August 24, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[6:11] thank you everybody Welcome to tonight's study session of the Boulder City Council I'm council member Matt Benjamin and thank you for joining us first I just want to welcome back all the students and parents throughout our community from K-12 to college and it's really important that we offer them a safe and successful year ahead and it's those students who are indeed our future Generations from which we strive to pay it forward so many of the conversations we're talking about tonight are indeed an attempt to pay it forward for those Generations so welcome back to school and thank you guys and everybody in our community um so we have an action-packed agenda tonight we have three items uh the our first item will be discussing Community

[7:00] Broadband the second will be an airport Community conversation update and our third will be a continuation of that conversation and update with regards to minimum wage but before we get into our work items I'd like to outline sort of really how the meeting will be conducted we'll generally look at reviewing staff's presentations and then that will be a time for questions when they follow and remember to my colleagues we'll want to make sure that we provide staff with good solid clear feedback so they go away with this knowing exactly what we're trying to do and then poor Nuria our city manager doesn't have to go back and review footage from eons ago in order to clarify what we did or did not say we respect her time so we will do good and better going forward on that front and speaking of our city manager before we get into our items uh we'll introduce our city manager Nuria Rivera vandermeid to introduce our first item thank you so much council member and I

[8:00] so appreciate Clarity we do have three media items today to talk about and I'll uh I'll send it to Mike Gian Santi to kick us off but I'll say that this last airport conversation came to you all last January and you sent staff back with some questions and a request for some further analysis and the team I will say led by Mike and as always um Jennifer Douglas uh is leading the department they have done phenomenal work really doing heavy analysis so Mike I defer to you thank you Nuria and councilmember Benjamin and good evening Council Mike jansante deputy chief Innovation and Technology officer I'm really excited to be here with you this afternoon and share the research and Analysis that staff has completed this year per your guidance at our January study session on the matter um so before I begin I do want to remind Council that the intent of tonight's study session is not to make a decision on a path forward but rather provide

[9:00] staff with any feedback on additional information that you might need before a public hearing and decision on our recommended path forward as council member Benjamin pointed out I also kindly ask that you hold questions until we run through the materials which should take about 20 minutes maybe 25 I just read an article that people from Massachusetts are among the fastest Talkers in the nation so I'm going to try to slow it down and stretch it here to 25 but 2025 which will leave us two-thirds of our time for discussion and Q a so we can bring you make sure to teach your colleagues Mike on how to fast talk and we would March through these things no we need a lesson in that too so never mind you go ahead can we bring oh here they come thank you Emily and we can move into the next slide and just some quick introductions on the call this evening we have Chief Financial Officer Carl Skinner who will assist me in the presentation uh Chief Innovation and Technology Officer

[10:00] Jennifer Douglas is on the line uh assistant City attorney Andy frohart and City attorney Teresa Tate are here to help answer questions also here to help answer questions or Consultants who we have partnered with over the course of the last eight months to inform our work including Tim Scott who is an independent contractor and Broadband industry expert Kevin Williams and Ernest Perez from our research Partners at BBC research and David Talbot and Matt De Haven from our costs and financially modeling Partners at CTC energy next slide please so again tonight's purpose is to share the outcomes of our research and Analysis answer your questions related to the matter and ask what additional information you need to decide on a path forward for Community Broadband at a future public hearing next slide so with all that in mind I'd like to begin by re-grounding us in the community Broadband Project's intended outcome and objectives these were first developed in 2017 and reaffirmed at our

[11:02] study session earlier this year the ultimate goal or outcome of this work is really to achieve affordable high-speed fiber-based broadband internet access for the entire community how we achieve that goal can take many forms and making that decision requires careful consideration of the elements of cost risk level of City control time to Market and of course How likely we are to achieve these six objectives Citywide access creating a more competitive Marketplace having services that are Equitable and inclusive having infrastructure in a business model that are future oriented having internet delivery for the entire community that remains net neutral and places the highest regard on consumer privacy next slide so with those objectives in mind in 2018 Council took a major step towards our intended outcome and invested 20 million

[12:01] dollars in a fiber backbone the fiber backbone is about 65 miles of fiber this is infrastructure that is physically in the ground construction on that backbone will be completed here at the end of the calendar year that backbone runs along the major transportation corridors of the city think of it as the interstates of the fiber Network that can carry massive capacities of data this is completely city-owned infrastructure and we expect that to remain the case regardless of our path forward the intent of making that investment in 2018 and council members who are here then please feel free to add your perspective but largely it was to put the city in an advantageous position with some existing fiber assets so that at a later time a future council could make a more informed decision on whether additional City investment and or partnership with the private organization and complete the network build and actually deliver fiber-based internet services to the community

[13:00] so I want to come back to this graphic on the left hand side of the slide here and I want to be very clear about what the backbone is and what it isn't if we carry that Transportation analogy through I mentioned that we own the backbone it is like the interstates the question before this Council in 2023 is who builds the interstate off-ramps the main roads the side roads the driveways and then ultimately who drives the car who provides service along the network so while the internet highways or our backbone is is absolutely critical for the network to be viable it alone does not provide our constituents with internet service for that we require additional investment and that's what this conversation tonight in this entire year has been about whether that investment is from the city or from other sources both to to build the network and serve the network all the way to homes and businesses across the city the other question highlighted here on this slide which I will allude back to when discussing the benefits and

[14:01] challenges of each potential path forward is how is the rest of the network physically constructed it's an important question because it has huge impacts on the prevalence of traffic disruption or so-called cone zones if you will it has a huge impact on the long-term Road surface conditions and it has obviously a huge impact on the overall cost and time to Market of our internet services that we would be trying to provide over that Network so the point in bringing this up now is is definitely not to Deep dive into this topic tonight happy to answer questions on it but we want to be transparent that this will have an impact and the nuances later on on whatever broad path is is chosen by Council next slide please so we've broken before we move into the section I just want to highlight we've we've broken the presentation into two major sections well I guess three there was that intro part I just did now there'll be two major sections the first here is a summary of the extensive research that we completed a council's

[15:00] request since January This research included a robust look at internet accessibility in the city today statistically valid resident survey small business focus groups a request for information process that's solicited input on Market appetite for a private partnership with the city a revamp of our Municipal internet utility cost analysis and financing options engagement with Community connectors and residents feedback on be heard Boulder numerous discussions with our two incumbent internet providers Comcast and CenturyLink and discussions with stakeholders from the city's five manufactured home communities the second section of this presentation or I guess the third will provide staff analysis of the three potential paths forward that consider all of this research in a decision framework that considers the elements that I mentioned earlier cost control time to Market risk and the ability to achieve our objectives so next slide please

[16:00] so at the January study session we had a lot of discussion about access to high-speed internet in the city what we've learned through a detailed analysis of FCC data and discussions with several property owners here in the city is that over 99 of households in the city of Boulder have access to wired Broadband which should be celebrated this is this is really great and well above the state average the wired Broadband threshold is the state industry Benchmark for quote internet accessibility so while there are Wireless options pervasive throughout the city we really look at wired Internet to the whole all of these properties have access via Comcast Xfinity and remember Comcast has a cable franchise agreement with the city that requires them to run cable infrastructure to nearly all the homes in the city and this is the same infrastructure that they provide internet services over so while there is no internet franchise agreement our constituents benefit from having Comcast

[17:00] infrastructure running to their homes to access Internet services as well additionally on the right side of the screen here Lumen under the brand name CenturyLink provides fiber-based internet services to about 36 percent of bowler premises this is mostly concentrated in South Boulder University Hill and downtown and just north of downtown this means that homes here in CenturyLink's coverage area actually have a choice between CenturyLink and Comcast because there is overlapping in those zones it also means that the 64 percent of older households that are not in CenturyLink's coverage map have no choice when receiving wired internet access Comcast is their only option and then for the half a percent um this is about 200 or 250 residences that are currently unserved by wired internet our research found that all of these premises are located on a single manufactured home community property we've spoken to both the property owner

[18:01] and to Comcast to understand possibilities of closing that Gap as soon as possible unfortunately I don't have an update on that for you tonight but um I I hope to soon so all of this is to say that it is really important to frame the discussion that we're having tonight not around access to Internet as that is largely not an issue in the city with of course that one exception that I just mentioned that we believe can be remedied outside of this larger discussion instead tonight we really must focus on access to Future oriented fiber-based internet which of course uh according to this data only 36 percent of homes have access today and most importantly we must focus on the affordability of internet and consumer choice in their internet provider next slide please so as I mentioned uh we solicited a lot of feedback from the community over the last eight months we did this via statistically valid survey business focus groups through discussions with Community connectors manufactured home

[19:00] community members and and other stakeholders throughout the community a few highlights of that engagement are here on this slide as I mentioned we have Kevin and Ernest from BBC research on the line to answer any specific questions that Council might have related to the statistically valid resident survey or the business focus groups I do want to highlight the affordable connectivity program the ACP is a federal program that provides up to thirty dollars a month towards internet to those at 200 percent or below the federal poverty line luckily both of our uncommon providers Comcast and CenturyLink are participants in this program and both offer a service for those who are Income qualified at thirty dollars a month which effectively makes service free to those households there are about 250 households or 5.3 percent of our households here in Boulder that are currently leveraging ACP funding also outlined here on this slide on the

[20:00] whole most households are willing to pay between 60 and 80 dollars for home internet today about 53 percent are actually satisfied with their current service which means 47 are not um most did cite reliability speed and cost as major challenges and those three elements are also the three drivers on how folks are making internet buying decisions lastly here as I mentioned before uh the provider decisions alluded to in that former bullet are really currently only limited to the 36 percent of households who have service provided from both incumbent providers and so this lack of choice was echoed not only by residents in the survey but it was also spoken very loudly at our business focus groups with small and medium-sized businesses in in town next slide please so this past spring we also issued a request for information to understand

[21:01] Market interest in a partnership with the city we were curious to understand Market interest in operating an internet service on city-owned infrastructure and or operating an internet service on mostly privately owned infrastructure we received information packets from eight different organizations and from our analysis of those responses there were essentially Three core partnership models that emerged as potentially viable for us basically all three models have the partner operating the internet service as they would bring the economies of scale operationally and the Deep expertise and how to run operations the the differences in each of the models were based on the level of City ownership in the infrastructure so sort of model A or partnership a here represents full City ownership and all of the uh of all of the infrastructure B has some shared ownership and C has full partner ownership of course with the exception of our of our backbone

[22:03] um so for the purposes of our analysis later on in the presentation here we've essentially combined partnership A and B here and we've termed that a proper public-private partnership this is where the city has some level of financial involvement in the full Network build and then we term model C here as a right-of-way agreement and a backbone lease so the idea here of this third type of partnership is that the city again retains ownership of the backbone we charge lease fees and or we negotiate other policy objectives and in exchange uh the the potential partner or Partners receive non-exclusive use of the backbone and non-exclusive right-of-way agreements so that they can bring private capital and build that middle and last mile infrastructure so we'll come back to more on the pros and cons of these models in in the analysis section we can move on to the next slide again over the summer uh we we partnered

[23:00] with another consulting firm CTC energy and technology and they came back to the city to update their Municipal internet utility costing model and financial projections that they originally developed for Boulder back in 2018. so just to be clear this is for the situation not with a partner involved but where the city owns and operates it's a full internet utility so this is the the Longmont Loveland Fort Collins model that many of you are familiar with I have on the line here tonight again David Talbot and Matt dehaven from CTC they're able to answer questions you might have about the cost estimates and and the financial modeling that we're about to walk through um the cost projections uh here in 2023 were much more informed than those in 2018 they can considered specific information that we now have on specifics of our economy and our geology here um in the city of Boulder because we've actually been out and we've been constructing fiber conduit in our

[24:00] backbone and so we now have a much better understanding of the level of rock in our soil that we learned through the build of our backbone and we included those assumptions in the new modeling we also consider the nearly 25 base inflation that we've seen since 2018 and they also considered a major major research resource Crunch and cost increases related to the materials and labor in this in this Broadband space since the massive Federal funding programs for Broadband opened a couple of years ago our cost estimate as shown here on the slide in 2023 dollars is 218 million this is about a hundred million dollars more than what the estimate was in 2018 again for those reasons I just stated then when we consider inflation during a five-year bill period cash flow of shortfalls during construction and financing fees based on ctc's analysis we would require 268 million dollars of

[25:00] debt to complete the build I do want to note that there is a slight difference between what is here and what was in the memo a couple weeks ago we have had further discussions with Bond Council financial advisors and CTC and that has resulted in solidifying some of the financing assumptions um probably most importantly that we would not need to fund a Debt Service Reserve fund for uh from debt proceeds and so that resulted in in the decreased projected total cost of finance that you see here from what was in the memo it does have a small impact into the annual subsidy that you'll see here on the next slide that is required to make the model work but it absolutely does not materially change any of the risks that we're about to talk through or any of the key takeaways presented in the middle we can move on to the next slide please so here we look at Financial projections these projections assume a 40 take rate which means that 40 of the homes in the projected service area that we build out

[26:02] will actually buy the service that the City offers we assume that it will take six years to achieve that level that is just based on standard industry practice and you'll see because of that you'll see these projections in the graph on the slide here begin in 2031. we've assumed a retail price of seventy dollars which is right in the middle of the acceptable range indicated in the community survey and we also included a thirty dollar product for those that are Income qualified to be in line with ACP regulations and being competitive with income and providers in that space we've also assumed a five percent interest rate on a 25-year bond for the 268 million dollars that I just mentioned and we made a long list of assumptions based on industry standards and what we know about our city operations around standing up the business to run an internet utility it would include creating a whole new City

[27:00] Department with dozens of head count they would operate everything from sales and marketing to field maintenance and customer service all the way to Administration so the graph on the slide here I'll kind of walk through one of these bars we'll start just looking at 2031 here the green bar represents Revenue in that given year uh operating expense Debt Service and the other expenses are shown here in red and then the black bar for each year represents the shortfall between cash inflow and cash outflow this means that for the length of the debt service there would be a required subsidy from the general fund to bridge that Gap so that we stay financially solvent and the average annual subsidy will be 14 million dollars and it ranges between 12 and in the low 20s excuse me and it would accumulate to about 295 million dollars of subsidy over the term of the bond so we're going to move on to the next slide and I am going to turn it over to

[28:02] Carl Skinner our Chief Financial Officer to speak in more detail about the financial picture and other potential financing options that we do have thanks Mike and good evening Council car Skinner so yes so given the results of the financial model um and the um need to potentially raise approximately 270 million in capital and to uh come up with a funding source to fund the average annual subsidy we did look at a number of financing options and you'll see on the left hand side of this slide these were options that we explored that we determined really were not viable I'll go quickly through them the first um I'm sure you're familiar with communities that we're able to leverage their Municipal electric utility to fund uh internet utility but we are not familiar with Nora our advisors communities that were able to leverage their water or Wastewater utility even

[29:02] though we contemplated that um and frankly um our the city's water utilities have substantial Capital needs and a need to issue debt for those projects next we considered an option of whether the general fund could initially issue some debt to fund the construction of the internet system and then when internet utility was up and running and operational possibly it could um support its own debt issue and then refund the general fund on its debt issue however given the results of the financial model there is not sufficient revenues based upon the projections to cover both operations and maintenance and Debt Service and so it as we showed this would require a subsidy Enterprises can't have a subsidy from the general fund more than 10 percent so we will not be able to form an Enterprise fund for this

[30:01] um operation and then last we did consider whether we could issue certificates of participation and to do that you need to pledge assets and frankly the city does not have assets sufficient to generate nearly 278 million dollars so that was not an option so last we are left with the only real potentially viable option and I say potentially viable and and just want to say it is very challenging as the city could issue some general fund or general obligation bonds to finance the construction of the utility this path based upon current projections of the budget that Mark wolf shared with the financial strategy committee and then we shared with all Council last week in a question and answer um session last week at Council based upon current projections we are

[31:00] really forecasting that in the time frame from 2025 to 2029 of only having an additional average five hundred thousand dollars of additional general fund um budget to go toward ongoing needs so frankly there is not anticipated additional Revenue to cover some new service or subsidies such as this in the near future um so given that in order to fund The Debt Service and the subsidy needed we would need to either re-prioritize general fund uh programs and services to the tune of approximately 14 million dollars or we could ask voters for a new increment of tax and we also did put in their and because it could be a combination of these two could be some re-prioritization and some new increment of tax but um we want to emphasize that this is

[32:00] extremely challenging from a budget perspective and just to give you some context 14 million is 7.5 percent of the 2023 general fund budget so it is not an insubstantial sum when compared to the total also through the 2024 budget process as I think was also shared by Mark Wolfe last week and you will see more of next month as we um roll out the recommended 2024 budget there were 26 million dollars of budget requests from departments and that's those requests were to meet um current community needs program needs we were only able to accommodate about three million dollars of those requests and just to give you a flavor for some of those requests they really were for core service needs maintenance needs additions to basic needs affordable

[33:00] housing support dollars to implement some strategies and some already approved Master plans including the fire master plan and ALS implementation Building Maintenance to meet guidelines contained in the facilities master plan so there are substantial funding needs for existing programs and services and and needs identified through various City plans so we just want to really share that this would be extremely challenging from a budget perspective um and I guess the other thing too that I would just highlight uh that is shared on this slide is both of these things would require voter approval the authorization to issue debt and then if we were to ask voters for a new increment of tax that would also require voter approval

[34:01] I would also share that I think that those same budget concerns relate to the potential for a new increment of tax because I think that the community conversation or the policy decision would be that that this need is the highest priority uh when weighed against those other funding needs next slide so in addition to those budget considerations we did identify risks and other financing considerations uh the risks are outlined on the left hand side of this Slide the first is of course interest rate risk we did put an assumption into the model on the advice of our Municipal advisor of five percent but certainly interest rates move and there it's always risk that interest rates will move between now and when we might issue debt um

[35:00] there's costs risk we have a financial model but there are there's certainly risk that Capital costs could be higher than forecasts there are risks that our operating costs could exceed forecast there's Revenue risk both in the take rate of 40 percent that my Mike highlighted uh it could be less than that which would impact the subsidy level required and then there's risk in in the price and while we say we we might have control over the price um if we operate there's still competition out there and so we would have to have a competitive price and then last uh credit risk and and I appreciate many of the questions from council member Wallach with regard to uh debt and issuance of debt and the impact to our credit rating and and what that might impact might have on our other credits that we might need to

