Full Circle so part one and part two really talked about more of the operational carbon as we mentioned here on this slide and this this piece really pulls it in full circle and we talk more about the the embodied carbon aspect and so before I really go down that Avenue I just want to clarify one thing and so whenever we talk about carbon in terms of this embodied carbon reduction really referring to carbon dioxide or in this example it'd be CO2 and then a small e at the end of it for embodied carbon or

[178:01] embodied or o for operational and so as you can see from the definitions we really have two types of carbon we have operational carbon which is basically once the building gets turned over you get your Co it goes into full operation it deals with the management the processes any maintenance items and everything that's uh basically on the operational side of the building and it's functioning and the carbon dioxide it produces the embodied carbon is really anything from the extraction of those materials up to to the certificate of occupancy for that building so it can include um extraction Transportation manufacture of these materials installation construction processes many different things as you can see from the the image here operational carbons about uh I think we looked at it earlier and it was about uh you know it's a lot smaller portion than the embodied carbon piece really as what it takes to get up to that final piece that final stage and one thing to

[179:00] note too is um buildings I want to say and I apologize I don't have my notes right in front of me but buildings uh account for about 39 of the global uh greenhouse gas orb the greenhouse gas emissions and about a quarter of those are actually due to embodied carbon and so this is really why um this is something that we really want to look at and focus on because it's something that we can actually impact so next slide please all right and right there perfect so there are a couple of things we can look at when we talk about embodied carbon and of course many of us have probably may or may not have heard of a life cycle assessment or a life cycle analysis and so this is a um similar to an energy model but we look at the environmental impact of the building over the useful life of it right so all the products materials processes basically Cradle to grave on that building to see what it how it impacts the environment up above you'll see that there's about

[180:00] five categories that we would really consider low hanging fruit when we look at embodied carbon and so this what we're looking at considering here is with mention of the life cycle assessment consideration of looking at possibly requiring certain building types or certain buildings of a certain size to say provide a life cycle assessment or you know consideration of maybe having a prescriptive path that if you don't want to do a life cycle assessment then you have these five categories above you've got to pick two categories or three categories and comply with those and as we see it's it's really comes down to a lot of thoughtful selection on your products and your materials you're going for so like we see Opera concrete mix and rebar it really just comes down to thoughtful selections and uh uh when it when it with those materials and it's just having that forethought up front to really make those choices and those requests to ensure that we comply or that they're able to comply next slide please

[181:01] all right it's going yeah stop Perfect all right so our next steps on this project is to incorporate the feedback that we heard from the planning board the environmental Advisory Board and city council look to engage our stakeholders in the community um look at possibly having some in-house or open house excuse me uh meetings with some stakeholders in the community you know look at using um some of the different lists that we have to reach out and get some feedback to really engage the community because at the end of the day my intent for this code is really it's it's the city's code and it's going to be the community's code so um once we have all that feedback we really look to incorporate the feedback and recommendations look at drafting the 2024 kobach in the third quarter of of this year and then uh bring it back to the planning board environmental advisory and city council really to get your feedback uh any tweaks or changes that you feel that we need or if there's anything that we fully missed that you think that we need to revisit and look at and then hopefully have our first

[182:01] public reading by the fourth quarter of 2023 next slide please and so one more thank you and so to bring it back kind of back around to the beginning again I just wanted to look at these areas one more time before we go in and really look at some of the key questions that we're here to ask about from city council and so just please keep these in mind as we look at the next slide and we can jump back here in a second if we need to so next slide please and three more so what I'm really here and want to want to ask is um yeah does the city council agree on the proposed areas of focus that we have for the 2024 koback is there any areas that you should see that we should we should also include um that we just are currently and then from the city city council's perspective do you have any recommendations on any Community engagement strategies for this project

[183:00] um we're really looking to uh you know expand and get feedback from everyone um in regards to the community engagement piece just to make sure that everyone that wants to be heard can be heard and so um that I believe is all I have and so I I want to say thank you all for this opportunity to speak to you on this topic and uh I open for questions and discussion all right and for questions and let's uh lead off with Lauren thank you Mark um so I'm gonna have some stuff to no one's surprise I will have some specific questions here um with the Target um the eui targets for commercial energy usage

[184:04] I was wondering if we've looked at if there are any more standardized codes that do a similar thing um as fun as Reinventing the wheel is and doing something different than what everybody else is doing if there are things like if the international green um code touches on that I feel like have we looked at that other yeah yeah codes in that area yeah and that's what we'll plan to do when we look to update um our eui targets is to look to those different standards um I know that like you said igcc is one of them I know NBI has one that's out there that's available as well that's got some good information and data behind it and then also as I've mentioned um you know are our Consultants naresco have worked across the country in many of the different municipalities um they've they've been the boots on the ground in California in their Wars and then they all also work in Washington as

[185:00] well as Nevada or not Nevada excuse me New York and so they've seen a lot of this as well and kind of can bring a lot of that knowledge and experience with them as well as we look at this and Josh still I think I might add again I'm Carolyn England with the Department of climate initiatives um is some of our neighboring jurisdictions have have also been transitioning to an eui pathway um so Denver and then there's some others that are looking at that as well and I think we'll want to do our best to be consistent with them to at least you know drive more um consistency in code application um for designers and builders that are working across those jurisdictional boundaries thank you um I know we talked a little bit about this previously but um as we look at energy as we look at trying to reuse buildings you know one of the things that I notice in my work is that when we start getting into level three alterations that's where I start seeing

[186:01] people weigh really heavily whether it even makes sense to remodel or where costs can go to the point where it financially isn't that different from tearing down and building new um some of the things that can impact that are you know zoning issues and things around that are we looking at trying to make any adjustments to make it easier to do retrofits from a zoning standpoint as well as what kinds of targets we like maybe lessening some of the targets for retrofits to make compliance paths either easier I I can't speak so much to the zoning side of it but on the building side I can say yes I know that Rob and I have talked about that and wanting to work with Landmark to make sure that you know our Landmark is one example but in general just existing buildings overall to make sure that we understand you know because like I said the majority of the um of the projects

[187:00] and the permits that we see that come through the city are really existing buildings now and so we want to look at that really and analyze that to make sure that a we're living up to the city's goals and Visions but to make sure like what you're saying is we want them to retain the structure if possible you know and and where it makes sense because that's kind of back to the embodied carbon piece it's going to be more painful to really tear it down and bring in all new materials versus retaining the current structure and what's there and so um I guess for a long answer to a short question um from building code yeah we're going to be looking to update the existing building piece to make sure that it's it it it's not as we don't want to push people away either to do the work without a permit or to just not do it you know so that we want to really look at that and really weigh that out I think so anyone else want to add anything to that sorry yeah no I think you did a great job of touching on it um I think with our pass code update we did look at zoning specifically um in the residential code we did make the decision um not to make the adjustment we had

[188:00] planned um for the alterations or some um and I I think I think it's currently um you know just a different ERI Target I think one of the things we want to explore in this code update is like how much of that makes a difference and that was some of the feedback we got from planning board as well is is what we currently have actually driving that retention or are there learnings that we have because that was certainly a deliberate effort um on the residential side that we were making we hadn't yet really explorted on the commercial but that's certainly something we would look at as well thank you and then in terms of like the Brad maybe you could also touch on you know are there any things we could anything we could look at in terms of easing some of the Hoops that people have to jump through in order to get go through that retrofit process you know I'm thinking about adding insulation on a building that's near its um setbacks and requiring you know

[189:00] zoning adjustments or various things like that or if they're are any additional areas like that that we might be looking into at this I appreciate the the question uh um I I have to admit that yesterday uh this conversation was really my first introduction to the idea that there may be zoning kind of aspects um that interplay with the broader goals that are being addressed in part by the energy code updates that we'd committed to working on but uh we definitely see as Carolyn indicated that um that there is that relationship and that has been looked at in the past and we certainly will commit at that you know moving forward I am still building kind of a comprehensive understanding of climate