[36:00] issue and and increased costs so there is some credit risk associated with uh this potential model last our financing considerations we just wanted to highlight for you all um just to give you the context of what is our current outstanding debt and currently it is their 256 million I will note that that does include um our debt outstanding for the utilities we also have nearly 200 million and voter authorized debt capacity uh that's for the ccrs and climate tax primarily so we are contemplating that we will be needing to or wanting to issue debt in the future for those two programs and then we are anticipating potentially to have to issue certificates of participation for Alpine Balsam or some other financing mechanism as we explore that with our facilities team

[37:01] again this this next bullet is sort of reiterating uh the budget considerations that I highlighted on the previous slide but the other community needs and just this it is a policy decision or consideration if this is the highest priority need um regarding Revenue sources I mentioned on the previous slide we could ask for a new tax or an increment of tax and really that is either a sales tax or a property tax so just wanted to share some contexts and facts here that currently our total sales tax rate is just over nine percent uh there sort of is a perceived ceiling of of 10 percent um so we're already sort of approaching that there are very few communities in Colorado that have a um uh total sales tax rate uh approaching 10 or over 10 percent and when I say current total sales tax rate I want to be clear that that is um across all the jurisdictions in the

[38:01] city so if you make a purchase in the city of Boulder that is the total sales tax rate that would be attached to your purchase and it's comprised of both the cities sales tax rate as well as the county the state RTD so the cities is only a portion of that so we're already sort of approaching this sort of perceived limit and just for dollars a point one percent increase around 4.6 million I'll note that that's based on a revised 2024 projection that we received just recently so to generate 14 million would be close to a point three percent increase for property tax um one mill based upon 2024 projections would generate around five million dollars so it would need nearly three Mills to generate approximately 14 million a little under that

[39:00] and we do currently have a mail Levy of 11.648 there is a charter Mill Levy cap of 13 mils um and there is a charter debt limit um so if we were to go down the property tax route if that was the direction of of council there are some careful considerations that we would have to make with regard to the tax that we might request and the how we would structure the debt and how the interplay might be between that Charter Mill Levy cap and the charter debt limit so it would be a little bit um complex and then the last point that we just wanted to really highlight is that if we did go down this route of a municipal internet utility given the financial projections that the total cost would include not only the cost of the internet service to those who subscribe but they community members would also be paying uh through attacks

[40:04] and next slide with that I'm handing it back to Mike thanks Hora so we'll wrap the presentation uh portion of this uh this 90 minutes by outlining the three potential paths forward for Council to consider again not for decision tonight um but for you to consider for a future public hearing number one is establishing the municipal internet utility number two is to create a public private partnership and number three is to execute a backbone lease and right-of-way agreement with a new internet service provider for Boulder next slide so why would we build a municipal internet utility well we're really fortunate to have three great examples and and mark thank you for the questions on hotline the other night about our Envy of Longmont Loveland and Fort Collins who uh or you know were quite jealous of in their ability to execute

[41:00] on this model and execute really well on this model all three of these cities have reaped the benefits of of control both during construction and now operationally um also all three of those cities as is true with our projections plan to ultimately be be cash flow positive uh the main difference though between those three cities in Boulder is the cost to build um of those three cities the most recent build is in Fort Collins uh and in Fort Collins uh their build cost about nineteen hundred dollars per premise our estimates from CTC are at thirty seven hundred dollars per premise almost double there are two big reasons for this this difference number one all three of these cities already own their electric utilities which provided uh in most cases over 50 percent of the needed conduit to run fiber which means less digging and lower cost and number two they executed in the 2010s uh they were lucky they uh they

[42:00] bonded they bought materials and executed contracts before massive inflation that we've seen since the pandemic and before the major federal investments in Broadband that I mentioned earlier that have caused this huge crunch in labor material resources in this sector so all that to say um and based on what car I just Illustrated we have a number of challenges uh to consider here number one of course again as Cara just said are the financial risks we will absolutely need to find a way to pay 14 million on average annual subsidy for uh for upwards of 25 years there's also unprecedented risk in addition to the risk that Carr outlined with and that is that you know with the exception of Recreation services this is the first time that the city of Boulder will venture into a Service Marketplace that has incumbent competition both of

[43:01] these incumbents are major national players in the space they have a lot of power and a lot of Leverage we also stare at a very long time to Market we would need voter approval for to issue the debt potentially to approve a tax increment and then we would go through a lengthy design process and need to secure major contracts with construction and project management firms lastly I also must highlight the fact that while entering the market as a third provider will absolutely move our competitive market objective forward we also must balance that with our need to stay financially solvent and in other words here it's it's conflicting to want to drive lower market prices through competition while also maintaining the revenues that we will need to to not require an even higher subsidy from from the general fund next slide please so the so-called middle option if you will creating a formal public-private partnership this would require the city

[44:02] to bring some level of capital to the table by bringing Capital we realize proportional increases in potential benefits however I I don't want to oversell these right the the value of control and of course the financial returns post Debt Service are limited by the stake that we have in the equity of the of the assets the full benefits that we reap in the in the municipal internet utility model of controlling price to Consumer uh or the priority on the sequence of the build really only comes with majority ownership which of course create many of the same Financial risks uh detailed in in Municipal internet utility model this model has a similar but likely a little shorter time to Market since the city would still require time to go to voters for bonding Authority and potential tax increase but the private partner would likely bring some of the economies of scale of standing up the operations and some of the the contractor issues that I outlined for

[45:00] for the municipal model I'll also mention here that uh partner Financial involvement will require the city to use a combination of construction techniques the ones that I outlined at the top of the presentation which do present a potential challenge that we will need to work through during negotiations with a potential partner again not a factor uh and not a major factor in in deciding tonight um or or deciding at a future public hearing um around one of these three broad here uh options but if we involve a partner and their capital in any way uh and the partner stands firm on construction methods um we we will have to uh make a potential uh change in the design and construction standard for our right away which which would of course be brought before Council before before that would be made next slide please so lastly is the idea of creating a non-exclusive backbone lease and right-of-way agreement with the third party to bring both operational

[46:00] expertise and private Capital to Boulder there is very strong Market interest in this model we're seeing variations of this model used all over the country including several municipalities right here on the Front Range it represents the lowest risk option for the city both in terms of this deal and any potential future deals that the city would want to make whether that is a deal with the private another private party or uh investment from from the city itself in other terms it represents the most flexible option for potential future action on top of on top of what we're doing at this time it monetizes the backbone asset through lease payments and it is by far the fastest time to Market as a third party would already have the economies of scale in their operations and existing construction contracts which which I mentioned for the last Model as well while this model scores really well on most attributes as you can see here the one it does not is on control for this particular type of deal the

[47:01] city's level of control would be minimized to what we can negotiate for and or what we can do indirectly with revenues from backbone lease payments the model largely achieves the six objectives not by City control or direct government intervention but rather harnessing the power of of Greater price competition consumer choice and the incentives of that third party to grow their market share to see a return on on their capital investment in the city so in short this model has very little downside to the city it brings private investment to further future proof our internet infrastructure it leverages the investment the city has already made in our backbone it allows for competitive market forces in an already private Marketplace to improve price and service to our constituents and it leaves the door open for additional future action if if it falls short in any of our any of our objectives um it by no means represents a government subsidy to a private sector um company or does it seek to favor any

[48:02] particular private entity whether in common or not it simply opens the door for private investment again from incumbents or otherwise and to bring their expertise to the city and help us address some of these challenges of consumer choice and price uncertainty and service levels so uh all that said any of the proposed paths that that car and I have presented here they could be done with the right amount of money and the prioritization and the right amount of time they could be done staff also believes that all three of these models have a good likelihood of achieving council's objectives for Community abroad then and I I do want to uh just State before I close here that I am a boulder resident myself I fall into that 64 without Choice um like 90 plus percent of my fellow Boulder rights according to our community survey uh I want to see the city take action I would absolutely love for the city to offer a city-run

[49:00] internet service but in my role here it's it's my duty with all of you to be objective and present all all these options available that we we believe are viable and do it in a way that that demonstrates fiscal responsibility so I I as as well as my colleagues who are presented here and are available for questions see a path that can greatly move the needle on our objectives we can create ubiquitous fiber-based affordable internet we can do it in a very cost effective manner for the city and we can leave future city council with even more choice if needed so uh lastly before we go into discussion and questions and we can take the slides down I just want to reiterate that our question of counsel tonight is not to choose one of these options but rather ask the question what additional information do you need before voting at a future public hearing on uh potential proposed motion to authorize the city manager to begin negotiations on a backbone lease and right away agreement with that I will pause and turn it back to you Matt thank you Mike and and thank you Carr

[50:01] for delivering that I know just it's easy to dive into the Weeds on a subject of this complexity and so thank you guys for taking that dive on our behalf and presenting um some really good information um it'd be good to also welcome our colleague Lauren in I know she joined a little bit before we got started so thanks for joining us uh appreciate that and I appreciate also the fact that we got the question in chat so if you need to reference this question it's there in chat um so let's open it up to questions um let's maybe go focus more on some of that additional questions if there are comments on kind of how maybe we're having a little bit of feelings about some of these options it's helpful obviously we're not going to vote but that's okay to sort of Express how you're feeling a little bit um now that we have some greater detail than we did previously um so I see Bob Aaron and Nicole go for it Bob thanks man I just have a handful of questions that really um to clarify some of the things that that uh R and Mark Mike just talked about um one of my questions is related to the take rate the 40 take rate is that um a

[51:01] take rate for I think I heard you say Mike it was limited residential is there an assumption ontake rate for businesses it was assumed to be the same okay that's fine and um how does it I'm sure as you looked at the other three cities up to our North uh who have run the successful Network what kind of um take rate experiences have they had uh Longmont and Loveland are in the 30 excuse me uh lot been in Fort Collins are in the 30 range and uh Longmont is around 60 percent are those other cities that are in 30 range is that because their networks are relatively newer than Walmart in other words they're they're at 30 but they they may eventually grow to 40 50 60. they have hopes to do so yeah it's exactly that reason yeah so almost the most mature Network right now that's right among those one on those three yeah okay and they're sixty percent did you guys do um kind of a sensitivity model and I know that you talked about a 14 uh annual subsidy average uh at a 40 take rate due to a sensitivity model to

[52:00] see what that would look like at 50 or 60 that's something closer to what Longmont is actually experiencing we did um I don't have the table up in front of me I provided them in the hotline response to Mark's question I can pull them up here and uh respond in a couple minutes unless car you have that up in front of you foreign or maybe a little bit more technical it looked like Carl was about to answer your question but I think I saw her mouth move but it was muted so maybe she can give you the answer to your previous question yeah sorry I've I forgot to unmute um he did provide it in that hotline and just for example at 50 steady state take rate uh the average shortfall is 10.4 million I don't have the 60 okay it I think it

[53:04] implies there will still be a shortfall right is it relatively linear in other words because the expense is the expense of that stays the same so if it goes from 14 to 10 point something at 50 presumably goes down to seven or eight at sixty percent is that a fair assumption I might look to our modelers who might be on the call um because I do think there's probably some o m that goes up with with uh additional subscribers so absolutely right yeah I forgot about that thanks David or Matt which would you like to comment on that sure I mean we can certainly run it we don't have we we did do what if the take rate is lower than 40 or higher and 50 was one of those we did include in our report we'd have to go run the model to get it to 60 I'm sorry we wouldn't be able to do that right on the spot but we could get that out tomorrow okay I would add that too I know you guys would keep a running list of maybe follow-up requests I'd ask ask for that if you could if you could do that one more uh pricing question that I have

[54:01] a couple of technical questions and I'll yield to my colleagues um you assumed a price point of seventy dollars which sounds about right to me and I think that's probably consistent with what our sister cities to the north are doing uh since you ran this model out from an expense standpoint and a bond Debt Service sampling for 25 years did you adjust that price point based on CPI also or did you assume it was gonna be 70 for the next 25 years there's a three percent inflation Factor on the on the arpu which is the average revenue per user so yeah we do have a three percent I think I figure you probably did that so I just wanted to make sure uh just a couple technical questions which are probably for the experts um I I think did you in in the overall uh build cost of 214 million or whatever it was did you are is loaded into that the the drop or lateral costs in other words are you assuming that this is the network plus laterals into subscribing business or subscribing residents and businesses it does yeah it includes the lateral and

[55:00] and subscriber drop um uh connections at the take rate specified so as you uh as you increase that take rate those particular costs uh go up as well right that's a variable Integrity yeah oh yeah yeah no I assume that and I I also notice that you you included CPE uh customer promises equipment in in your overall assumption again at the take rate is that right exactly correct one question just kind of a just kind of a kind of a marketing question oftentimes aren't those nrcs the non-recurring costs like CPE and laterals aren't they often absorbed by subscribery there's a one-time fee or or if they want to finance it through higher pricing they pay that in other words don't you have um rrc the nrc's NRC is usually picked up by the by the customer the non-recurring costs are are frequently offset generally generally not fully covered you will typically find something like a 50 activation charge you probably experience that type of thing in the past that certainly

[56:00] doesn't cover the cost of the subscriber drop or or the CPE in its entire entirety um and in a lot of cases those are way particularly when promotional deals are involved so our model does not incorporate that as a an upfront Revenue stream okay I'm familiar with businesses businesses usually pay the NRC right it's particularly Enterprise customers right that that is that's very typical in the in the small business and the residential Market that's less the case got it okay good that's helpful to know what is what I just kind of continue on that line what is Longmont doing with laterals and cpes do we know Bob I'd have to go back and ask them uh that specific question I can do okay this is again a follow-up question maybe for your next memo yeah and then my final question I'll yield to my colleagues um you laid out very nicely options one two and three um with staff recommendation for option three or the last option is that is that much different than what we're doing now in other words aren't we opportunistically leasing condo space

[57:01] you know through irus and other things to um providers like Comcast and and CenturyLink and whatever else comes along aren't we already doing that now and or so is option three basically continuing what we're already doing uh Tim would you like to speak in detail on that you're aware of a few of those yeah um so so good evening um we are not actively doing that yet and one of the primary reasons is because we're not finished construction the the backbone fiber the 432 fibers was certainly built with the purpose that it could do that what we have at the moment is we do have active fiber customers which um are some what I would call sort of community anchor institution connections direct connections and and for Public Safety and there's there's a small a small number of fibers in use to support those cases on areas of the backbone Network that are completed and stable as we finish the last two phases at the moment

[58:01] which is phases five and six but it can absolutely be built as you said or it is absolutely been built without an intent to lease out the backbone I got him so while we we kind of contemplated option three back in 2018 when we approved it and ire are you in either fiber or condo but um we just haven't gotten to it yet because we're not quite done with the build is that right well two things we're not quite done with the build and we've never had any sort of discussions about setting like commercial level rates and stuff like that for releasing to the private sector and so if if Council Direction tonight is to further explore option three you guys would come back to us with some more information about what that might look like I would assume that yeah and we have a very rough sort of allocation table of the fiber backbone asset where about half of that was provisionally allocated for the for the purpose of leasing potentially to private parties right okay thanks Jim that's all I have thanks man thanks Bob thanks Bob um it was a fire hose of

[59:01] acronyms um it was that was fantastic um that was my that was my business so I'm sorry oh I know this that was your sweet spot yeah you were you were on a roll um I appreciate that um Nicole you're up all right thank you um thanks for the presentation and thanks for all the work that's kindness just have a few questions um and and it's fine if this these are answers that come back a little bit later I'm just thinking about you know the lease option if we were to do that what are we talking about in terms of Revenue what kinds of things might we spend those funds on um and kind of at what stage would we start getting back the investment that we put into building the backbone in the first place so that was three three kind of related questions it's a great uh great questions uh Nicole so um we can't really speak to what those rates would be right now um certainly if we signed a lease agreement with a provider with the intent of them Distributing for

[60:00] residential and small medium-sized business retail internet we would establish some rate it would be done through negotiations with them to Bob's previous question we would probably also have some generic commercial rate for for other leases um it may or may not be similar to that negotiated rate um how we would spend those funds so so Nicole I guess to that first question it really depends uh when we get to the negotiation stage so I really won't be able to have a specific there we can have some some uh general idea based on what other communities are doing by the next meeting uh for sure okay thank you yeah that would be helpful to speak to uh how we would spend those funds I wouldn't speak on that um ideal to maybe Cara or Nuria or someone else on the on the line we certainly could use them to further the objectives of community broadband and increase access through additional investments in the community or use them as a as some sort of subsidy

[61:01] for income qualified or otherwise qualified homes or businesses in the community but certainly we could use that revenue for for other City needs as well okay we can certainly look into whatever that may be in the future and I'm not looking for any specifics or anything that you know we're writing in stone or anything like that just uh just some ideas what are the possibilities out there um and then kind of another another question I think this isn't going to Veer into comment territory Matt uh keep it at the question so you know part of the part of the problem as I'm understanding it with us not not it not being financially viable really to move forward with a a completely public option at this point is that we don't have our own electric utility and that was a choice right um because we kind of had the opportunity there to go in that direction we chose not to and so I guess you know that that decision is impacting things now so what are the things we're

[62:01] kind of not seeing you know when when we decided to not move forward with our own electric utility I don't know that this was on our radar is something that might impact so I understand you may not have an answer tonight but what's the what's the last opportunity here how might this decision have some waves that Ripple out um a decade or two into the future that we aren't necessarily thinking about right now Nicole let me just clarify that I want to make sure I understand the question I don't think we have an answer for you tonight but um are you implying what are we not seeing if we don't municipalize an internet utility not what are we missing from the decision not to I mean yep yep yep correct because in the same way that our decision to not municipalize our energy is kind of having some carryover effects on this decision what might this impact on the road we can certainly put some thought into that and have some answers for the next memo thank you um and then one one last thing the um just thinking about any new

[63:02] technology that's out there on the horizon I mean I imagine that this kind of um internet provision technology is growing a lot there's probably new technology and development right now is there anything on the horizon that would make building out a public utility cheaper easier in 10 years something like that I'll star and then Tim I'll yield to you all of our all of our internet options say whether wired or Wireless or largely driven especially in urban and Suburban areas are largely driven by the existence of fiber in the ground in terms of new internet Technologies we hear about satellite type internet um and other non-wired means those are largely at least today in 2023 I had to check my date on what what year it was it's 2023.