[190:00] initiatives goals broader goals in that regard and uh can't speak to really what scope that kind of implies and probably would rely a little bit on Jonathan's history to speak to that if I can put you on the spot um Jonathan with with that question sure Brad uh good to see you all Council Jonathan Cohen with the climate initiatives Department yeah I I think that this is a really interesting question uh that you raise uh councilmember folkerts I this is I think a great opportunity for the Departments to come together and kind of think about the synergies between where we're trying to go and look at the full package of tools that we have so you know tonight we're talking about the energy code we should be thinking about um when and where do we Implement some of the changes in the building code and as you bring forward now how we think about the zoning to to address some of the challenges that we're facing in the community and and again to align around

[191:00] this issue of of climate and resilience so I I think that I think this is a really interesting Dimension to add into the project and I would just suggest or perhaps ask that the staff team take that back and think about what is the holistic and more comprehensive approach that could include some of the zoning some of the buildings some of the um some of the energy code updates and think about that as a package and I'll just piggyback on it on one comment uh Jonathan just made two about the relationship not only to the development code zoning code but also the building code and we do have uh on a planned work schedule to update the building code here in the next year and Rob you might have a little more precise information of that that you could share if you would please yeah we're looking at adopting the 2024 I codes uh when they become they should be published by January so we'll be able to start working there early next year

[192:00] um and we'll be looking at how that integrates with all the other land use and energy codes that we have adopted currently and parts of that particularly the embodied carbon piece might be impacted by the the building code particularly the IBC adoption yeah thanks and um related as we you know we talked about this a little bit also that um sort of the changes in building Technologies are pushing forward products like foam insulation and things like that we use to meet our energy code requirements but that those products can cause consequences when it comes to deconstruction making the wood products that would otherwise be recyclable not recyclable anymore I know that you guys are also looking at an update around that Co around the deconstruction code would that kind of ensuring that

[193:00] buildings can are designed for disassembly or recyclability um maybe be part of that or this work or the building code work yeah I think it's I think it's all of the above um Lauren and definitely we did have a chance to kind of check in with our circular economy team and they're they're doing some some good working groups right now around the deconstruction to learn more about where the successes and challenges are coming and using that to inform some best practices there's a lot of analysis that needs to be done but I definitely think we want to start to take some steps in that direction and I think it's sits very well with what Rob said is certainly as we're looking at the IBC update um thinking about things like um you know class four shingles restrictions on the types of insulation those types of things would be really well suited as part of that as part of this project we are doing a broader

[194:01] roadmap around our codes and so we're also wanting to reflect that and and make sure that we're putting the things in the energy code that we can that also support that thank you that's it for the moment mayor yeah thanks for the very detailed presentation Josh I can tell how well you know this stuff it's very impressive um I just had one question which was and noticed a difference in what you were talking about then what I remember from the presentation and it was a difference to my thoughts a positive one but just wanted to check in which was about the electric vehicle charging stations and um I think in our packet it talked about a minimum of I think 25 units before you would apply a 10 standard and I think I heard you saying 15 or 16 and just can you clarify that this is a little different from what's in the packet and just just address that real quickly please

[195:00] yes um I remember correctly we were talking yes so we're talking about the EVPs and we were looking at the parking slots basically what we were trying to do is align it with the state with the states currently requiring because I know that they've tightened that down and so the intent was to look at starting where the state's requiring it and then building off of it there um if that answers the question Carolyn I think yeah and I think what we put in the packet is where we are today and and we neglected to put where we think we're totally going to and so the the main changes um is I think as Josh mentioned we currently Define small Lots as 25 and under and the state's going to Define it as 10 and under which um and then I think um the other thing we've talked about is I'm studying a different definition around multi-family of 10 and under um recognizing that the needs are there that's some of the feedback we've heard and then I think we anticipate um based on feedback we're Gathering through through planning board EAB and this conversation

[196:01] um then continuing to up whether it's um some of the you know just conduit install and other things so what you saw in the packet is kind of the starting place it's not intended to be the ending place great thanks for clarifying yeah I just while we're on the topic I'll just say it sounds like going more in that direction stable was the right approach that would be increasing the EV requirements for those developments between 10 and 25 units or spaces 20 post spaces that sounds like a great idea so I'm glad you're you're moving more in that direction that's my only question thanks uh Matt and then I will have a couple of questions of my own I appreciate that Mark and and thank you guys for really detailed work I mean this is this is uh good stuff um in a lot of ways um so I'm glad we're embarking on that um I was just gonna maybe piggyback a little bit on what Aaron was saying about EV stuff and the fact that even though the state's sort of targeting 15 that's based on really a state average and and we know pretty clear that Boulder far exceeds that state average so as we're looking at that take the

[197:00] state and then add 10 kind of thing I hope that's kind of where we're looking so thinking that we don't come back to these for about five years my hope is that we will take the state and be pretty aggressive beyond that um knowing that we're building infrastructure that kind of hangs I just want to make sure everything that kind of level of feeding data I'm not you know exact percentage but really trying to go above and beyond knowing that we won't come back to this for five years I I think that's the intent yeah is that we're really going to look at pushing the envelope on it and also we're trying to be thoughtful on it to make sure that you know it's in certain in certain building types and that you know maybe if it's a retail space with one spot out front they may not have to have it because we don't want someone you know clogging up that one spot for the whole day charging their car but you know with multi-family I think there's a huge need for it and I think really that we can really make strides in different areas and really live up to kind of the intent and the vision of what Boulder wants by also appeasing what the state does blowing well I want to say blowing it out of the water but that's where my background so I apologize we should be blowing all of these things

[198:02] out of the water so like let's do that I know uh I know that that's where Jonathan likes to live he likes to at the bar High live dangerously that's right and that having had the privilege of actually being on the state energy cohort I I can attest to um that really was a consideration right that state minimum like has to consider rural areas and and other areas and and so we're very familiar with how those got set and we're and we definitely those are the Baseline um but there's some great starting points for us as well fantastic um my other question center around kind of just you know um incentives on how we get people to these targets and maybe not get them there but also like we just say blow them out of the water how do we get when you're thinking about developments how do we get people to exceed them and so I'm kind of curious about um like or have we thought about tiers of these codes so that there's uh you know if you hit the the gold tier there's these sorts of

[199:00] um benefits that come from it whether it be Community benefits or or trade-offs or if it's the silver tier we thought about doing that so that again as people are looking to build multi-family housing or anything they have a clear sense of all right I'm gonna do the Baseline but if I really want to go there I can kind of quickly do my um evaluative opportunity cost of what does that really then equate and get me is it you know not having to do site review is it you know is it just all of those little things that we've discussed I'm just wondering how we can leverage the energy code to drive some of those incentives to the things that we know we want in our community and not now but but 20 years down the road sure no definitely and not so much on the terms of the EV side of it but we were talking about it a little bit earlier and um as as council member folkerts mentioned earlier you know with with regards to like exterior insulation right what we can try to do is look to incentivize maybe someone that well instead of using exterior insulation that's this poly ISO board that always ends up in the landfill why not use maybe roxol or something that's going to

[200:00] be a little bit less embodied carbon uh more forgiving on the environment but there is going to be an increased cost for that and so our turn would be well we'll give you a five percent allowance on like our your target that you're trying to hit but try to try to lead with a carrot and kind of get them to really do the right thing but you know on their own accord because a lot of the times we've talked about it it's like when you try to push and push things upon people you're going to get higher resistance and so when you have options that are available too on the table they they feel like they have more of a selection on the path they can go and they're more apt to do the right thing I think too but but I think that's really something we're looking at is as I mentioned on the single family side there are incentives that are available and then I know that uh there was some discussion on the possibility of you know larger homes you know look at maybe having them subsidized for the smaller homes to make sure that everyone has access to Energy Efficiency you know and they have the money that's available let's put it to use and put it to use in a good way so and I I appreciate that but maybe my question was really bigger than just staying within the energy framework in terms of like like you know