[64:00] um those are largely uh only successful in more rural areas where there's not a higher density of folks trying to to use that that's somewhat limited bandwidth but Tim I'll I'll yield to you as sort of our representative of Industry expertise here anything you would add to that uh not much to add I think the the key point is that fiber itself is an enabler for a lot of these other technologies that we hear about so when we hear about 5G type even you know cellular type Services they're available and continuing to grow by the fact that actually fiber Powers those services so you know it's it's a great start that Boulder has the backbone footprint because that can obviously facilitate newer Technologies it just then becomes a question of how far does it continue to expand that footprint um some of the Tactical little things we touched on tonight such as different Technologies as to how to put the fiber

[65:00] in the ground that was called reference to shallow trenching they have minor impacts on like a capital budget um but but really uh most of these newer Technologies really are are reliant on on fiber powering it somewhere in in the grid structure okay thank you and but do they do they depend on fiber being everywhere or is it enough just to have kind of the backbone that's in place um it it depends and a little bit of it depends on well a lot of depends on many things so for instance you know Wireless Technologies is often a shared technology as opposed to sort of dedicated bandwidth which is really what we're talking about with the services that we've been focused on tonight um you know powerful Wireless Services require uh aerial assets to to have the the reach um so that presents a whole series of other problems if you don't again own polls as an infrastructure when you talk about your utility there if you don't own the polls it's hard to have the

[66:01] aerial assets as infrastructure you're reliant on maybe rooftops and then maybe you only own certain rooftops in certain areas so as I said it's kind of a combination of thing and then obviously density has a big impact on where Wireless is most effective and where it isn't as well as environmental stuff conditions as well so all right thank you so much that's all my questions man thanks Nicole I see Lauren Rachel then Tara and Bob looks for another bite at the app so I understand this is one you know I am really interested in understanding more about how the cost the long-term costs of shallow trenching um for Road quality and maintenance I just I have some concerns that digging up our roads might have some big cost burdens in the future is that

[67:00] something I would like to understand in more detail before we were to move forward with that um I was wondering are there examples in other cities of leasing the backbone to multiple private parties for providing internet services I mean if one of the things we're interested in is increasing competition is the backbone able to be used by can we create that competition on our backbone yeah there are several examples of cities numerous examples of cities all over the the country that have made an initial investment like we have in some some core infrastructure and then use that to encourage additional investment from private parties and in many cases having them overbuild is sort of the industry term build on top of each other try to compete for that same market share in the same areas of different cities Mesa Arizona is a really good example

[68:00] um of of sort of that type of model and there are numerous others that I'm happy to provide everyone if desired okay thank you um and then having working with the dairy a little bit on their lease I was just wondering I know that for building leases we have a 20-year maximum before there is you know we basically can't lease things for more than a certain length of time it's in our um Charter I believe and so I was wondering how that works you know if private companies are building out the laterals is there any issue there with can we actually promise more than a 20-year lease to them and yeah thanks for that question Lauren I am going to yield that one to either Andy or Teresa in the attorney's office

[69:00] good evening Council Teresa Taylor Tate City attorney um Lauren you're absolutely right that we're restricted on Real Property leases to 20 years so I think the question here would be you know is it a real property lease or or is it some other sort of lease and we haven't had an opportunity to look into that but we're happy to do so okay thank you um and then my next question is sort of back to the um cost and service so in in the survey 93 of residents said that they wanted Council action to mitigate cost customer service reliability and lack of choice and so I'm just wondering if the city doesn't have control over um mid or last mile service how can we ensure that this asset provides the benefits that we're looking for and

[70:00] doesn't become another Comcast yeah it's a great question Lauren and as I outlined in the presentation we we in that model we would not have the specific control on on price or where we build we would largely be reliant on on Market factors of competitive pricing and um and the the the the potential partner that we bring in and and trying to maximize their footprint here in in the city to ensure a positive Roi on their investment so it's a valid point and um our impact would be both through negotiations and potentially indirectly as I mentioned earlier using revenues that we generate from from a police agreement okay thank you and my final one um is there any way you know we sort of looked at the cost as a whole and um is there any way that we could potentially build out the network slower

[71:00] like potentially look at you know section by section and try and get Promises of leasing up on areas before we build out to help try and control costs and potentially reduce the debt burden by not because you know we clearly can't build out the entire system all at once anyway um I'll start on Tim I'd look to you again maybe fill in some some gaps here I will say Lauren there are a lot of fixed costs associated with doing this so it would not be a linear sort of debt amount to footprint area um so I I'm curious Tim if you are aware of any cities that have sort of taken that approach um yeah I would say some cities have usually in conjunction with a partner that they've selected where they agree on some level of sort of co-marketing the initiative to get to indicated take rates before they you know disband the

[72:00] capital dollars to to build in that particular area um I don't see it very often but I I am aware of a couple of those examples um and I did want to point out that the backbone lease model that you one of your first questions is exactly what the city of Centennial did so just just down the road here in Colorado but I'm going to maybe ask Matt if he's got any other options or ideas around your your question specifically for building it more in a six sort of face success model I know exactly what you're asking I just can't really think of any off the top of my head so um I mean it certainly is possible to phase it in that way generally when it's phased it's usually uh I think the goal with with the implementation is to begin Revenue generation as soon as possible right so you're you're building out certain elements of the backbone which you already have in place which is a huge advantage in terms of time to Market and then generally lighting up portions of the total service area

[73:03] um uh uh in segments so neighborhood by neighborhood and you're trying to get to completion one neighborhood at a time as opposed to turning on a switch and lighting everything so that I mean that is inherent to pretty much every project I've seen but it's not um but that is not over an extended period of time generally uh it artificially extended it really is tied to you know what the the build out itself takes to do you know that help helps gonna clarify yeah thank you um that's it for now Lauren I did just want to Circle back on your question related to shallow trenching uh real quick we would absolutely need to study that um cross-functionally in the city between Planning and Development Transportation utilities and Technology um and that will take some time so we won't have specific numbers available on what potential future indirect impacts

[74:02] would be what we would ask in that sort of proposed motion is that we begin a negotiation in parallel with the investigation of what potential cost around shallow trenching would be and we have a conversation with all potential partners and understanding what mix of construction methods are sufficient for them to still want to bring their capitals oh won't have an answer on that uh certainly not if we don't meet on this again and if we do meet on this again in the next few months we won't have a specific answer on that just yet but we would before we signed any sort of agreement thank you thanks Lauren see Rachel Tara um then Bob it's Matt um and thanks for the presentation everyone um you know this is a fusion of or intersection of finance and and Tech stuff so I I just pre-apologize if I'm

[75:02] asking questions that were already answered or if I'm just not following or understanding but first is um I think for Cara in terms of their credit rating implications I just want to understand is it um from the memo in your presentation is there like a cliff that we can go up to but we can't pass and and like is there some amount of this bond that is okay before we would maybe have an impact on our credit rating or can you be uh concise on on where we would get into danger there I think it just depends on the structure and on the pledge and so um if we were to do this and and it depends on what type of Revenue we would pledge we might get a lower rating and it might just be for that issue um and so it would increase the cost for that issue what do you mean by an issue I'm sorry oh I'm sorry a bond issue so like if we did a total of 268 million with a certain pledge that the rating agencies

[76:00] perceived to be riskier pledged than they would give us a lower rating which would result in a higher interest rate um that one does that mean by the issue okay yes yes and so um it's really just unknown I mean they do believe that there's a lot of likelihood that if we tried to issue something like this it would result in a little bit lower rating than our AAA maybe one notch maybe two notches um can you you know can you do a 20 million bond in year one and then another 20 million dollar the next and you've paid off some and so you're not implicating your rating can't no you if we were going to do this I think in our discussions with the municipal advisor we would maybe do it in two tranches I mean there's costs of issuances you need dollars up front for them to make to contract with to get the project done I believe and so I think you would you would need bigger tranches

[77:00] than just 20 million at a time um so it's a subset of 260 million maybe okay yeah um thanks for that you know I understand that we're and Lauren got at this a little bit with one of her questions too so apologies again if it's duplicative but one of the primary goals here as I understand it is to ensure there's competition in this space so and zero disrespect intended um I'm a fairly happy Comcast customer I suppose All Things Considered but would we be making sure that Comcast or um is it CenturyLink would not be getting this contract from the city to be blatant you know because then we would not really be increasing competition because yeah it's a great question Rachel uh so Comcast current uh infrastructure is is uh cable based so the the upper limits on what they can provide in terms of service are are lower than what can be provided through fiber infrastructure so um while it wouldn't necessarily create

[78:01] direct price competition um if there was an incumbent provider that wanted to create a backbone lease with us I think that would be something we would want to entertain because it would increase the investment in in fiber base the future what we believe is either future oriented infrastructure in the city however I would say that we we would absolutely want to consider and place a high regard on uh potentially introducing additional um additional companies organizations into the boulder Market to create that price competition that you're referring to so the answer is really um yes to all the above um yes we would prioritize a a competitor we would also be very willing because these would be non-exclusive so we obviously have a certain capacity in in the backbone but these would largely be non-exclusive type deals um and and we would welcome additional investment as well um okay interesting I guess part of what's been I think sort of sold to me a little bit is like you know

[79:01] somebody else to come in and then maybe Comcast will also get more competitive with what you know their rates and stuff it's Comcast I don't see how that necessarily works out but um I don't believe I'll be on Council really when these decisions are made so just flagging that um let's see in in the other cities where we looked tear I'm not running you laugh all you want but I won't be here um in the other cities where we have looked at the take rates I'm just wondering if in those cities they also heavily subsidized the product like we're saying that we're going to subsidize it out of the general fund because I would think if I'm a city Boulder resident and I'm already basically paying for this product and probably buying it too so just wondering is that the same scenario in those cities because I think that could possibly uh impact our take rates so all three so when we speak of subsidy we're really speaking on the subsidation of the actual uh business of doing it not subsidizing to the the retail consumer and so for the three cities

[80:00] that we mentioned Longmont Loveland and Fort Collins um they uh they all had uh debt issued from their electric utility not general fund debt because they had that existing capability with their electric Enterprise fund um they're uh their their amount of debt was significantly lower longmonts was uh 47 48 million at first um Fort Collins I believe was the highest of the three around 150 million and so they were able to make the the finances were to not have significant subsidies certainly not subsidy from from their General funds okay and then I think there are a lot of people in our community who think we're doing this like we're going to have a municipal um provided Broadband in the near future so I don't feel like the Outreach that we had got to that yet like just the I understand we did a survey and we we engaged Community connectors and in the business community and some focus groups but like you know I always default to like my sister I

[81:00] doubt my sister knows that we're having this discussion tonight so if people and she probably thinks we're getting Broadband because it was promised like five years ago so what uh what is the Outreach that we've done to sort of the every person in Boulder on this that that might indicate we're thinking about putting the brakes on this and like we would like to know how how important it is to you and you might want to spend all of our outstanding credit on this because it's a everybody uses Broadband so just wondering what's the Outreach to my sister yeah I think your phone number if you need it um I I think it's important to state that this is not putting the brakes on on anything right this is um this is us trying to further the objectives that Council back in 2017-2018 um laid out um by the with the 20 million dollar investment in the backbone by no means did that say we were going to bring um municipalized internet service um to every resident in business and town 20 million dollars would not have done it um Bob Chris meschuck others uh Aaron

[82:01] others on Council others here that were there at that time can certainly speak to that um in terms of communication with with uh with the public we have done this Outreach as a way to better understand their perspective of how we move forward not necessarily to sell a certain type of message around what we are doing um I I do agree with you I think there are some false expectation in the community today that that the city is bringing um this municipalized internet service and we will need to tailor Communications Post Council decision on kind of where we're going with this to inform um the community on on exactly how we intend to move the needle on the objectives around this program uh well I'll I'll reserve the rest of that for my comment and then just wanted to clarify that um for a previous comment like this was very much on our radar when we were discussing Excel and the settlement like um I I bet

[83:00] four of us maybe on this call five of us can remember conversations with Alex Alice Jackson of excel like if we settle this we're still going to use your trenches to put in the fiber cable lines right like we don't want to harm our position on um community-wide Broadband by settling with Excel so just want a flag that that there were a lot of considerations on how that would ripple effect into the Broadband space and I think that we we worked through that pretty um smartly and we are supposed to have rights and and Mike and I talked about that earlier this week but that like we're supposed to be burying uh fiber when possible when Excel opens up uh Powerline trenches to Barry cable or wires I think those are all my questions thanks Rachel I do want to Circle back on one of your questions as well uh the one around inviting competition and sort of a bid process to partner with us we can't stop somebody um from from getting a contract or you're putting a bid in um with the city obviously but we absolutely would could

[84:02] add criteria into any uh type of procurement that would put a preference on increasing competition so I just want to be clear that the idea is obviously to increase competition uh but we we certainly cannot prevent income parties from from submitting a bid thanks Rachel um I see Tara Bob um that I'm I've got a couple questions just for acknowledging time uh we sort of had 10 minutes left for our a lot of time on this subject so um once we're done with questions if we can be quite brief on our comments on the back end um and we can hopefully stay on track so Terry Europe so Mike thanks for this this is great um I am going to tell you how I feel and then I'm going to ask you to tell me which option I want so my question is here's how I feel about this subject what should I what how should I vote so I really don't like monopolies they are not good for society in my opinion

[85:01] I am thinking that the whole thing with Excel right now is the problem is is they are Monopoly so even though they were doing pretty good that's because we have to constantly be pushing them and they're not Forward Thinking and they're slow and they're expensive so now we're going to have to bring in the CC the community um the CCE just tell me what that means people Community Choice Community Choice electricity energy rather and so we're forced we need to force in competition because we don't have any and we don't have any leverage any real leverage with Excel so the other thing is if all of us old people remember Ma Bell they said that it was the end of the world if we brought in competition literally was going to be the end of the world phones wouldn't work that was it so for me the most important thing is that we have two options I don't like it Mike that you don't have a second option I don't even think it's important to me that it's

[86:01] this even if it was just the city and no other options that's still a monopoly and I still wouldn't like that even though I know that's not the things that we discussed so from my point of view wanting to see everybody have two options at least for a provider which option do I like well Tara I think you need to consider sort of the other factors right cost time to Market these other factors that I uh that I outline um I absolutely see a path to creating that level of competition that you're describing here uh and to move the needles on all all six of our objectives uh and to really create this ubiquitous fiber-based internet option um by going with the staff recommendation of opening up our backbone for potential leases with with private investment and private operation um in this market so you think that the staff option will give me what I want and it's the least expensive one is and the least risky it's the least risky

[87:01] it's the least expensive uh it it provides an opportunity to get at what you want and if we don't get at what you want by doing that it still preserves all of our capital and additional options down the road to um to to fulfill that goal um if it falls short so then why did you say that you didn't want that at the very beginning was that a joke remember when you said you would rather have us be the provider I I said that in the in the context of the envy that I hear from a lot of uh members of the community and and from members of council that we have of the city toward North if you will okay that makes sense okay that's it thanks Tara uh Bob and then I'll go there's two more questions and we've we started to touch on these in response to Rachel and Tara's questions Mike I just want to make sure that we're really really clear on this these two points one is um if if we do go down the path of option three and that is authorized staff to start um leasing or selling uh

[88:02] fiber or conduit to various providers that are out there either either existing providers or maybe new new entrants to the market um are we permitted because obviously we have some people in our community who are understandably unhappy with the level of service for various reasons and we also have 250 people who don't have any service can we um can we impose you know there's obviously a price part of the contract you know we're going to charge you X dollars for for the fiber but um but can we also impose non-economic conditions on our leasing of fiber or conduit to like achieve some of the the goals and overcome some of the concerns that community members have or are we subject to kind of non-discriminatory rules where we have to kind of like if we if you offer fiber for lease we have to take all comers and we can't impose non-economic conditions you understand that question I do and I'm going to yield on that Bob to uh my my colleagues in the attorney's office Teresa or Andy uh if you could maybe chime in on that or if we need to get

[89:01] back to Bob on that question yeah I I Andy frohard a assistant City attorney um absolutely that would be the idea is that we would lease it out with conditions and those conditions could include things like must be required to participate in the affordable connectivity program you know for so long as you're participating or as long as you're leasing the infrastructure and so that that would be the idea is to lease it with conditions that would allow us to claw back if they're not performing adequately and and that could include service level terms such as requirements for uptime um it could include depending upon sort of what the market would tolerate it could include like customer satisfaction surveys or other ways to sort of verify adequacy of service or response times um so we have to again we don't know what the market will tolerate but that would be the idea behind that yeah Let's Help lending things and then my second question I think we've also touched on this but I just want to make sure that that we're very very clear on

[90:01] this mic if we good on the path tonight and and subsequently when we approve whatever pricing you put in front of us for option three that is we we don't operate our own ISP we're not going to do a whole lot more construction um or spend a lot more money but we're going to lease out fiber and conduit to Providers either existing providers or new entrants we do we are not foreclosing ourselves this is this is a statement affordable question we are not for closing option one or two for the future in other words we're not going to impose upon ourself in exclusivity where we say yeah we will lease this fiber to you Comcast or or CenturyLink and we promise never ever to get in this business we still preserve option one and option two for the future so if a future Council or a city with more money uh has um has the ability to to do these things three years five years ten years from now we can do do this because it's a truism that in the Telecom World everyone's editors also their customers right the biggest customers of all the telecommunications companies are in fact

[91:00] their competitors as well right uh that's right Bob we we would not um we would not do any deal that is an exclusive type deal um and and to what I said earlier in the presentation um we would want it this is sort of the option of flexibility if you will it enables that future Council um to make additional uh decisions around maybe uh inviting uh or encouraging uh another um another potential provider to come to the city um to maybe compete directly in the same service areas or to fill a service area that maybe that that third or fourth provider didn't didn't sufficiently meet in our eyes or um for the city to to a richer city as you said to invest some of our own money um and maybe creating some sort of Internet a municipal internet utility as well great thanks Mike that's all I admit thank you Bob you actually uh asked my question about preserving our right to have a nice PE in the future so they

[92:01] stress in that um my I've got really two questions and we'll get into comments on the quick side um I just wanted to verify Mike we've been in discussion about annexing uh the uh San Lazaro uh neighborhood and I just want to make sure that in our calculations about who gets served that should we Annex them in that they are already connected or have access to wired internet and won't maybe add to the um of uh 200 or so residents that don't so I just want to verify where they stand on uh wired internet yeah thanks for that question Matt and thanks for the heads up on that question I did look at the FCC data and according to that data which was last updated in December of 2022 they are currently served by Comcast wonderful thanks for thanks for verifying that um my other question um had to do with kind of the financing uh slide number 11. um and I noticed that the the revenues seemed to outpace expenses over time and revenue seemed to grow faster than the expenses grow and I knew Bob asked a question that there's sort of a