[201:01] if you go above and beyond maybe you get we give you eye bearings right I mean I mean I like really you know and I see Brad certain who wins uh a little at that one um but but you know it like that's where I want to think of like think more holistically about the whole built environment and how we can create those trade-offs in other forms and I know we sort of talked an email like maybe there's things we do on the parking front that then are that are tied to are we doing gas or electric appliances like so I'm just thinking like think bigger in terms of how we can leverage those things without being and just thinking bigger in those sorts of incentives and trade-offs might be a way for us to leverage more of what we want to get in our community so yeah maybe I'll take this swag it that one so just um just a reminder we did um or was it earlier this year well or late last year earlier this year we did bring the community benefits project forward and we do have an energy related um criteria within that right now it's it's a percent Improvement in eui

[202:00] um you know certainly as we learned from that I think there's opportunity to allow for other above and beyond I think all the other above and Beyonds we heard from Council that you want to be the base code um and so those are the things that are showing up here but um definitely something we can can learn from through this process and maybe bring back with a um some other strategies but do know that like there is an above and beyond energy related component in the current um Community benefits site site review criteria update processary thank you and just to clarify if I can piggyback um councilman no wincing for sure actually more uh recognizing as this conversation and conversations leading up to this evening's uh study session uh really reinforces I think the interconnectivity as we get into a you know a broader and more aggressive Vision even than historically how that

[203:02] really does um imply the interconnectivity of all these different codes and all the different um tools that we need to exercise and so you know as a relatively newcomer to all this I really appreciated our opportunity to have a partnership with climate initiatives and Jonathan and I not not to get off in a tangent too much but Jonathan and I have uh talked in the last six months about ways to strengthen that and operationalize that even more than that so if that looked like Wednesday I apologize no I was only just putting you on the spot a little bit Brad um but but thank you for that song those are my questions I appreciate it okay seeing none others I will uh have a couple um you know to some extent there's an inherent tension uh between the affordability of Housing and the Technologies you want us to adapt for greater Energy Efficiency and

[204:02] conservation are you are you being mindful of those costs not so much with respect to large 100 unit developments but I'm thinking of the you know 1400 square foot home somewhere in Martin acres to what extent are you impacting the price of um being able to renovate that home um with some of these new requirements I would I would assume there's some impact here I know you say that there are incentives that are available that's what you said in the slide but is it um to what extent are we actually imposing um additional expense for those well the homes that are likely to be at least in their present condition the most affordable in the community so thank you very much for that question and that is something I want to say that that hits a little close to home to me

[205:00] too because um I I'm I live in Firestone I can't afford to live in Boulder and so the equity piece and making sure that it's available to everyone and really analyzing the technology that's out there and making sure that it's available and wanting to be aware of the cost impacts as well is really something that we want to dig into and understand because you know like I mentioned there are incentives that are available but you know the other thing too is that the Zero Energy ready home is going to be a lot cheaper from the reports I've seen to do versus a zero energy home um and the main point really there is it's it's the Zero Energy home or zero energy ready home really is a starting point to get you to zero energy and so um with our consultant naresco I know that they've done a ton of work on Research across the country in these um in this the Spectrum as well and so as of right now I don't have an answer for you but we can definitely that's going to be something we dig into under understand because at the end of the day

[206:00] I want to make sure that like I said it's Energy Efficiency for everyone not just the folks that can afford it honestly so thank you I hope you'll be mindful of that my my second question is as follows I was uh emailing with the council member Focus this morning or earlier today and it turns out we both have some interest in uh the technology of cross-laminated Timber uh have you considered that as a technology that we ought to be encouraging uh in the city of Boulder and it comes out of I believe Scandinavia um it's been used in buildings up to 10 or 12 stories so it's clearly applicable to the height of our buildings here and it has been advertised as containing much much less embedded carbon than buildings constructed with steel and concrete is that any component of what you're looking at I I think that that would be