[93:00] bacon of of well you know rev you know the revenues are just going to kind of go up a little bit but I'm wondering what's driving that um on the forecast is it just a as an assumption of an increased take rate um is it you know um is it you know that that kind of thing or is it inflation so I'm just kind of wondering why the revenue seems to outpace the expenses um on that long-term 20-year projection so I'll start and then David or Matt I'll let you fill in the gaps um operating expense and revenue are both growing at that inflation rate of three percent starting in year uh 2031. the differences are changes in in The Debt Service just based on financing assumptions and and then other expenses which include replacement capital and other things like that that would happen in in sort of different years throughout the the 25-year Horizon here David or math did I miss anything or would you add anything uh I think you summarized that well Mike but I'll if Matt has anything to add

[94:01] about that no no I think I think uh I think that's exactly right all right well that's a triple stamp of approval for for that answer so I I appreciate that um all right so um if we can just sort of circle back briefly if there are any um comments uh overall on this um and you know obviously feel free to comment on on what you want I'm also curious if there's if there's any sense of a lien here um from Council in terms of um is there any option here that we kind of just are are feeling uh mostly skeptical of being able to achieve and um and I'm not we're not making a formal decision on which one we choose but if we kind of are leaning on of them or so is just not where we want it to be it might be worth expressing that to staff because that might help them as they further uh procure analysis for any sort of remainder options um going forward so uh how about it Mark I see you go for it okay um first just very quickly I wanted to

[95:00] thank Mike and other staff for a really first-rate presentation of a difficult uh subject um my lean is is clearly to uh option three I'm I'm very persuaded about the seriousness of the risk factors involved in and doing it by ourselves I'm not sure I see a whole lot of advantage of doing it 50 50 with someone else there's still a very significant significant commitment of capital to do that and there are risk factors there as well so that would be the direction for me um uh just given the magnitude of what's involved in actually building this out and financing it and and bringing it to the community and then running it efficiently um for me it's a very very easy one and my lean is completely towards option three thanks thanks Mark I see

[96:02] Aaron then Juni so the importance of this discussion was brought home to me at the beginning of the meeting when my internet went out which I'm one of the people that doesn't have a choice in in high-speed internet so I've been Tethered to my phone uh as a backup option so I definitely need some more competition here in town um I'll Echo uh councilmember wallach's comments uh appreciate you doing the detailed Financial anal analysis uh I think we would all in a perfect world love to have a municipal internet a la Longmont but of course we have the name Boulder for a reason and uh construction expenses are much higher here so the staff the direction you're going makes sense to me um in terms of what information we might need before moving forward there there's one thing I wanted to call out um you know we would have less control of course with this option three approach one thing that's I feel is important is that the build out of this

[97:01] additional internet utility reaches many households as possible and so I would um I would want that to be a high priority as we're thinking about how we approach about backbone lease and right-of-way agreement with the third parties is to what extent we can leverage the use of our facilities to make sure that we get a commitment for people to reach as much of town as possible in particular to include some of our current underserved communities both in terms of income location and such like that so that's just one priority I want us to make sure we have in mind as we're thinking about how we move forward thanks so much uh things are in a great point on sort of that Equitable conversation making sure the same people don't get the same overlap service it's a it's a great great point so uh Juni then Bob thank you I just wanted to say that I do support option three as well and I have been sold on that option because again of the low risk the low cost or zero

[98:01] debt and also the how quickly it will get also the time to Market it's between uh 1.5 years and the full build is four years I just think this is great this is much better than uh the other options which is three years and then eight years that's a very very long time uh to wait for a needed service so I think this is really great um I like the cd-wide access right which we get um and all the options and also um the equity aspect of it as well I'm sold on that it's so important that you know community members have access to broadband not just people who can afford it or wealthy people so I think there's a massive Equity component to this particular project so I fully support option number three thanks thanks Judy Bob you're up

[99:01] yeah I had the same problem as Aaron did um it took me forever to download the staff memo on this uh so my my Broadband speed is not very fast either because remember it wasn't that fat but it still takes a long time to download uh console packets um I agree that um we should as Aaron said we should make sure that that there are not only economic terms but non-economic terms in whatever leases or irus we do with providers I know that we can Target providers encourage maybe new entrants or people that are providing more competitive services but we should look holistically at all all of the issues and problems for their speed reliability outages slas customer service what whatever the issues are that the 90 of people who said they're unhappy let's focus on those and let's make sure that if we're I'm going to be leasing out a valuable City asset which we spent 20 million dollars on we're getting solutions to the problems that our community members have expressed not just not just money um and uh then I I think to Rachel's

[100:00] point about Communications I think Communications is very important the voters are approved there's a state law requirement that voters approve a city is getting into this to an ISP business um which our voters uh waived that rule back gosh it was more than it was more than 10 years ago and so I think expectations have been set for a decade that the city might someday do this and then when we when you authorize the build out in 2018 I think there was an expectation now I think we were very clear say in 2018 that we didn't know if we're going to get in the ISP business it was a no regrets decision because we wanted to connect traffic lights and police stations and fire stations and that someday we might actually lease the fiber or the conduit out that someday has arrived it sounds like the bill is wrapping up and so option three is is no more than what we said no more or no less than what we said we would do in 2018 so this is just continuing our uh our our practice so the question is not so much do we want to do options three because that was always Our intention the question was now that we've kind of more or less finished the bill do we want to move to option one or option two for the last we've been working on this

[101:01] for eight years nine years 2014 and uh all along the price has been very very high I think uh eight years ago was 140 million dollars now that's almost doubled not surprisingly and I think it's very important that you know the headline of tomorrow's paper is not City decides not to to provide internet service it's it's City decides not to provide internet service now um because we're broke we don't have enough money and that's I mean option one is as attractive as it might be you simply don't have the money as Carter did a very good job of describing so I think our explanation to our community is yeah we've been toying with this idea for for going on 10 years um and we're still coming with idea and we're not going to stop doing with the idea but in the meantime let's go ahead and monetize the 20 million investment we made thanks thank you Bob uh Rachel Lauren then Nicole thanks Matt um first Bob you can don't you can download your packet earlier you don't have to wait till you get on the meeting so I'm just going to give you that tip it's easier when you're not also on Zoom

[102:02] um so I as someone who was a you know a Community member paying decent attention in in the lead up to the city's votes and council member then who's paid a lot of attention in the last couple years I it has it definitely seemed to me that we were telegraphing to the community we are looking at you know being a provider of um a broadband service so I I don't feel that I have heard from the community that they are really comfortable with us not doing that now because we're saying like dang it we should have done it in 2010 but I know darn well in 2040 people would be like oh if only we've done that in 2023 like what idiots are we to have not done that as a city so I I feel uh unfortunate to not have really heard from you know I use my sister just you know as a catch-all for all Boulder like I

[103:01] have not heard from literally her or so many people in the city about like do they like where we're going with this and and I'm uncomfortable so to answer the question what additional information do I need before voting again I don't think I'm here for it but I really hope that we have have really communicated to the community hey we are we're really looking at at least in this this backbone out and you're gonna get your internet um this long-awaited Broadband from someone that is not the city of Boulder and I just want that to be clearly communicated and evaluated by the city because this is a big deal it's going to have um you know 100 years worth of implications and at some point it's going to turn profitable and we're also forfeiting that if we don't um get in the game I feel like early and then other other people take over the space so um I option three maybe all we can do I I am still open potentially to option one but I really want the community to have that chance to to tell us loud and clear like yeah we get it like the finances are or

[104:02] that they want to break the bank on this I think that that is something we should let people weigh in thank you great discussion thanks Rachel um Lauren Nicole then uh I'll finish off I'm gonna I think Echo a fair amount of what Rachel said um our community voted overwhelmingly for this backbone and they're also overwhelmingly unhappy with their existing service um we're already covered at relatively high speeds and so for me I really want to make sure that whatever service we provide is meeting the needs that the community is requesting so I would like to know what we could if there's anything we can do in terms of delaying rollout to raise tax funds for longer for several years before starting

[105:00] the project reduce project costs or really anything we can do to kind of tackle the costs for you know into making it something that could be something we can accomplish because the reality is it costs a lot to put wires in the ground no matter who does it so our community is going to pay these costs either through their bills or through taxes and um and if it's a private company doing it they're going to pay more than just the costs because the company has to make money so while I realized that this option one presents sort of nearly insurmountable costs to us [Music] um I would like to see us figure out if there's any way we can break those down and make them more capital and also have the community weigh in just because this this is a

[106:00] long-term commitment and we've seen how that went with Excel and I wouldn't want to see us make the same mistake here thanks Lauren Nicole thank you um and thanks Rachel and Lauren for echoing many of my thoughts as well I think you know the only thing that I would maybe add to what um what Rachel and Lauren said is that it doesn't seem to be an issue of access so it's it's there are 200 to 250 homes who need access and I really hope that we can get them that access soon but in my mind that because they're because most people do have access it doesn't add the urgency um that I might otherwise feel if say half the city did not have access to Internet so um so for me it feels like there is some time to do a little bit to get a better read on the community because I also just don't have a sense of of whether this is something the community would

[107:00] like to invest in because there could certainly be some long-term impacts here I think my biggest concerns if we were to move forward with option three are issues around data privacy net neutrality uh customer service and just ultimately the cost to customers too the goal of Private Industry is profit not service not privacy not keeping costs low and not really our community either so what are what are we doing if we're going to move forward with leasing out this backbone that we've invested 20 million dollars in to make sure that our communities needs are private or um are prioritized as much as possible given the privatized nature of what we will be moving into thank you thanks Nicole um I'll finish up and try to summarize what we've heard here hopefully and get staff what they want um I

[108:00] um I I think um number three is obviously the most viable uh thing to achieve but I think what's important to maybe sort of address where Rachel and and Lauren and Nicole are is Nicole is is we're preserving our right unlike the municipalization we had to make a decision and then figure out where we were getting our power from right so that was a choice point that wasn't we didn't really preserve our right to municipalize tomorrow or the next week like we could but we kind of foreclosed on that whereas this is different we could pursue option three and then always do that and in many ways that's probably the option that is best because we're at the peak of cost inflation's super high everybody's doing internet so you're gonna have to pull people equipment is scarce I mean waiting is probably the ultimate thing but if we're waiting to do our own why wouldn't we address the urgency that our community wants more choice and that of course then is option three because it comes to Market faster so I think we're kind of saying the same thing as long as we recognize that we're actually preserving our right to to do the public option for

[109:00] perhaps and hopefully when costs come down which hopefully they will I mean really it's a question of who versus what I I is people if people are getting cheap and reliable service does it matter more that they have a city a boulder sticker on there um invoice or or does that really matter as long as they're getting affordable and reliable service so I I I think the who versus the what is an important piece here so um uh you know so that's my perspective on it but but in terms of what I've heard I think um you know Mike um what I've been sort of hearing that are outstanding questions are you know um models of different take rates um charge rate projections of the private um of the private sector option option three um and also the city attorney's office looking at those 20-year leases and the impacts on private providers um certainly more study on micro trenching and then more Outreach for public option um and where that is just to make sure people understand where we're headed um and then sort of that last one was brought up is sort of how we and if we

[110:00] can sort of prioritize in a partnership who is getting that initial build out of service to make sure that it's not the people who already have Comcast and CenturyLink overlap that they're getting now a third option meanwhile folks like yourself um uh Mike and others are still stuck with one for a long time so the equity conversation there as well so those are the ones I heard were still on the table and just want to check in with you Mike um do you feel like you and staff have got everything you needed to March us to the next one I do I appreciate that summary man I appreciate all of council's uh questions and feedback this evening super helpful um I have a number of questions jotted down here in front of me and we'll certainly play this back tomorrow to summarize in more detail um with you next week um and we will start working on those outstanding requests and and look forward to uh seeing you again hopefully very soon awesome I appreciate Mike Cara um and then also Matthew Tim and um well who else no David thank you guys so much for for your input and your

[111:02] expertise and your work on this we greatly appreciate it I'm sure we'll see you guys again soon when we are having some public feedback and looking to make this decision um and go forth with an option so much appreciated uh thank you guys and you guys got to go first you get to call it a night so thanks again appreciate it thanks very much nice seeing you all have a great evening thank you um and uh with that I'm going to turn it back over to our city manager Nuria Rivera vandermeid uh to introduce our second item for the evening uh thank you council member and um nothing like a little levity in an airport conversation to follow up broadband um as you all recall the question about the future of the boulder airport is one that has come up over the years um most recently we have heard a lot and I know that you have received a lot of emails from what I'll say are people really passionate um either about the airport and its meaning to the community or frankly people that are passionate about the impact that the airport may have on their lives

[112:00] we remind folks that the airport is a land use the airport is a land use that's included in the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan to that end um the plan reads that at the time of the next airport master plan the city will work with the community to reassess the potential for developing a portion of the airport for housing and neighborhood uses I say that because that's a little bit of what brought us here today in 2022 staff was assessing the need for an airport Master Plan update so that we could actually pursue needed Capital Improvements at the airport and we recognize the commitment to the community laid out in the Boulder Valley comp plan to fulfill that commitment we initiated a community engagement process to hear from a broad and diverse set of Community Voices about the desired future for the airport site and in turn develop four scenarios to respond to what we heard the project is only the first step of many depending on the community and council's desire as we move forward the

[113:00] first step enables us to ascertain if there is an appetite for considering an alternative alternative scenarios that would then require us to alter the FAA required master plan and have us reconsider the breadth of future Investments at the site we appreciate being able to have this conversation with the community to better understand the community's desire and vision for the future of the airport site and tonight we'd certainly like to hear from you on any additional information you may like staff to gather before we come back to Council in early 2024 for more concrete Direction on next steps there's significant work to be done at the airport and we really rely on your guidance for our what our next step should be and I'm going to skip over Natalie uh Stifler our director of transportation and Mobility is certainly here um as is John Kenney who I think you all know who really frankly keeps it all together at the airport so thank you John but Allison Moore Farrell

[114:01] has been really at the Helm of the engagement and so I'll send it to her to kick us off Allison before you get started I just want to allow um Lauren to to mention something uh to us and the community sure the conflict that I have and under advice of the city manager city attorney's office I'm going to recuse myself from this conversation thank you all and I'll see you guys soon hopefully pretty soon because we have a minimum wage conversation to happen which she has been leading so we'll see in a little bit more um all right sorry Allison uh take it away all right thank you and I think this city clerk's office is going to share the presentation perfect thank you so much all right wonderful thank you Nuria um hello members of council my name is Allison Moore Farrell I am a senior Transportation planner here at the city of Boulder thank you for having us this evening I look forward to providing an update on the boulder Airport Community

[115:01] conversation I look forward to sharing with you the engagement activities that have occurred thus far Community input that informed the long-term scenarios and near-term action items Community feedback on those scenarios and action items and an evaluations consideration Matrix which evaluates how well each scenario aligns with the city's sustainability equity and resiliency framework goals we look forward to sharing the four draft Community informed scenarios please keep in mind these scenarios are driven and informed by the community we intend on providing these four refined scenarios and further information as needed in early 2024. next slide please all right just a quick presentation outline we have the project purpose I'll be sharing the community engagement that's occurred analysis of that the Matrix of community visions and next steps next slide please all right so what is the purpose of this

[116:00] project the purpose is to conduct a community engagement process and resulting High net high-level scenario analysis we last came to you in January 2023 sharing about the process this process is about creating an aspirational vision for the airport site it's about informing Consulting and involving the Boulder Community it is about identifying concerns and ideas for the future it is not about closing the airport changing airports site land uses in the near term and developing detailed feasibility analysis and I want to share a little bit about how we've Incorporated your feedback from when we came to you in January Council asks clarifying questions regarding the difference between the airport master plan and the airport Community conversation we shared that the master plan process is prescribed by the FAA and this is focused on growth and operational needs at the airport the community conversation is to help understand what the community's vision is for the airport Council also asked for a clear

[117:00] introduction of History issues and opportunities which was provided at both open houses and our community working group meetings Council also provided project team suggestions with with community members who should be on the community working group which I'll share a little bit later next slide please and next slide thank you so I wanted to share a schedule of community engagement events that we have conducted over the past seven or eight months and I really want to thank many of you council members have attended a number of these and I really appreciate that involvement we've conducted a wide range of activities from December to August and we have more coming in the next month the aim of with the community outreach was to connect with those most impacted by the airport as well as the broader Boulder Community and I'll share a little bit more about those next slide please so we began with in-depth interviews with which really helped us learn about key issues and concerns that neighbors

[118:01] tenants pilots and community members have this helped provide Baseline information and shape future engagement needs and helped Identify some information information gaps we had moving forward we had two open houses we hosted one in April 2023 and in July at the first open house we shared information about the airport shared input received to date and requested issues and ideas on the future of the airport site we had over 200 attendees at this first open house the second open Ed and concerned about noise leaded fuel economic impact environmental impact rules and regulations and community relations this served as both an information session for the public and a valuable resource for the project team to understand the concerns our second open house was just last

[119:00] month we shared desired near-term action items shared draft long scenarios long-term scenarios and requested feedback on both we had over 120 attendees at this open house next slide please we conducted two online questionnaires through be heard Boulder the city's questionnaire platform we received a large number of respondents we conducted Outreach for the questionnaires via City channels in line with City best practices we also reached out to Neighborhood HOAs and underserved neighborhoods who could be more impacted given their proximity to the airport questionnaire is an engagement tool for collecting feedback from the public it is not intended to express a scientific statistically valid representation of All City residents in addition staff is not interpreting the feedback as votes for or against certain scenarios the behard boulder questioner is just one of the tools that the city uses to solicit input and we acknowledge the limitations of this type of questionnaire nevertheless it's a useful engagement

[120:01] tool to help identify Trends and potential areas of commonality the project team worked to remove respondents who were outside of Boulder County with the first questionnaire we had over 700 respondents who resided in the city of Boulder and Boulder County this is a very large number of respondents for behold Boulder questionnaires approximately half of the respondents use the airport for work or recreational purposes when asked what do you think about the current operations or services at the airport 16 of folks responded I don't think there should be further operations or Services about 60 percent recognize the need for minor and or major improvements at the airport remaining folks fell into the other category in the open-ended question about the vision for the airport folks expressed a desire for improvement and around safety unleaded fuel and noise there's a wide range of visions and I encourage you to see what community members shared in the memo appendices