[207:00] something that we would never turn away if someone brought that to our attention and wanted to use that as an item I don't I don't foresee that as being a roadblock it would just be a different um a different approach to what we normally see for building right and so the other thing too to really look at those as we kind of delve down the Avenue of embodied carbon is that is you know that's one of the pieces that we really kind of have to analyze on more of the single family side is availability you know we we love to have some of these Big Timber projects and these cross-laminated Timbers that are readily available if you're Trucking it in you know you've got to kind of look at the analysis of you know with the embodied carbon aspect and bringing it in you know what's the impact there and luckily it does have a lower embodied carbon um because of it being a wood product but um I I believe that you know from our perspective I don't think we would turn down I think Rob and I actually were talking about some of the Timber buildings that are going up around the country and how it would be neat to see that here in Boulder and so I think that this would be something that um I think that if this was brought to

[208:01] our attention I think that we would try to do what we could to Foster it through to make sure that um it it would be an option to build that you know with those materials we would never we would never stop someone and say no you can't use that um I guess my question is would you go further and try to incentivize people to do that I think that's um I think that kind of leads back to what we were talking about with looking at you know incentivizing to move away from like insulation and that and so I think that that's something we could definitely um consider honestly so that thank you for that feedback that's that's right yeah can I jump in on that one absolutely So like um Mark was saying there's not only does that reduce carbon emissions but the wood actually sequesters carbon right so you could with a switching from a steel or concrete building to a heavy Timber build you know assuming you're looking at sustainably forested woods and all of

[209:00] that it might actually have such a significant offset in the amount of carbon that it's storing that you could be actually making the building carbon negative and even carbon negative after a significant amount of operational energy goes into you know heating and cooling it so I I think I would like to see us really look hard at how the energy code and um what kinds of targets for embodied carbon we might look at because just again the potential impact is so big and so what like could we look at not having a strictive energy requirements on a building that's doing something that is so transformational like that no I I think that that's a valid oh sorry yeah well you're fine I was just gonna say we are starting to see some of these Mass uh Timber buildings appearing

[210:00] in the United States that really originated in Scandinavia they're still very new so there isn't as far as I'm aware and the IBC really a prescriptive Pathway to uh construct them but that doesn't stop anyone building them this alternative means and methods approvals they would have to be engineered structures but most large commercial buildings are engineered anyway so it's certainly a possibility to build one in Boulder I think right now probably the biggest disincentive is just the cost and the the newness of the technology that will definitely take it into consideration the embodied carbon I think that's really valuable feedback and something we can work with moving forward on this yeah and if I could I just reflect back to um council member focus and council member Wildlife I think one of the things I'm hearing I want to just make sure I think what I'm hearing is is can we explore strategies for example alleviating eui requirements um or and also ensuring that any of our like envelope requirements or others aren't prohibitive um as a means within the energy code to encourage

[211:01] um people to bring forward lower and body carbon materials and yeah I and I think very much that is something that we is on our plan um and this is good feedback to know that that's a good direction for us to head yes I would urge you to do that um uh I think there's a really promising technology there and and uh if it's endorsed by uh council member Focus she knows and uh I was a mere Builder but she knows so I would uh urge you to take a close look at that all right seeing no further questions are there any other comments mayor great well uh again a big um Kudos and thank you to all the hard work that's gone into this it's uh incredibly detailed and a good really good steps forward that we're looking at taking my one piece of feedback that I want to give well first of all I really like where Lauren was going with that

[212:01] and that Marcus well that to consider um those allowances for much lower embodied carbon materials so just a plus one on the investigation of those ideas um but the other ones I would really like to see us move uh to adopt a an approach similar to what Cresta Butte and Denver are doing which is the all-electric requirements for new construction um I think uh we we only revise our codes every few years and I think now is a good time to be bold with the of course the scope of the climate crisis that's upon us and so the buildings of course that we build now will be with us for decades so it seems like it's it's a good time to start making those requirements um to be all electric so I know there's some nuances to that of things like you know potential exemption for a commercial kitchen and things like that but I also know other people in other jurisdictions have thought these through so I I would really appreci if you could bring us back when we get to these codes an option or or simply just

[213:01] something that implements an all-electric requirement for new construction with reasonable carve outs so I wanted to get that out on the table and um safe Council might agree to giving that feedback in general right Nicole and Lauren thank you mayor Pro tem Wallach um I just wanted to Echo uh first of all gratitude thank you for all this work that's gone into doing this and I really like Lauren's ideas about thinking about other ways we can encourage people to reuse buildings through things like zoning changes so would love to see that as well this idea about thinking about now how we can be building in a way that anticipates future dismantling or reuse or recycling I think that's that's a wonderful thing too as well as this idea of embodied carbon I think is absolutely a critical one for us to be thinking about for me