[121:00] there was over a thousand pages in there so it may take a while but if you have the opportunity I encourage you to um you know to take a look at what folks shared about their vision in our second questionnaire we had over 900 respondents in the city of Boulder and Boulder County our aim there was to gather feedback on the identified near-term action items and draft scenarios when asked to rank the preference of scenarios scenario three was the most preferred of the four from the short answers provided folks appear to desire more collaboration between the airport community and the broader Boulder Community while it was the preference there was doubt that some of these elements could come to fruition but there is a desire to look into them and prioritize that vision focusing on people and community and increased benefit of the site no matter what next steps were taken was clear from this questionnaire next slide please probably our most instrumental piece of Engagement in this process was our community working group the purpose of

[122:00] the cwg was to provide input and recommendations to the project team and support the community conversation effort we collaborated with the project with the cwg they were not only at the inform and consult realm like other engagement activities but they got to the involved level of participation we worked directly with cwj members to ensure that concerns and aspirations were consistently understood and considered and reflected in the scenarios the cwg was intended to have a diverse mix of stakeholders who are impacted by the airport and the future of the site we included many folks that counsel and suggested in January which we really appreciated folks from the scientific Community the Emergency Services Community those engaged with the East Boulder subcommunity plan those in underserved communities who live near the site and many others we also had members from planning board tab housing board and we also involved many departments within the city such as planning osmp and others

[123:02] um from the cwg um like I said they're very instrumental in developing scenarios and near-term action items they helped us prioritize those action items and over the past several months we've shared Baseline information about the airport communicated these known opportunities and constraints provided summaries of all the engagement activities developed Visions for the airport and Airport site developed evaluations considerations that connected the scenario to City goals and throughout this process we often assigned homework to cwg members to speak to their neighbors colleagues and acquaintances about the airport and this process and to report that next slide please another piece of in community engagement we conducted was bilingual community means these meetings were held at San loser and Vista Village and they've been very valuable we actually have our final set of meetings next week at San Los room as folks who's reside right next to the airport their lived experience is helpful to understand many folks wanted

[124:00] to see the airport as more of a Community Asset and explore opportunities for youth engagement such as summer camps jobs and Technical career options noise was a major issue identified in these communities and we intended Our intention with these Community meetings was to have the same depth and detail um to understand the concerns and desires of these communities one was English first with Spanish translation and one was Spanish first with English translation next slide please and next slide thank you so I'd love to move on to what came from these Community engagement events here's how we organize this and why so first we have the initial setup input and that was in the earlier part of this year in March April May where we had our early Community working group meetings open house first questionnaire Sam our first visit with San Los room Vista Village and we created this space for our impacted community members in the Boulder Community at large to share

[125:01] their issues and ideas this was the initial input stage this wealth of input coupled with subject matter experts led to development of high-level long-term scenarios these scenarios reflect what we heard from the community this is the scenario feedback stage and that's where we're at right now next will be refining those scenarios based on all of this feedback and coming back to you and it's important to keep in mind throughout this process the desire for near-term Action items emerged from a number of different groups folks really wanted to see improvements in the near term not just 20 plus years in the future regardless of what future a scenario was chosen so we organized these um so they could occur in the next one two three four five years so we'll share those as well as they were developed next slide please and here we have a word cloud showing all of the feedback themes and interests that we heard throughout this engagement process you'll see a lot of words that you've you know connected with folks on

[126:01] throughout this process and we just felt it was really important to share a lot of what we had heard all right next slide please next slide all right and next I'd like to share the four Community informed scenarios so scenario one is existing airport with enhanced maintenance scenario two is airport with Aviation improvements scenario three is airport with neighborhoods serving uses in limited housing scenario four is decommissioned airport and create new neighborhood next slide please so with each of these scenarios what I'm going to do is describe um the purpose of the scenario and I'll describe what remains and what changes from today and then I'll share the feedback we've received from the community on these what do they like what did they dislike what further information were they requesting in order to understand it further so scenario one would bring the current facilities up to a state of good repair no new facilities would be built so

[127:02] everything would remain and no physical changes outside of enhanced maintenance of existing facilities slide please so the community saw a number of opportunities and constraints here opportunities was improving maintenance less change continuing to accommodate emergency response supporting training some of the constraints that were identified was does not Advance City goals lack of implementation plans seen as a Band-Aid on current issues does not address Boulders housing needs does not address flight pattern issues and furthers perception that BDU serves select groups further information that was requested is economic noise and Environmental Studies and flight pattern review next slide please scenario two would Foster Aviation development that is responsive to Aviation market demand this would include modernization of general aviation hanger improvements and

[128:01] implementing the most recent airport master plan from 2007 which would add facility and infrastructure improvements enhancing safety and capacity so the existing elements remain would be the runways taxiways Hangar facilities support buildings the changes would be upgrading existing hangers development of new hangers enhancing Aviation facilities preserving options to accommodate future modes of travel and goods movement and upgrading the public Aviation viewing area next slide please some of the opportunities community members saw here was the use of new technology and Aviation advancing use of unleaded fuel and it could make the airport more inclusive constraints that were identified were may lead to more Aviation traffic concerns about environmental impact noise safety and Equity concerns about source of funding and not addressing housing needs further study was very similar to scenario one looking at an economic

[129:01] noise and environmental study flight pattern review and review of funding sources for BDU and I apologize I'm calling it BDU is the airport code for Boulder municipal airport so in case you didn't catch that I apologize I didn't clarify that all right next slide please scenario three would Foster Aviation development and Community Development that complements each other so this would include modernization of general aviation and hanger improvements and livework Hangers it would also include a wide range of neighborhood serving uses such as a restaurant or Cafe a stem Learning Center vocational opportunities for local Youth and a community center that houses meeting spaces for both Aviation and public uses so remaining would again be the runways Hangar facilities support buildings the changes here this is kind of where we get to more changes where we look at upgrading existing hangers developing live work hangers building a restaurant or Cafe creating a stem Learning Center and job

[130:01] opportunities enhancing Aviation facilities and building a community center that houses meeting spaces next slide please thank you the opportunities have seen it has a good middle ground advancing the use of unloaded fuel inclusive of community could improve community relations constraints identified were may lead to more Aviation traffic may be too extensive to implement concerns about land use compatibility environmental impact noise safety and equity and does not provide enough housing again further information requested was an aviation land use compatibility study with special consideration for housing and again like the previous slides we looked at economic noise and environmental study and a flight pattern review next slide please scenario four would decommission the airport and create a new mixed-use

[131:01] neighborhood that may include housing activity centers employment hubs and green space a portion of land would be set aside for helicopter emergency services that would support the resiliency of the region so remaining here from Aviation facilities would be an aircraft landing area for emergency Support Services this would have the most area of change with building a range of housing types creating activity centers employment hubs and allocating Green Space for native plants and animals opportunities the community members saw here would be serving a larger portion of the community reducing leaded fuel impact on the community and providing additional housing constraints identified are the FAA may not allow this may not provide affordable living could be a costly option Aerospace would likely be utilized by other airports does not provide open space lack of airport could have negative economic impacts further information requested would be a

[132:02] feasibility study an economic study and the scenario would need to be cognizant of current FAA obligations and the timeline associated with them next slide please so the four scenarios were evaluated based on how they align with City values which are outlined in the sustainability equity and resilience framework building on feedback received from the cwg and the broader Community the project team expanded upon the framework to create evaluation considerations which have been tailored to the boulder municipal airport site next slide please the project team is comprised of subject matter experts in transportation planning Community planning Aviation planning and engagement professionals to utilize their expertise locally and nationally to conduct a preliminary evaluation of the scenarios using the evaluation considerations developed with the cwg each scenario was then

[133:00] qualitatively evaluated looking at impacts of unfavorable neutral and favorable by the project team as to whether each scenario actively contributed or detracted from these goals the sustainability equity and resilience framework is meant to provide guiding principles and goals they are not quantitative metrics and should not be utilized as such here they are not votes for against future scenarios we recognize that this is qualitative which is the intention as this is a visioning process um it is subjective and only meant to give counsel in the community a high level assessment of how each Vision may move forward towards our community goals these considerations are meant to be one tool for Council to understand the anticipated impacts of each scenario we also anticipate feedback from the cwg which we've already requested and City Council on these evaluations so I'm going to identify some of these valuations I know it's really small on the screen here but you do have this information in your packet if you'd like to review each of them I'll share a few right now and again these evaluation

[134:01] considerations were developed by the community working group um to really hone in on Airport site specific so that it could be applicable to any of the scenarios so for example under safety one of the considerations is increasing resiliency through mitigation response and Recovery for the accessible and connected goal some of the considerations are increasing current and future multimodal Transportation options enhancing open space bicycle and Trail connectivity and accommodating Goods movement for economically vital vital another one is Foster diverse business options so these are a num of the considerations um that were pulled together by the cwg and then the alignment was identified for each of these so as you'll see the elements that make up scenario three and four bring these scenarios closer to alignment with City goals but again this is one tool to kind of understand this alignment

[135:00] next slide please all right so like I mentioned earlier these near-term action items were actually identified by community members as a desire to really look into as as something we can do in one two three four five years from now and as you'll see these so all of these action items came directly from the community members as we shared in the memo they have not been evaluated for feasibility just yet we wanted to communicate with you what the community has shared and in the coming months they will be going through a feasibility process um throughout the engagement process we heard from many community members the desire for these actionable short-term items that they could see come to fruition so we did incorporate that into our Outreach and these ideas really complement the long-term visions and again the majority of these can occur no matter what future scenario moves

[136:00] forward um the intended time frame for these like I mentioned is about zero to five years and in early 2024 we will come back to council with implementation steps for each of these um and ideally they could um complement any of the scenarios so what I'll do is I'll go through each of these and again there's over 40 of these so I'm not going to read through each one of them here you have all of this information in your packet and they are all listed in the memo I'll highlight a few of them as we go through and all of these all of this information we've received and these suggestions from community members we pull together into five topic areas we have noise health and environmental impact community relations airport economics and safety so we'll go to the next slide please so under the first topic area of Noise We have a suggestion to include South Boulder and Boulder Reservoir and the voluntary noise abatement program we

[137:00] have encouraged voluntary limits on start and end times of flying investigating ways to better report noise explore feasibility of quieter planes next slide please a few highlights from the health and environmental impact near-term oxygen items we have expedite the delivery of unleaded fuel to BDU incentivize the use use of electric aircraft evaluate proximity and impacts to natural features and Wildlife investigate impacts of leaded aviation fuel next slide please under the community relations topic a few highlights are coordinating airport land use planning and compatible land uses commit to ongoing coordination between pilots tenants and Neighbors create or promote community events and programs

[138:01] deliver quarterly noise reports to boards and Council host family-friendly activities at the airport introduce Community programming for underserved communities next slide please for airport economics we have update contract leasing structure and fees to cover cost administer an economic impact study for the airport make airport economic and budgetary data easily accessible next slide please under the safety topic area a few highlights are mitigating known risks or hazards Monitor and enforce compliance with airport minimum standards and FAA compliance standards introduce real-time messaging for Pilots next slide please so like I shared before we've collected all of these from the community we wanted to share that information and

[139:00] moving forward we will be assessing them for feasibility and implementation possibility of next steps and there's clearly a strong desire from the community to determine what can be done in the short term and some highlights that we received about feedback on these from the second open house and the final two Community working group meetings we recognized there was quite a bit of community alignment on phasing outleted fuel there was a desire to review noise payment procedures and consider changes there was a desire to analyze the impacts of Aviation or Community Development on open space and surrounding environment there are varying opinions on the purpose and feasibility of implementing Landing fees there was a desire to review the runways in use and evaluate their compliance with FAA design standards and safe Airfield operations so there are a few areas of agreement and there's been a lot of feedback on this and again we'll be coming back with more feasibility on these next slide please

[140:01] thank you and now I'd like to share the project Maps next steps with you so the next steps we have identified are addressing city council questions and obtaining additional feedback as needed conduct cwg meeting number five in September refine the scenarios and action items including high-level costs and next steps for each scenario produce and share the final report and present the refined scenarios in near-term action items and seek direction from City Council in early 2024. and I'd also like to point out where we are in the engagement process um in our city of Boulder engagement framework we have um right now we've you know identified the options we've shared this Foundation of information and right now we are evaluating the issues so we appreciate your support in this process and where we are right now and we will continue to refine the scenarios and action items based upon feedback from city council the cwg and

[141:01] the recent engagement activities all right next slide please next slide thank you thanks so much recognizing we have limited time with you tonight we've refined our our questions a bit since the memo and we want to focus on understanding what information Council will need to provide staff Direction in 2024. um do you have questions about the community input or the community feedback that informed the scenarios and action items and we would like to understand as we contemplate coming back to Council in early 2024 what additional information is needed to provide staff Direction on next steps and I will end our presentation there uh thank you Allison really appreciate that presentation um before we get to questions I wanted

[142:01] to ask our director of Transportation Natalie Stifler a question on do you have on update do you have any update for us on a recent uh conversation with the FAA that might really help contextualize some more of what we're discussing and bring some more information to Council in the community yes thanks Matt and good evening Council um we were able to have a conversation with FAA staff earlier this week um and just some initial information that I can share from that conversation is that um and we we did share this in the questions that went to on hotline as well um but fa's position is very clear they it remains that the city is obligated to current grant assurances for 20 years from the day of the last accepted Grant and there are additional obligations and perpetuity for grants that were used for land Acquisitions which would encumber the entire airport airport footprint

[143:00] according to them while Grant assurances are in effect FAA must approve a request to use airport property for other than airport purposes including requests to discontinue its current use generally FAA only grants such requests if a closure would protect Advance or benefit the public interest in civil aviation or the airport no longer serves its intended purpose so this was just an initial conversation a lot of this is information that can be gathered by our grant assurances so it's information that's been kind of out there certainly more conversation with fa in the future if that's something desired by Council they've offered to have further conversation with you and with the community if that's desired hopefully that's helpful very helpful as they are a partner and

[144:00] have have a big stake in what we're doing at the airport um so thank you for that Natalie um sorry let's uh let's touch off with some questions for staff I see Bob Rachel and Juni go for it thanks man uh Natalie I want to pick up where use left off and make sure I understand this correctly As I understood it from the memo and from some other materials there's there's actually two types it sounds like there's two types of of restrictions of the FAA poses one is for for infrastructure or I guess non-land things um if we participate which we have in the airport Improvement program the AIP that um there are covenants that we may not close the airport from for 20 years from the last Grant and that's different from um a separate commitment to get FAA permission in perpetuity if if the FAA helped us buy some lands am I understand there's kind of really two different things here the 20-year limitation and

[145:00] the forever limitation that's correct they there's a distinction between what was used to purchase land um versus the airport Improvement Grants for Capital Improvements right so the Capital Improvements the last time we the city received Capital Improvement money from the the um FAA that starts a new 20-year clock ticking was two years ago in 2021 is that right that's correct so under just under that just that half of the of equation the faa's position would be we couldn't close the airport before 20 just on focusing on that not the Land part of it I'll get to that in a second we couldn't close the airport before 2041 is that it was my math right there that's correct okay and then on the land part of it if the if the AFAA helped us purchase some of the land out of the airport that um restriction on the uh that the FAA prohibits closure unless we meet their criteria that goes on forever that's not a 20-year it's a perpetuity thing is that right yes this is where it gets a little bit

[146:02] like we would need additional conversation because the um piece around the land and how that's applied and you know what time frame and all of that um is just requires more analysis and more conversation I understand entirely and so I guess one of the questions was what more information do we want so I add that add that to as the first item on the list is it'd be great to have more information on that from from analysis either by our outside experts or or actually just hear what the FAA has to say do you think it's possible that we could get the FAA to come in and maybe even make a presentation a council at some point in time would that be appropriate yeah I think they would be happy to do that okay that'd be great um my second kind of set of questions were actually my last question is I saw something in uh first of all I want to thank you and your staff Natalie you guys did a fantastic job we peppered you before this meeting with all sorts of questions I mean like dozens of questions that we sent in and you guys did a really great job of kind of bundling all those together and answering our questions so

[147:01] we'll probably have a few hopefully we'll have fewer tonight one of them just really jumped out of me one of your answers I just want to read it out loud because I I guess I'm inviting you to elaborate on this or somebody to elaborate on that it says air traffic would increase over the city of Boulder considerably if BDU the boulder airport was closed the air traffic would increase if the airport was closed the resulting increased traffic over Boulder would be a combination of Jet flights much greater than we see today which is nearly none and an increase in train flights over the city could you elaborate like if we closed the airport why would there be more traffic over the city rather than less traffic I will let John Kinney take that one thanks Natalie good evening Council John Kennedy Airport Manager Bob um the answer to that is airspace is such an incredibly scarce commodity um the airspace above Boulders actually

[148:01] influenced by Dia Buckley Air National Guard given the speeds of those aircraft so folks usually look at the airspace disable the airport's 10 miles away or 15 miles away it is absolutely connected with very few voids in between that airspace so if the boulder airspace suddenly became available because Boulder airport was closed you know it's just my professional opinion I'm not an air traffic controller but I'm a pilot that airspace would be gobbled up immediately to relieve the congestion of what has happened over at Rocky Mountain Airport as they are continuing to be constrained and it could even have a ripple effect where a Centennial Airport would hit traffic airspace would come a little North pushing then the airspace utilization through Rocky Mountain Airport to the north right over the city of Boulder we currently have some Precision approaches over the city of Boulder

[149:01] um for one of the runways into Rocky Mountain Airport and so to think if this air Place became available that we would not see increased traffic I I just think it's almost a guarantee so I think that John that was very helpful so should I think of the airspace above Boulder is kind of a a bit of a box and that we kind of control that box or at least we can exclude um traffic from other municipal or or the DIA airport because we've got all these planes flying in and out and if that stopped then those planes would kind of swoop in but pun intended yeah it's almost like taking your hand out of a bucket of water right I mean it would just immediately close up it's because the airspace from Rocky Mountain or the traffic excuse me from Rocky Mountain Airport would immediately shift over the top of Boulder possibly Longmont coming down but I would think that reserve the majority of the airspace that is up became available at Boulder airport closed that would be consumed completely by Rocky Mountain

[150:01] airports traffic they have pretty aggressive plans to expand at that airport in just about every category okay great uh thanks John that was very helpful that's all I have Matt thanks Bob uh Rachel then Juni thanks um everyone Allison Natalie John good to see you um so you know I think to Natalie's point in Bob's questions follow-up the the constraints listed under a category four which I've been pretty bullish on I would say says FAA may not allow as the number one um and I guess I'm I'm a little bit concerned with us now that you've had this conversation and it would appear that there's like a snowball's chance and you know what that the FAA is going to you know just forfeit the their control over this airport and say you