[214:01] it's it is really Forward Thinking it is bold it is the type of leadership that I would expect over to be having on climate related issues and one of the other things that I really like about it is that it's considering the impact that our city and what's happening in our city is having on other communities versus just thinking about what is happening here so to the degree that we can incorporate things that will store carbon in the buildings that will offset or not offset but um reduce the carbon that's being emitted in the production Transportation all of that in materials too I think that's that's a really good thing and um I think I agree with uh Aaron's point about the um moving toward all electric uh appliances and things and buildings um and I would also be interested in that intersection with the embodied carbon issue as well so it'd be interesting just to to see how those overlap

[215:02] thank you thank you Lauren thanks and I really appreciate all the thinking that you guys brought to this um the residential sort of Net Zero Energy going with a pathway that's um more widely accepted and has opportunities for rebates I think is a great idea doing the um the solar for commercial I think in the way that you're thinking about it and the potentially greenhouse gas offset requirements I think makes a lot of sense um with the electric vehicle charging especially on for pre-wire I from what I've heard it seems like we want to shift um charging towards daytime charging just in terms of grid capacity and storage and things like that for

[216:01] efficiency reasons and so I question a little bit having diff having the commercial requirements be so much lower than the residential on the pre-wire side because if we're going to try and get people to charge during the day I think we need to be ready with the infrastructure for that um and then for as Aaron and Nicole talked about with the um natural gas following Crested Butte in Denver I think that that would be a great direction for us to go in and something I'd be excited to see and like my post hotline post talked about please please let's do something on embodied carbon I think that would be really important for and transformational okay thank you any any other comments

[217:01] for uh our presenters tonight once twice up mayor Brockett well um mayor Pro tem if you might indulge me could I request a straw poll on the all-electric requirement to to see if that's a majority interest of council I have a question before you go to this trouble really yeah um my question is I don't remember all the detail of that legislation uh is this something that we can do requiring 100 percent because I know there is a minimum requirement but can we require 100 is that Within so we can we can go higher than what was mandated by the state we just have to meet the minimum of what the the state model code says in fact we're encouraged to go beyond it okay

[218:01] and okay I my next question well you know what I'll reserve the question I think I want to make the comment Aaron as the mayor I'll defer to you to make that request of 100 but I think that that should should be vetted through with maybe with the chambers or other group in the community as well but I will I will follow your lead on that one thank you and we'll definitely take that as a response on our question number three um that we asked around engagement because I think that's a that's a really important point on that topic and if I if I could clarify if you don't mind Mark um this would not be a final decision right we're not we're not making decisions tonight it would be basically to show a majority will in Council of having this be one of the things brought to us for final consideration and final adoption so it would not this would not

[219:00] be making a final decision obviously the feedback from the community and stakeholders and Technical input would be important um as we move towards the final adoption in the Q4 and with that let's take a straw poll how many people are in favor of moving in the direction of requiring 100 electrification I see one two three four five six seven eight um I am a partial yes I would like to see more analysis on cost and impacts um but with that caveat I would be nine as and so that's a very clear direction that we're taking I'd give him thanks for indulging me on that I appreciate it any other comments for this evening we are at the end of our agenda and I'm sorry Nicole I missed you it's okay I was just I'm sorry I was

[220:00] waiting for the uh engagement strategies and things um with that and you know I know we talked a little bit about the business Community kind of Builders reaching out there I don't know what the right approach is for this and so I will defer to our amazing engagement staff but thinking about folks who are really impacted by the climate crisis even here in our own Community how are we hearing from them because I also want to hear from them what it is that they're thinking about about these strategies that we are taking to um to make things more energy efficient to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and kind of carbon that's out there in general I would really love to hear from someone from the people in our community who are on kind of the front lines of the climate crisis and when I think about people like that I think about the people who are living in really older housing stock that maybe don't have money to become more energy efficient I