[151:00] know close it um I I would be reluctant to have a lot more Community engagement and and um people getting wrapped up in this issue if there's not a real viable path so I am wondering um in addition to having conversations with the FAA where I think I can anticipate what that you know with the outcomes what they will say to us what are our next steps planned for FEA may not allow because again I think we spent a lot of money and time and and there are a lot of there's a lot of energy for you know possibility of housing there and if that's not a a realistic or legitimate possibility at this stage how do we vet that and um move forward without wasting people's time like that seems threshold or like a a gatekeeping question right I think this is something that we've discussed internally to

[152:01] um just given the the position that fa shared with us this week I think um you know there there's always two sides to a story and so I think there's an opportunity to hear um what you know another perspective is that would still be a very long difficult expensive um path um so there's there's that piece of information that we can also share with you when we um if we come back to share the the additional information with the F from the FAA um and then you know I just acknowledging we we did make this commitment in the Boulder Valley con plan so I think I I just want to say that that this work was not was for not for nothing right like we did make that commitment we needed to hold true to it before we went down the path of updating our airport master plan um but I think having as we just dig into it and look at options for the you know a vision for the future this was

[153:01] something that we knew we needed to eventually get to and understand um so that's where we're at now well and my question may be more for Teresa and I don't know I mean obviously we can't anticipate future litigation but what what are the steps that we can take to sort of get an answer on this like can we or can't we do this if you know because I again I'm someone who would like to move forward possibly with with option four I also don't want to spend a lot of time and money if it's if without knowing that we can so um I don't know that it makes sense to do things in parallel if there's a potential dead end what are what are what's our path for figuring this out other than a conversation with the FAA which I think we should have but you know if that's a you know no we're not going to be you know amenable to an airport closure it's not going to be a um an easy path what what what are we

[154:00] looking at yeah thanks for that question um certainly I do think the faa's perspective on this is is important in that you know they are the um they're the sort of gatekeeping body and and they regulate we um we also do have expertise in this area from outside Council and um and you know we we of course consult with them and um ultimately I think this is a you know we need to get a lot more information um but I think it may be a decision about how how much what is what is the appetite for litigation um because that I think that that may be you know among the paths forward and uh Lucas Markley from my office who's an assistant City attorney is here um Lucas I would invite you to join the

[155:01] conversation if you have anything additional to add at the airport on their day-to-day matters but it is hard to put a sort of a yes or a no answer on it I know it would be nice to be able to do that but as Teresa was alluding to it is more of an appetite for litigation and maybe getting an understanding of how long it would take and how much would it cost not just an attorney's fees and things like that but you know they're having questions about what how much money are we looking at in terms of paying back um the FAA if it comes if it is approved or we we Outlast our grant obligations so that there is ultimately probably more of a cost benefit and risk analysis situation rather than a yes we can do it and we'll win or no we can't do it and we we can't yeah I understood on that and I guess part of what is um you know

[156:01] maybe maybe we haven't discussed before was sort of the second box that that Bob was talking about which is there there's there's this column that that is that there will be no conclusion to a grant obligation if I'm understanding Natalie and Natalie's point so um that seems like something that you have to have an end point on to carry on with this conversation and and I'm unclear on where to go with it yeah and I think that you know I'll just add that that takes often times that takes litigation in many years and and dollars spent to even get to that answer and so you know we John has a lot of experience working in communities that have tried to go down um a closure a path to closure we've spoken to other communities about um their experience and attempts or where they are now on that path um and no I you know I said no two cases are the same like that's the challenge and trying to kind of take a guess of

[157:00] what this is going to look like um or what it could look like so um I think even to get to that answer around just the the land question and is is that in perpetuity or not do we agree on that like that would be potentially be a litigation um so I'm so sorry I won't be here for this that's all my questions for now thanks are you really sorry Rachel I don't know um we will miss you though nonetheless so we would welcome you being here for that um all right uh next up I see Juni and Mark then Tara thank you thank you very much and I want to start I really think the slides were amazing they were great so also thank you for your presentation I was looking at page 13 and

[158:00] we've received a lot of messages from Community but in reading that particular page it seems that the closure of the airport was not the prevailing theme of most of the communities pulled or surveyed is that correct that's correct yeah yeah that's yeah also I think Bob already asked my question as well but I just wanted to go back and just maybe talk about it a little bit more about the the um airspace and I was looking at page 15 which is scenario number four um where you know which is decommission and create new neighborhoods But ultimately on page 23 if air space in the land are like two

[159:00] separate issues really um and I think it was mentioned earlier that closing the airport doesn't really based on what I'm hearing it doesn't really Abate the noise actually it might even exacerbate it which to me is like wow that's shocking to hear but that's what I heard earlier from from the conversation between Bob and um and Kenny yeah um and also there was a I was looking at the slide where you were talking about the health and environmental impact and I just wanted to note that um I did work on the bill last year which is House Bill 1272 and I think it might be good to follow up with the um Colorado Energy Office to find out more about sustainable uh aviation fuel because um you were talking about established timeline for discontinued use of Let It fuel but I think uh sustainable aviation

[160:02] fuel is also part of that conversation in order to reduce greenhouse gas emission for decarbonization thank you thank you Juni um let's see Mark Ventura yeah my my first question was uh involves these uh allegedly infinite covenants that never expire but is it not true that we have received legal advice to the contrary with respect to those covenants um that they are not um Eternal and in fact many of them have expired so respectfully Council uh mayor Pro tem Wallach um I I'd rather we not discuss confidential legal advice

[161:00] um then I would I would respectfully ask that the community be given the information they need to make an app an actual decision on this and I have asked for the staff to tell us exactly what it would cost us to pay back the FAA with respect to the the grants that we entered into for acquisition of land and it is certainly unfair to represent that there's a state of facts out there that may not be supported legally so if you're not going to release information that the community needs and ask you not to opine on the the Perpetual nature of Grants um and I will also um with respect to this I I don't know if you're familiar with FAA order 51 90.6 B which describes that if an airport is released early from its obligations the Improvement Grants have to be paid

[162:00] back on a pro rata basis the clear implication of this is that there's a process for early closure the fact that the FAA has said you know never no way is highly predictable um and not this positive to me so I I am suggesting to my esteemed corporate Council that you can't simply keep this kind of information from the community and then go on and say but look we can't do this I am suggesting without going into specifics that yes we can um and that we should make that Community decision as to what we think is the appropriate use of that land in light of full information not in light of doctored information I have two other questions and when I'll turn the floor over um am I not correct with respect to dealing with noise we can have all of the programs we want but each one of

[163:02] them is voluntary we have no enforcement capabilities am I incorrect correct okay and with respect to the phasing out of leaded fuel that too is entirely voluntary on the part of uh plane owners and in fact if you read my hotline of a couple of days ago um recently the FAA wrote a letter to the mayor of superior telling him he doesn't have the authority to get rid of leaded fuel am I not correct there as well correct um it would be violation of one of the grand Assurance is not to provide fuel no and I will I be correcting saying we cannot uh make any in the impact on the key environmental issues with respect to the airport we can request we can beg uh the pilots but we we have no capacity to

[164:01] enforce whatever it is we would like to enforce and am I wrong there or correct well I would I would frame it a little bit differently you raise two specific questions one noise and the second the uh unleaded fuel there actually is some incredible opportunities for for the city of Boulder uh to acquire lead and fuel much sooner than I think anyone anticipated uh it requires a separate infrastructure from our existing fuel type system as well as a fuel truck for dispensing directly into aircraft but in direct conversations that I've had with uh our fuel provider they are ready to provide unleaded fuel to Boulder airport if the infrastructure was in place so that would likely take an RFP process to put out to see who would like to we've had about three or four individuals approaches saying they would like to provide this service including

[165:00] our existing FBO uh to the community the this fuel provider here is airserv apps AB fuel excuse me different industry uh app Fuel and you could go to their website they have a tremendous amount of information about what's available but Centennial Airport just started providing this fuel uh they're doing about ten thousand gallons a month the supplier has shared with us that they could provide us about 9 000 gallons every 60 days which is more than we consume now so that's good news that there is an opportunity to make something happen there sooner than later the second component with noise like you just never you never solve as you probably already know uh noise issues at airports it is a Perpetual management issue and you get together with the community and the pilots and this has been a process that a lot of folks described as being paid for for the community as well as the pilots because it is so emotionally charged as

[166:00] nearly framed up for us from the get-go in your most effective tool at any airport I've ever been associated with since for 41 years is get two sides together have them understand one another's perspective we formed a technical noise committee here at the airport and just yesterday they were sharing with me of the 30 recommendations that they're talking about one of those is to not do more than three touch and goes after 5 PM completely voluntary on the Pilot's perspective to try to be good neighbors unless it's absolutely necessary for a particular certification so I I think people are getting very aware of the need to play nice together in the sandbox to understand one another's perspectives we got a long way to go but I think that was a big step and that's just one of 30 of the recommendations that they're proposing so I think there is I think there is more of a optimistic view on some of these things

[167:02] but it's been developing because of this process four months ago I would have agreed with you thank you and my last question goes back to uh the City attorney is it your intention to release some of the key information contained in that independent attorney's analysis are we going to continue to treat this as the Pentagon papers I'm gonna I need to step in Mark I I were um we're approaching on some perhaps inappropriate territory with with um ask your City attorney to divulge confidential legal advice while also then chiding her for not doing it I am we're pushing that a bit and and I'm feeling I I'm feeling uncomfortable that we're broached that territory and and I think that we need to probably end that line of inquiry um that's not a fair accusation to make without prop

[168:01] evidence of our city attorney's office um and so I just I I would like us to to move on to a different line of inquiry but to even a slightly uh insinuate that there's some sort of Nefarious or deliberate act to hide information from the community I think is a very very uh risky move so I just I I just I know this is a this is a I know you care a lot about this issue I just want us to not be pointing our frustration with outcomes on staff if you could please and I appreciate your perspective Matt but there is also non confidential information that I've requested be disclosed I'm not asking for information on legal strategies or anything of the kind but there is information contained therein that I think it's important for people to know and I want to understand and I'm prepared to understand why that information continues to be under relevant as I said in my uh hotline the

[169:01] FAA knows the answer staff knows the answer Council knows the answer the only people who don't know the answer is the community tell me how that's a good result tell me how I was going to ask if I could call it quite for a second Mark but you were done so carry on um I I just don't see that as a productive and appropriate approach to take with respect to the community that's considering not deciding but considering various approaches to this property and and when my colleague Bob's is speaking about um covenants that endure eternally I want to understand if that is in fact the case thank you thank you okay colloquy away

[170:01] um we'll say that I've uh I've been cc'd on a lot of Mark's requests to staff going back um you know I think to your previous city manager or previous Transportation director and um I do empathize with the frustration that that I think Mark has been trying to get some some information daylighted for quite a few years um so and and I think it does tie into my question like where do we go from here if we you know we including the public who are working hard and some are very invested in in moving forward in One Direction or the other that includes again like I think people who want the airport to stay with with like some you know confidence in that and then people who would like to repurpose it would like uh to to move forward with that so just um I don't know what what what can be further disclosed but I think we need to to um get as much information out there into the public realm as we can so that we can as a community move forward on this so I think you know just maybe um gently plus wanting the the what I

[171:01] think is the intent of that like so that we all have the same facts that we're operating from and and I think probably facts are going to be subject to interpretation but um just wanted to add that in thanks so I I'm happy to speak to this a bit which is to say that we are giving you information as we learn it uh our transportation and Mobility director and I collaborated to figure out what from the advice we could tease out that wasn't legal advice but was factual information to share and so you know we're doing our best to share information I'm loath to share litigation strategy in a public sphere and you know I would uh in order to do that Council would need to waive the privilege Council holds the privilege my office does not I do not have the authority to release confidential legal advice you all have the authority to waive that privilege so that that information could

[172:00] be released if we were looking at that I would welcome the opportunity to have a conversation with you about the pros and cons of doing something like that and by the way Teresa I'm not asking for the for the release of litigation strategies or the sort of thing that is generally uh withheld I was simply asking for factual information that we both know is contained in a memorandum um and that I believe the community has a right to know and I've requested that release on several occasions and have never really gotten a response um and it's time to Daylight just the facts not not the strategies not that which would normally be considered confidential just the facts thank you yeah and and I think you know we as I said we will follow up with more information we you know frankly just needed to do a little bit more homework around some of the costs

[173:01] um and and we can share more about just the purchased land and the differentiating piece between um the grants that were used prior to a certain date versus some of the grants used more recently for the construction easement so we can provide some of that just factual information and some follow-up wonderful thanks for that uh response and that in that um clarification appreciate that um and thanks Teresa for for um responding to that um with regards to those constraints and clarifying privilege I think that was very helpful for all of us to hear and the community as a whole about their expectations on information that as much as we are a public and represent them there are certain things that that we need to maintain in order to protect the community as a whole um so I appreciate that um Tara then Nicole okay first of all everything I'm going to ask

[174:00] is an actual question I know sometimes they ask questions just to make a point that's not now so nobody get offended okay I said it thanks for appreciating that Nicole all right question number one um Juni asked a question about the community and you said I think Natalie you said that or could have been Natalie or somebody else yeah the I think it was someone else actually who cares you'll tell me um who is the community exactly that you're referring to do you talking about the uh the working group Community or the giant Community all of Boulder which Community said that they don't want to close the airport oh maybe that was Allison yeah I can answer that one yeah um I believe what Genie was referencing was in the um memo I think you shared I'll look back at the pager reference I think you shared on page 13 is what you were referencing um so that's the engagement that has um occurred thus far

[175:01] um at the open house number two the community working group and the questionnaire number two so a wide range okay okay so how many of those Community were people who supported the airport worked at the airport had Commerce at the airport and were pilots versus how many were just community members percentage-wise do you know it's a good question um we do have some of that information for the questionnaire because we do ask that question we don't have that information at the open house because we don't ask that information at the open house um so so it can be partially answered so then it could have been mostly the year per community that wanted to keep it open as possible it could be possible okay I'm not trying to be a lawyer here no laughing no no it's fine it's it's you know and Community engagement is not not a perfect it's fantastically valid so it's it's so yes that the answer is I don't know um and that's not really something that's fine that's fine okay so the next question is is when you say

[176:00] that Vista Village in San Lazaro communities thought there was noise do you did you go door to door how did you find out that information and how much noise how many people felt it was too noisy it would be good if we could have more details so we know how it affects them yeah absolutely that's a great question we actually had a community engagement meeting at Vista village this past Tuesday night a couple nights ago so we had another touch base and we've had over 40 people attend the three meetings we've had thus far and we have another meeting next week I'd say a large majority of folks have shared that noise is a significant issue for them there some of them some of some of their homes actually have um older windows and they share that their Windows shake from especially from helicopters it sounds like those are um those create the most noise nearby um so it is it is a significant issue that um I'd say of the folks who attended the community meetings a lot of them Express noises and as a major issue

[177:01] okay um next question you know um soaring Skies do you know how many runways they need to operate I believe are they the one quiet user sorry Skies or my misunderstanding what they do or does no one know who they are okay John you're muted I effectively muted myself apologies um Tara I'm not sure who that is is okay that's fair it's one of the many emails of a company that probably Bob Yates knows but I don't even know if he's on stop that's okay we can skip that one could you say the name one more time it sounds like one of the glider yeah sorry in society yes sword Society of Boulder yes I'm sorry the question is how much what do they use exactly one

[178:01] how many runways are there at the airport again was it two or three well historically I'll say before my arrival there was three Landing surfaces and that became problematic so we have them as two separate Landing surfaces but only one can be used at a time okay um okay so moving on from soaring whatever your second name is no what percentage of the users in the airport are from Boulder versus outside Boulder by users I mean Pilots um you know not just Pilots but you know the various different organizations the eagle this Eagle the scouts do you know how many of because we have a lot of airports in the series so I'm just trying to figure out how necessary this report is so what percentage is actually from the city of Boulder we got a lot of letters but I can't I

[179:01] couldn't tell how many of them were from the city of Boulder right you you could tell they were even some outside of Colorado but yes I we don't have that information right now but I think we have the capability to answer that question and provide it to you could be an estimate yeah that's good last question I think I have is actually there's one more so if AAA if the FAA will they ever be able to do do you think in your estimation since noise is our biggest problem I would say um that they will ever help us in this lifetime with noise abatement or do you think they would actually be a partner in noise abatement or do they have no attention to do that you asking my professional opinion yeah I I think the pendulum over the last 20 years has continued to swing towards um land use has not been as disciplined

[180:01] as it could have been and we're continuing to create the conflict uh I'm talking system-wide and I think as legislation it continues more frequently to be proposed I think that it's headed back towards uh local municipalities being able to Institute noise or flight restrictions on airports but I I don't think it's going to happen in the next two years but it's definitely maybe momentum national scale okay all right um so this next question revolves around people saying well they knew they were moving to an airport so I've heard it said that um the replacement propellers are louder than the original ones on the toe planes and that's why people are complaining more that there's more noise at the airport than ever is that actually true I would agree with that okay so the people that might have moved there five

[181:00] let's say six or seven or eight years ago it is it might actually be louder than it was then so they didn't know what they bargained for yeah they had three incidents where the propellers needed to be changed out and um two of those aircraft possibly three of those aircraft uh the availability of those quieter four-bladed prop per cup were not available and so they put on three bladed prop but it is discernably noisier um the glider operators are researching uh the ability to bring in different aircraft because these aircraft are getting older they're safe but they are getting older and that might be uh uh one to two years out where they get some new technology in here but that is not a um an imagination of the noise level being louder the last year it is okay and then my last question is is there for options but is there such an option

[182:02] does this request of mine fit into any of these options I did this earlier for a second question a smaller less loud airport with reduced airport traffic how do we reduce which option is reduce airport traffic so option 4 would virtually eliminate it and go to resiliency in terms of uh helicopters responding to events okay and then what at let's say that we can't we find out we can't do that then which one if you were to do status quo that would be option one which would be basically maintain and make it the best airport you can but firm hold hairspray in place of what it is today okay I just want to say a quick word that is in no way do I think everybody at the airport isn't great I mean I met a lot of great I've been there so much lately and I met a lot of really great people these are just honestly questions that I

[183:01] had and I know a lot of people are trying really hard to to do something about the noise and I want to acknowledge all those people that are trying to do something so these are just questions with no emotion thank you Tara uh I'm Nicole and then if no one else wants a crackle I'll I'll uh I got a couple questions awesome thank you I got a bunch of questions uh sorry so um with regard to you know thinking about the airspace and kind of keeping control of the airspace if we were um if there were a helicopter pad there would that still keep control over the airspace or do we enter into the same same issues there you hear me John I get this yet sorry so are you is the question if we went to scenario four would the helicopters be able to operate into and out of the airspace

[184:01] um basically so what I heard um initially right is that if we went with scenario four we may lose control of the airspace and I was wondering if there were still a helicopter if a helicopter were there would we still lose control of the airspace well very likely the air traffic control tower located at Rocky Mountain Airport would be either controlling uh entity of that airspace so they would just sequence in those helicopters as needed um like they would day to day the Ebbs and flow of volumes okay um so it sounds like we would you're saying that we would still not have control of the airspace even if there were a helicopter there correct I I yes yes it was we controlled and primarily used by Rocky Mountain Airport but if helicopters needed to come to go from Boulder airport that would just be another operation that the

[185:00] tower would handle without difficulty okay and then as far as they were talking about you know there's still be noise potentially it feels like it would be a different type of noise I know in my house if there's a jet from DIA flying over that's a very different type of noise than if it's a small plane that's flying over and I just kind of wanted to be clear about what what type of noise are we talking about would change their under a scenario for well it's very hypothetical right but um guest estimation that I can give to usually will be a combination of training flights and uh jet traffic coming into and out of uh the airport so you know you really have three types of operations two of them Jets and training as we're talking about and then you have the touch and goes which are just the repetitive ones I don't think you'd see the repetitive ones but you would see

[186:01] the two and froms flying over Boulder uh without a doubt [Music] we can't really regulate that under scenarios one through three is that right that's correct out of our control and just up to sort of Goodwill of the folks who are there yeah let's try to build those relationships between on and off airports and yes okay awesome um and then uh just speaking to some of the engagement that's been done um I think Tara Tara touched on this a little bit too it really does seem like it's been about disproportionate in terms of people who are connected to the airport somebody wrote us about doing um uh kind of statistically valid survey of the community to get some feedback is

[187:01] that anything that's an option particularly if we uh as we were talking you know if there were some information that Council were willing to release to the community so that we could provide some education and then just try to get an understanding of of what it is the community is interested in I'll pass that process question nobody Allison I'll start with that and I'll let Natalie add anything um so the way the process was designed is how we we typically design a lot of our planning and visioning processes if they impact a certain area so for example with the East Boulder sub community plan you over sample the folks who are most impacted by a project or the North Broadway reconstruction project so um so this was very in line with that practice of connecting with folks neighbors HOAs who are most impacted by this you know for example with open house number one we sent out 13 000 postcards we didn't send out 108

[188:01] 000 postcards to every resident in the city of Boulder we looked at um you know areas around the city who are most impacted by those flights so that's how the process was designed um you know like I was like I was sharing with Tara that you know Community engagement is is not statistically significant so um and and that is how we design this process in line with how the city of Boulder does it um so it would be really an adjustment in that process but I'll let I'll let Natalie speak to that we're adding I mean I think it really is just if that's the desire of counsel to do something like that that's something we can explore well thank you I appreciate that it's um you know it is I understand that there you know our folks around in the immediate vicinity the people who are using the airport and as we start thinking about something like scenario four the impact becomes much broader than just the people who are living in the immediate vicinity right then it

[189:00] expands to kind of a broader portion of the community including workers students that that sort of thing as well so um anyway so I that is something that I I've I at least I'm interested in can't speak for my seven colleagues who are here um and then I I guess kind of a related question uh what would it take to develop a housing study I mean that it feels like that's sort of a big elephant in the room that some of us would like to have as we're considering um this this question you know that you have about coming back in early 2024 that feels like a big part of what would be of interest and so I'm just wondering is that in the realm of possibility like can we take a straw poll tonight and say you know who wants to move forward with developing a housing study and that maybe that's question for an area I don't know well so Brad Brad is here from pnds his team has um he he said that I could call him out here

[190:00] because his team has been instrumental in helping us with this project um and and they definitely have contemplated what would be the next step from a land use perspective um to explore related to scenario four um and and I'll just say whatever the work item is it would be significant and so I think um having some clarity on the path that we're headed down is really that next step and then we could think about okay what are those other work plan items that would um fall after that because there would be I think it's it's beyond just a housing study in red you can that's where you could take over yeah thank you uh Brad Mueller director of planning and development development services a lot depends of course decisions and discussion after tonight but a very likely tool for

[191:03] taking next steps for land use in this area especially if a variety of land uses were contemplated would be a sub community plan or something like that we wouldn't want to go and do it with any presumptions on the uh types of land use or distribution of land uses that's part of the public process and feedback from a policy standpoint more refined that really comes with something like a sub community plan or or similar but that's that's what we are teed up to do if um if that becomes part of a future Council priorities and part of the overall vision and work plan for this quadrant of the city great thank you um and I think one other thing that that would be helpful uh thinking about coming back in early 2024 is just that that chart with the different scenarios

[192:01] and sort of showing how it ties into some of the city's different goals it'd just be really um I would be interested in kind of having a more objective kind of analysis of that that kind of pulls from maybe the folks in the working group or something like that just thinking about how we're how we're getting to that chart a little bit more clearly because I think that is still um just a little just a little uh confusing if there's some way of getting ratings or something out of that I think it might be helpful at least for my understanding when we come back to this discussion early next year um and then I guess Matt this actually may be a question for you as facilitator um are we going to take a strap hole or anything on like which scenario we're leaning toward or anything like that to provide some clarity for staff um I I think that's perhaps reasonable I mean we can touch it from perhaps two ways um I would certainly maybe ask uh

[193:02] staff's opinion and perhaps also our City attorney on on that front if they feel the need to weigh in on whether we'd be picking one or we should be removing some options for further refinement to consider uh down the road so I'm okay with that if we want to spend the time on it but I'll defer to staff and maybe Teresa if they have input or opinions on that um well I can start and Teresa if you have more to add we we don't need that tonight I mean I think we really wanted to get a sense of additional information at this point that you would be needed we we really do need that at the beginning of 2024 because there's just work that needs to be done as Nuria said out at the airport um and we kind of need to know which direction we're headed so um that's not necessary tonight certainly if you have just opinions you want to share feel free to do that but Theresa do you have more to add on that okay cool thank you

[194:00] because your questions are you still rolling no it's done almost done um I one so one of the things that I am wondering about um I know that accepting more funds from the FAA is kind of lengthening the the period of time um that we don't maybe have a lot of control um and I'm what I'm wondering is um can we kind of decide as a group that while we're in this space we're not going to commit to taking any new funds just because we're sort of we're in a place where we're we got a lot of questions but still need answered so well I can say From staff's perspective we haven't accepted um an additional Grant since 2021 as I think we mentioned earlier um and we do that that is why there's some urgency to getting in some direction because next year we we need to and we recognize we wanted to honor this process and so accepting grants during the process didn't seem like the right thing to do but but we do need to

[195:01] do that um start doing that next year so that's why we're looking for Direction okay cool thank you so it sounds like then um we won't kind of go in a step of taking more funds until we would have a council conversation about it it's all right John is there anything to clarify there so early in the conversation the date was thrown out for 2021 was the last time that we accepted a federal ground I actually found just yesterday a document that shows uh in early 22 a covid grant was accepted uh so actually it was 19 years left on the 20-year amortization schedule that you you know just a reminder um we're under current Grant obligations to maintain this airport it's rough out here really rough and I I don't know if this is over out of my bounds but I I

[196:01] would really encourage the council to continue to accept the grants that have a sunset clause on them use or lose uh because there's quite a bit of money in the pipeline right now that's been in limbo um including some leases the reason is that we could not bring to you requests for longer term leases because we did not know what our Capital plan was going to be what the feds were going to offer but the state was going to offer and what the true condition of this facility is now that we have that Quantified we were very interested in implementing a uh Capital plan for next year that really included taking care of the roadway systems and the ramps and the Pavements because it is it is in terrible shape out here so um if you're asking a staff perspective I I would encourage you to take the grants it only adds one year but obviously you set policy uh staff does not and can I calculate on that

[197:00] from the 2022 Grant perspective for 20 I can't remember it was 21 or 22 but there were some 22 well I can't remember which one but I think uh councilmember Wallach and I dug into something that was in the the general budget that was coming from um I think some covered era stimulus money and it at least my memory of it is you know we have an obligation to keep up those runways and things and like there can be liability if we're not keeping up the the runways to the degree and standards that they need to be so I would not be comfortable saying we're not taking a dollar while we're working through this portion of it because I don't want to create an unsafe situation at the airport because they're waiting on Council approval like I think that um we're not extending it very far and I don't I don't I don't personally have like the expertise in airport and I was I was educated at that time that I pushed back like there's there's really good reasons that even during this time um you know you're not extending it by

[198:01] 20 more years you're just extending it by like another 8 12 18 months kind of thing so I think there are strong legal liability reasons to to um to keep up what we are obligated to keep serving for 20 years um just along those lines like one of the things that I'm hearing as well from community members is that one of the runways is non-compliant um and I was just wondering if this one of the one of the things that um is on the radar for being addressed or you know is this anything kind of the fa is overseeing yeah it's it's somewhat of a complicated answer in that when you accept federal grants you are committing to design those areas of the airport to all the standards of the FAA uh historically Boulder has done so on the main Runway Runway 826. just as gliders has evolved over periods

[199:02] of time they decided you know we could operate off the main Runway and let the higher speed aircraft do their things with landing and takeoffs and we could start Landing in the grass area over here and I'm talking this is probably 30 years ago it might even be longer period of time so the FAA allowed that to take place they have not so much approved the design of that air of that grass strip because it does not meet any FAA design standards but they've approved it to take place uh and since that time we've put together some operational procedures we're gaining momentum with that there was a part 13 complaint regarding that it just came out today uh favorable for the city of the airport sponsor has the ability to create operational procedures so we'll consider consider continue to work with the users to address some of

[200:00] these issues and most people are getting on board with them they're not his owner onerous as I think people saw but there's still some work to be done but that's kind of a detailed answer but there's a lot of variables in play there but there are some issues to to address over there to to up the game of safety From staff's perspective thank you Rachel nice to see your hat thanks Nicole I see your hand up I don't know if that was a reminder from a colloquy or if you've got something else it was thanks all right um so a lot of good questions have been asked um we'll get to comments here in just a quick second um the only question I have and um I'm gonna apologize Bob may have asked this but I was writing down info on his question before that so if you did stop me Bob um it's really a question perhaps for uh John or Natalie with his with regards to um you know what criteria does the FAA use um to determine uh if it will support an

[201:02] airport closure John I have that handy if you want me to kind of read it but if you have it memorized you probably do and you can speak to that it's two things the uh the FAA First one of the first steps is you need to prove to the Secretary of Transportation that civil aviation will benefit from the closure of your Airport and the challenge is what do you do with 200 base aircraft and the 333 aircraft waiting to come to Boulder airport if that argument could be or that case can be made and the Secretary of Transportation agrees that wow this is great there's benefit to civil aviation as a system then conversations would continue

[202:01] and so along those lines is there any indication that from FAA that closing Boulder Municipal would would benefit civil aviation I think I think that would have to be a submission of all the facts and all the variables in play that question was was asked to the FAA and they came back and said it's not that simple you would need to frame it up with all the variables in place so it is definitely a process sure it's a fair assumption the answer might be no to that um given what we know about the airport and its impact um and then sort of along those lines um and was there and then there's their other criteria you know I um if you get through step one and step two and step three and as Natalie eloquently put in that question and answer every airport is completely different so everyone always says Santa Monica Airport well Santa Monica Airport was transfer of land from another Federal agency so

[203:02] it's a different set of circumstances and it truly um I guess I can't answer that question because I I've not been through past step one with the FAA no no worries no and I'm glad you mentioned Santa Monica Airport that's actually where I learned to fly that was my home uh airport and the airport my father learned to fly as well so I know that place well I know their story um they are the most uh the highest traffic municipal airport in the country I think they still are um and well so and the reason I asked that is um it's from what I've known and actually I've actually reached out to a few airports I've flown into over the years and I still know folks there where there's actually been this conversation and and I've sort of asked them you know with regards to that context and Mark pointed out the sort of like oh there's a path to closure and and there certainly is and they always said that it was always within the context that that path was there should you be meeting those criteria that that triggers then a legal path and we might

[204:00] be getting into illegal stuff and I don't want to but but it seems like all of that is contained and I guess I'm asking is within the purview of of really we all the FAA release you from their clutches um is really the question and so I I if if you can answer that fine but that's sort of why I ask the question because that seems to be where where I've sensed things are that that's the linchpin here is what the FAA uh wants to allow and and everything else comes from that I'll just say I think that's true when your Grant assurances are in play what you just described awesome thank you Natalie um I see we're ready to move to uh some comments um I I and I think we're sort of moving we're moving in a good direction we're still going real along in the teeth here on timing but it's a helpful discussion for ourselves and Community um so let's jump into comments let's mark you've got another question actually just just two quick questions I I um do you know how Reed Hillman uh

[205:02] Justified its closure in terms of um enhancing uh you know uh the growth of uh whatever that standard is uh uh Aviation okay so so from what I understand in an initial conversation with them is and this is this is just very fresh information that I received this week so um they haven't actually had that com that conversation around um do you accept our our request for closure um because they're actually pursuing just running out the clock on their grants so um and that's why I was making that clarifying point that Matt was making is that the criteria to go and ask them for you know would they be open to this does it benefit Aviation or is it no longer serving the purpose

[206:00] um that is when your Grant insurance is certain play from what I understand and John can certainly weigh in here too is that and read hillview's case their not taking that approach they're not going and asking for do you accept our request for closure they're instead just running down the clock on their on their Grant assurances um and they've been doing that for a long time they have until 2031 they have 2031 is when they're done and they're just in a different situation because they didn't use grants to purchase land um so it's not a you know Apples to Apples well we're coming back to the questions they raised earlier which is why I'd like to get answers to those my other question is for John um do you have a sense of what the capital expenditure would be required in order to maintain the runways and could that expenditure be financed by increases in

[207:01] fees for the users of the airport as opposed to taking grants if if history is any indicator for us we've accepted approximately 12 million dollars in the last 20 years to maintain the airport um we probably should have used about another 3 million to to get it up to what I consider standards so say 15 million dollars so if you needed 15 million dollars during that period of time you would require over six hundred thousand dollars a year to of additional revenues if the airport's total revenues which they are approximately eight hundred thousand dollars a year it's almost a doubling what makes that challenging is the majority of your uh revenues uh come from leases that have durations to them they're fixed until 2028 so you don't really have the ability to

[208:01] capture that market to help close that gap which supports more of a smaller population at the tip of the sphere of raising fees to meet that Gap so either we do additional developments to bring in additional revenues or um receive general fund subsidies to to address that Gap but is there some combination of increased fees and capital expenditures by the city to avoid taking further grants I think that's I think that's Financial like some of that financial analysis that we've said we could look at at a high level to bring back as additional information okay and I'm just throwing that out as an analysis I'd like to see thank you Now Matt on to your question on to your comments well the answer is my comments I'm going to turn that back to um to my colleagues um you guys have some comments and keeping in mind we've pretty much answered the first question which was

[209:00] you know questions about Community input Community feedback informing scenarios we those are those have been asked um and Natalie I just want to check before we get into comments do you feel good about what you've gotten with regards to question one as well and yeah I think yeah that's where I was gonna go I think we've already kind of gotten most of the way to question two um if not all the way what I want to sort of pose and and you know I appreciate Nicole for bringing this up we have four scenarios in front of us and um there's been sort of information shared and and it's and in many ways we've had information shared and re-shared and then reaffirmed um and so the question is are are is that is there some information that's sufficient for you know a majority of us to start to maybe trim these down and I don't know which they are I'm just asking that that is a question because again if there's fewer options for staff to continue to work on we always we we totally understand the benefits that that creates so um if your comments can

[210:01] frame that as well awesome but I see Aaron uh um uh with his hand up so go for it yeah man I mean if you don't mind I just I heard from Natalie earlier that that you know they're not looking for like necessarily narrowing them if that's what they're coming back in January I'm just a little worried with the lateness of the hour that if we get deep into analysis of this scenario we'll tackle on another 45 minutes or something I concerned yeah now a fair fair point of timing uh uh I I see Bob is that on is that on this sort of point that Aaron brought up it is I agree with Aaron I um I'm not prepared we were not asked to and I'm not prepared to start voting on or eliminating scenarios I think all staff asked us is do you what more information do you need for us to come back with with a decision Point early next year and so I think that's when we was on Council early next year um starts to weigh in on the scenarios maybe eliminating them I think it'd be unfair to staff and to council to ask us to straw pull or eliminate scenarios or

[211:02] weigh in on a scenario or whatever that's not what was asked of us and I don't think most of us are prepared to do that tonight I am but that that's okay that's just me um all right nonetheless um I see uh comments uh so have at comments and we'll be brief and we'll uh release John Allison and Natalie and move on to our third thing and I still gotta text Lauren to let her know to come back Nicole awesome thank you um thanks staff for this this discussion as well I know it's been a long one um I would like I would really like to advocate for us to do some education of the community to think about what what information can we give to the community that is more than we're giving now but still within the realm of kind of legal possibility that feels really important for us to have that discussion because this in my mind is really a broader Community issue so I would love for us

[212:00] to figure out what are the what's the information we can give the community about these different options about pros and cons that may be associated with each one and what what are we willing to waive in order to be more transparent with the community and and let them engage better along those lines I really would love to do some engagement with the broader Community I think doing if we've been able to to educate a little bit doing a broader statistically valid survey of the whole community Community would be a really wonderful way to get some kind of quick information relatively quick as quick as we move anyway on what the community is thinking I really like the idea of a financial analysis that mayor Pro tem walek mentioned I think that would be a good idea and I kind of also Keen prepared already having a leaning and um for for me I'm very intrigued by scenario four so just out there thank you

[213:01] thank you Nicole uh Rachel you're up thanks um and thanks for the discussion it's it's been a long time coming so I'm grateful for it I guess where I'm at which is a little different than where I thought I would be tonight is I I'm not sure exactly how much we spent on engagement but I heard a figure and it was um not an insignificant amount um I would I would not do much more in terms of Engagement until we know what is feasible so I I don't I am zero surprised if the FAA says no like we're done here I don't think that's the final answer though and so I I need us to go to what is the stage after that before we spend money on housing you know what does the community want because if we get the community all hopped up I'm like oh my God we're going to get this great housing at the airport and we can't get there I think that has wasted a lot of time and money and I'm not uh and a lot of Staff energy so I'm worried about the community members who are you know excited or on the other