[221:01] think about folks who are um kind of in in places where you know maybe they don't have um air conditioning or some other source of keeping their their space cool those kinds of things and just going to give that as a general thought um I expect that the engagement folks will be able to articulate better who those people are in our community but people on the front lines of climate issues in our city thank you uh Lauren you have a comment Lauren I just wanted to follow up on what Nicole said because I think that you know not only does that Community either bear the brunt of climate change um but also that those houses are less likely to see the impact of our energy Co you know if they're not being remodeled or newly built um they're probably built to the oldest

[222:01] energy code and there is the most potential if we can you know find a way to make it make sense to do these upgrades that um there would be big savings and operational energy so understanding sort of what triggers and how we can help um support the changes in that in that area I think is really important thank you Tara you want to bring us home yeah we're we're paying you home um I'll show I'll shut my light and begin darkness and that'll make everybody want to end quicker no just kidding um I would say that right now I'm thinking about Empower our future all those folks must be so excited from this conversation waiting for this moment and of course I think Stuart if you're listening and out there people who brought me to their

[223:00] homes when I was running for election and showed me their totally electric home so I'm hoping that the um engagement we do is huge all the people that have been waiting for this moment and have input um that's how I feel about it thanks for putting up with my darkness and with that I believe we have concluded our agenda I'm sorry Josh sorry sir I just wanted to add one quick thing that I thought was pretty interesting in regards to the embodied carbon aspect and um our our actual where our consultant actually brought this to my attention today but I believe and correct me if I'm wrong Sally but there are two municipalities in the country that currently have embodied carbon written into their codes one of them's in California and the other one I believe is Denver's green code and so this is something that if we look at doing it would be something to pave the way is what we were talking about with the city of Boulder and so I just wanted to kind

[224:01] of mention that because I thought that was very interesting and and just to to lead the conversation to where we understand that but this is It's a newer technology and I think that um with a lot of that's going on in the development in the building industry in general with these ESG or uh environmental social and governance requirements for these larger projects I think that by us looking at embodied carbon and and these other aspects with Energy Efficiency I really think it's going to help um help these these other entities really meet their goals and their requirements because I've seen a lot a lot newer ones from coming from outside of the state the SEC has certain strict requirements on developers that they have to show greens you know Green uh programs and what they're doing on their end and so I think by us leading the charge here in Boulder it's going to help them um and there will be some pain at the beginning because there always is um but I think over the time they'll learn to appreciate really kind of what we're trying to do here and really trying to move the needle so and thank

[225:01] you very much for that time good Maria I I was just going to say mayor Pro 10 that I really think you and Council for this conversation I believe staff has what they need but what I really wanted to lift up was I hope you see in staff the passion for some of the work that you're talking about already it's a matter sometimes of timing and doing them uh as we're continuing to learn about more strategies but the invitation to continue to talk to us about what you're hearing that's new out in community or out in the world is really great so please continue to share that passion as we move forward uh this team I know is so singularly focused on moving things that really mitigate and are thoughtful about our uh sort of war with uh climate change as we're moving forward in in many different ways and it's a it's an amazing team that is really at the um I think at The Cutting Edge of a lot of the work that is

[226:02] happening nationally and know that they want to receive that um as we move forward and the other thing on note and I appreciate the thoughts about those that are most burden uh uh by climate change as we also think about costs that could be incurred that know that this team thinks about that and that as we're thinking about it we're really making sure that we're doing no harm as we move forward and yet advancing the initiatives that we need to be that we know to be true um to really addressing the climate crisis of the moment and so I just wanted to thank you for this thoughtful conversation and lift up how your passion really does match the passion of Staff who is trying to advance this work forward as well it has indeed been a very substantive and interesting conversation I look forward to uh your further work on it and as I will no longer be recognizing raised hands uh and as we have completed our agenda for this evening I'm going to call this meeting

[227:02] adjourned at the time of 9 43. have a good recess all don't get into too much trouble and we'll see you all again in July thank you foreign [Music]

[228:33] foreign