[214:01] side like scared of what might happen and and I think we know now that there is interest in this so let's let's do the next phase of Is it feasible so if that's I think I'm I'm hearing you know possibly that's litigation Rose I would want to know you know again I'm not gonna be here but that like somebody should know what is the uh uh you know case law and precedent on X Y and Z scenarios and and I assume that that the city council will figure out the next one what are viable paths and and that there will be a way to communicate to the community like this is or is not viable and and you know if if that ends up being the scenario I'm sure then in the master plan process we're looking at well how the heck do we mitigate for noise and lead and some of the other things that we've talked about so um you know that we get at some of the other issues if we if it is not feasible to decommission the airport I don't know if it is or is not but I don't uh I'm

[215:01] I'm very interested in scenario four if it's viable I don't know that it is so I don't know why we would continue going down that path until we have some clarity on whether that path is open at all does that make sense Natalie I guess and Teresa probably are the two most relevant for my and you know we're all a little bit speaking coded but I think that's the best we can do here so I think we need our answers yeah I think just you know what I understand is we'll try to as we've kind of said tonight we'll try to bring back just a little bit more information to be able to help Council make that decision in early 2024 about some direction that they want us to continue down um because yeah go ahead you go no go ahead I would also just put out one more little caveat wrinkle of I don't know if early 2024 is actually the best time for that conversation because you're going to have a brand new Council who's going to have to get up to speed on legal

[216:00] memos and backstories and understanding and we'll have just gone through a whole lot of community engagement probably on this during the campaign it might be like we're delivering that for the community and if you cannot deliver it and it's going to maybe take a little while I'm looking more at Teresa for that like there you may want more of like in April 2024 Council rather than in January so I just put that out there I think that um if it you know it's this is gonna be a 20-year process I don't think waiting a couple extra months to really give people time to breathe and Center and see what the options are so anyhow I didn't mean to cut you off there Natalie I was just an extra wrinkle no that's okay I was just mostly trying to clarify that there's like a certain Threshold at which like we can bring back additional information and then it gets so significant that it really requires just you know a work effort that that is kind of focused on a certain path if that makes sense yeah and I would think the next council is gonna you know they're probably already have a work plan in place before you get to this uh I don't

[217:00] know what that does but anyhow good luck thank you thanks Rachel uh Mark Bob then Aaron yeah first Rachel please please stop smiling whenever you you mentioned you're not going to be on Council in a couple of months it's really dispiriting to me um I agree with uh a lot of what Nicole said I think we really do need to at some point reach out to a broader Community that's that's not engaged I I know there are neighbors that are very engaged there are pilots that are very engaged but there is a broad broad Community out there and and I don't think there's anything wrong with with trying to bring them into the conversation because this is uh possibly the most consequential land use decision we will make over the next 20 years and we we ought to have input from other members of the community um and I agree with Rachel

[218:01] comments about you know let's explore the feasibility of option four before hurtling too far down the path but I would suggest that we can certainly afford to retain uh specialized counsel their Aviation Council and councils in in Washington DC I'm sure there were councils used by Reed Hillman airport and and their uh process who can sit with us and this would be litigation strategy perhaps and clearly not disclosable but who can advise us as to the possibilities um I have no um I am sure that the the odds of the FAA looking at us and saying that's a great idea to put housing there you know go forth and prosper is is approximately zero okay so it's not going to happen they're going to take a position of opposition and the issue is what is our

[219:01] position and how do we uh proceed if that's how we wish to proceed but it would be very helpful to engage some of that specialized expertise to tell us you know uh you know you are you haven't got a prayer and which mitigates you know the the option four or says look here's the strategy and this could succeed if you do X Y and Z we need to know that and um you know I think that's beyond our capabilities here uh and and I would really urge us to reach out and get that kind of expertise to answer the questions that Rachel has raised um is it a pipe dream is it possible um not simply to take an answer from take a response from the FAA that says no uh and and leave it there uh unchallenged unless there's nothing

[220:02] further to be done but I want to hear that from somebody else not from us um not from members of this Council because we just don't know so that would be my suggestion as we go into the next Council and go into the next year let's clarify where we are and not presume where we are and I may be wrong somebody else may be wrong but let's find out and and make decisions based on uh knowledge not supposition thanks thanks Mark Bob Aaron yeah I'm going to agree with with um both um both uh Rachel and and Mark let's um go find out let's get some extra device and let's find out I I think I'm doing much more Community engagement on on this or at least on this on scenario four it doesn't make a lot of sense because we

[221:00] um we could get we could survey people and get their expectations up and then say oh yeah well then we found out we can't really do what we just asked you whether you want us to do it'd be kind of like surveying people on whether we should go out and build a 280 million dollar Broadband Network and and service and ISP we just made the decision not to we could ask the community I'm going to guess can we probably say sure that sounds great but we um thanks to our staff we're armed with information to uh advise us that that was just virtually impossible from a financial standpoint and so we made the decision we didn't go out and Survey the community we just made the decision that we can't do that at least at night at this time and so I think unfortunately with the airport question we don't have that information as Mark said and so let's get that information to the best of our ability you know I'm a lawyer lawyers will always tell you that the answer depends and on the one hand the other hand versus a gray area and that kind of stuff but let's get the best information advice as we can and if our lawyers are telling us it's highly highly improbable that we could close the airport or close the airport anytime soon then this

[222:01] Council can take that information and make a determination just as we did did two hours ago with respect to broadband conversely if they say no you got a really great shot at it you might have to wait 19 years you got a great shot at it um okay that that then we might want to do a little Community engagement we then might want Brad's team to do a little investigation as to what the airport could be 19 years from now if we pay our own Freight I guess for the next 19 years um and so let's find out and uh before we start asking questions of the community that will set expectations that may be a wrong place thanks Aaron yeah I'm just gonna echo my colleagues quickly um and beneath for more information right so appreciate all the work that you all have done so far and we just need to figure out better the chances of the weather decommissioning is possible and if so what the cost might be and if there would be litigation involved in what the you know pros and cons and the

[223:01] risks and the possibilities are um so because I think we we owe it to uh the the community to kind of figure out the the feasibility of a different future for the airport and either keep it on the table or take it off depending on the feasibility level so um anyway so I look forward to you all coming back next year uh with that information I wanted to Echo what Rachel said though um January might be a little tough for the people who've just gotten sworn in to to make a decision a month later about the permanent future of the airport so I I understand the time sensitivity of needing to to zero in on a future course that we can start taking whatever that course is um but I you might want to give it a couple more months for a council and also you might help in terms of gathering more information thanks um thanks Aaron um uh just want to check in are there any comments from Tara or Juni uh before I sort of offer uh my comments and then

[224:01] we try to finish this up no further comments at this time thank you yeah everything was said that needed to be said my opinion thank you um yeah I'll I'll uh close up by saying I think yeah I mean I think we have a singular next step and that is talking to the FAA uh and getting more clarity although I do have the I I'm getting the Sensation that we're we're kind of acting like uh five-year-olds trying to get into a bar and the bar keeps saying no no you can't get in and we keep saying well what about soda no no did you did you hear me I said you can't get in and then we keep asking the question we already know the answer to so I'm a little worried that we're just sort of stuck in a Time Loop and there's a glitch in The Matrix um so I'm okay with that but it does mean we should stop engagement and and hold off until we just get that answer and then let that dictate and I'll agree with Aaron and Rachel the 20 or early 2024 is um I think an unfair

[225:00] um uh decision to place on a very new Council which will only have maybe three business meetings under their belt um and so I I think we would um definitely want to push that back but not hold up up the ability for John and Natalie and the team to start to figure out what they need to keep the airport safe and what those core maintenance issues are I think that's very critical we wouldn't ask them to do that with streets or Bridges just hold work till we figure out what to do no we'd want to keep them up because that's a safety thing so um I think we should focus in that direction um just as we close it up um Natalie um you got everything you need and probably a whole lot more awesome I see you're smiling and nothing um great well um Natalie Allison um John thank you so much for presenting being patient and and doing your work engaging with community on this issue and hopefully we'll come back um at some point after January and we'll try to maybe get to a place where we can

[226:01] finish this off appreciate it thank you guys okay thank you thank you all right um lastly not that we're short on big stuff tonight um so I'm gonna turn it back to our city manager Nuria Rivera vandermeid to lead into our third and final subject and if Lauren is listening I'd encourage her to tune back in otherwise she's going to get a text but nonetheless go for it Maria but I think actually uh council member folkerch was good there she is hello council member were you going to kick us off in that conversation or shall I go straight to Taylor oh yes thank you yep um so I wanted to thank Nicole for bringing up this important topic for discussion tonight and start off with a brief history at why we're looking at minimum wage at the municipal and Regional level and the origins of this

[227:00] effort so as you know 2019 the state legislature passed the bill that gave us local governments the right to set our own minimum wage and later that year the Boulder County Consortium of cities began discussions on that topic covid-19 interrupted those efforts and since then we've seen sharp increases in inflation interest rates and cost of living in general while these impacts were partially covered by federal increases in assistance as those programs sub Sunset the gaps between wages and costs of living is becoming much more challenging to overcome and an increasing number of community members are failing to fill those gaps everywhere we look our food banks financial assistance programs eviction numbers all tell the same story of rapidly increasing challenges to make ends meet in our

[228:02] community the minimum wage working group formed in 2022 to look at this issue collectively because we recognize that we are not isolated changing the minimum wage in any Community changes our regional economy many people live in different communities from where they work businesses non-profits and other organizations operate in multiple communities and for these reasons and others we believe a regional approach to considering a minimum wage is best for understanding and meeting the needs of our interdependent economies while also providing consistency for both employees and employers coordinating with a number of independent local government entities has been challenging and the progress forward has been slow but we are making progress Longmont Louisville Lafayette and Erie have all chosen to join with us with an eye towards implementing implementing

[229:00] a minimum wage increase January 1st 2025. as you all know by now Boulder County has also decided to move forward with their own engagement and Outreach with an eye towards implementation January 1st 2024. before we jump into discussing which path we would like to pursue Taylor is going to share some information about the work that's going on at the regional level and things to consider as we weigh implementing a minimum wage at the end of this year thank you thanks so much Lauren good evening Council Taylor Ryman assistant to city council I know it's late I've my comments are about eight minutes long so if you bear with me we can we can dive in shortly but I wanted to just bring folks to sort of the current update of all of this work since conversation that the Consortium started the city of

[230:00] Boulder has played a primary leadership role in the formation and advancement of working group efforts our approach has been very collaborative it's taken time to build trust and confidence and that time has created a thoughtful process that has brought many partners to the table since the beginning the primary goal has been advancing the work regionally and a benefit of this approach is that other communities with less resources can join when they might not have otherwise had the capacity to take this on alone Boulder County recently made the decision to seek implementation of a 15 rate raise in the minimum wage by 2024 one year sooner than what the working group was planning for our decisions when things started from forming last year through the Consortium and the decision at the May 25th Boulder council meeting and our decision tonight have all been driven by capacity realities and the desire for and feasibility of a collaborative approach to minimum wage as Council considers the decision decision to join Boulder County

[231:01] in a quicker timeline I'd like to make you aware of how this could impact ongoing work and the resulting trade-offs in our ability to collaborate more broadly a few months ago in may we presented the working group's proposal to this Council and at that time your direction was to engage the working group in scoping Community engagement models and an economic analysis since that conversation those scoping teams have formed and started meeting and in the meantime Lauren and I have had a bit of a Road Show going around to different councils presenting in Longmont Lewisville Lafayette Yuri all five of them including this one so making five altogether have chosen to join the working group and feedback has remained consistent councils have questions about benefits cliff and what the prevailing wages or in other words what businesses are actually paying the possibility of business migration how various Industries and business sizes would be impacted differently and other questions about our regional economic context these are good questions and we intend

[232:00] to answer them in planned engagement and economic analysis but since that work has not yet been done at this time answers to these questions would be based on speculation informed by limited local data studies in other cities and general schools of thought oh we could embark on a short engagement timeline to advance 2024 implementation our ability to be robust in that engagement would be limited this would not be our sort of um standard level of Engagement it would really need to focus more so on meeting the engagement requirements mandated by the legislation in other words tonight Council would need to be comfortable making a decision knowing that we will likely not have answers to these more specific questions about Boulder's local markets and economy going back to the ongoing work of scoping teams the engagement scoping team and economic analysis scoping team include representatives from the four communities as well as ex-officio members from Chambers of Commerce the self-sufficiency wage Coalition and

[233:01] non-profits so these two teams include about seven or eight members each and to give you an idea of the questions and collaborative process we're working through the economic analysis team is currently outlining discrete research questions and a geographical scope for set analysis and we know that identifying funding for the unplanned work will take some time so we're using an RFI process to understand the general cost for this type of analysis longmont's been very kind to Resource the solicitation for both the RFI and the RFP an initial draft of the scope of work would be released through the RFI process which is intended to identify the later budget needs for the RFP this waste staff can work through identifying funding while also scoping teams are meeting to simultaneously flesh out the scope of work enabling us to post the RFP as soon as we're ready to implement on the engagement side of it things uh that scoping team is working to understand the general engagement

[234:00] practices in each of our cities so that any engagement model created can be implemented respectively and generate comparable data and we're also being thoughtful about how engagement questions are worded to ensure responses address the questions we've received from our councils as I mentioned the city of Boulder has played played a key role in leading these teams and defining the processes when Boulder County chose to depart for a quicker timeline their staff had to step back from the working group so they could conserve capacity to address a much faster timeline and while we continue to update the county on working group efforts they they don't play a role they're not participants in scoping teams it's likely that if Boulder chose to move forward on a quicker timeline we would have to also step back from the working group in a similar way we would need to pause our work with the engagement scoping team at the very least because the current timeline between engagement scoping and for in the regional context and then engagement scoping in this compressed timeline

[235:00] would shake out such that we'd be engaging on implementations for minimum wage in 2024 and 2025 at the same time but from different groups of different cities and so between the likely confusing nature of this simultaneous work and staff capacity our collaboration with the working group engagement team would need to be paused I've received several questions about the ability for Boulder to lean on Boulder County's engagement plans to help alleviate capacity burdens and minimum wage ordinance passed by the county would only apply to unincorporated areas and would not impact the Incorporated cities and towns like like ours and it would also not impact hourly employees of the County government and the county is not sure exactly how many employees and employers that their ordinance would impact but we do know that the city of Boulder has 8 400 employers of which 90 percent have fewer than 20 employees and 97 have fewer than 50 employees um it's likely that the County's number

[236:00] would be much smaller than this so that and based on our initial review of the plans that the county has we do not believe their approach would fit our engagement needs and so we'd need to Source the bulk of the work ourselves moreover joining the county might undermine our regional effort as a whole if the city of Boulder departs from 2025 commitments it's made to other cities and local groups for the other four cities in the working group consistent feedback from staff and Council has made it clear that their ability and willingness to participate has been really driven by the opportunity to share the work and undergoing an economic evaluation to inform decision making it's unlikely that those other councils would move forward with a decision without that study and without a strong partner and Champion like the city of Boulder um it's uncertain if the regional efforts and those other communities will carry forward with this work at all moving forward on a compressed timeline with an initial increase still leaves an

[237:01] outstanding question of a more defined Target wage and escalation schedule this pathway will of course require two decisions that being the first 15 raise and then the larger more defined Target and escalation schedule this will duplicate much of the work needed it could lose the support and collaboration we've gained from other cities thus far and additionally additionally with Boulder and Boulder County moving forward on a quicker timeline and assuming collaboration is maintained with the other cities with a later implementation it would take a few years for the wages between those two groups to align with each other so that we can continue on a path forward to a new Target in other words our cities would have different wages for a few years before things really sync up we defer to Council on next steps right now we are continuing to pursue the regional Partnerships as directed by this Council and because preference for a regional approach has has really been the one truly consistent piece of feedback across all conversations we're counseled

[238:02] to decide to change course we would as mentioned need to pull back from the existing Regional collaborations and focus solely on meeting the minimum requirements on engagement in the statute and deeper epic economic analysis would not be possible within this time frame that that wraps up my comments there's a few other folks on the call that have been supporting this work over the last year and so we're all here to respond to your questions thank you so much Taylor um and and Lauren for your extensive work on this and um really showing how Boulder can lead in this sphere and I think that's just really critical so thank you guys for not just doing the work to represent Boulder but lifting up the work for certainly the Consortium and and all that that's a lot of work so thank you guys and the rest of staff for doing it um it's important we're work so really

[239:00] really awesome stuff thank you guys um we'll go ahead and let Rachel and then Juni uh ask some questions thanks thanks Taylor thanks for staying up late with us um just two questions um you mentioned this but just wanted to clarify it are any other of the cities that we're working with looking at fast tracking and getting this done by January 2024 to your knowledge no the Boulder's the only Community looking at this right now and it's understood in the community that sort of Boulder might have be the only city with enough support to possibly do a faster implementation so um I checked in with other communities I checked in with three of the four city managers they're not speaking for their councils in any way but just reflecting on the feedback that we've had during their Council presentations it's unlikely like I said that those councils would move forward with something faster absent the analysis piece and you think that's true the fourth city that you didn't get a chance to check in with too that seem likely I mean any it's a guess

[240:04] based on the feedback yeah um and then second I understand that you and maybe others in the city would have to pull back from the collaborative work what would be the if any other impacts on our work plan like if we decide to Fast Track This what does that look like for staff and for councils work over the next two months so I understand that um engagement has already made clear that they could make this work again it wouldn't be our sort of platinum level of Engagement that we always try to do but it could be done um and Theresa I'm not sure if you wanted to speak to the the other burden that it's going to really hit is Cao yes you know if it's the will of council that we move forward at this time we will rearrange priorities and make it work it is um it is certainly not something that we had scheduled on our work plan for this year it is something that that we

[241:01] anticipated having quite quite a lot more time for and you know frankly um there are there is only one other ordinance out there the law is pretty prescriptive um and so you know we just we just don't know quite what a heavy lift it's going to be to draft an ordinance okay the other thing I'd say on that too is this will require of course a second decision um chunk next year on The more defined Target and escalation and so um it would be really unfortunate to get this decision out of the way and for some reason um that worked not to be carried on and picked up next year um so probably in terms of Shifting work plans I imagine next year this this would need to be a priority okay and in terms of council impact what are we looking at public hearing what like what is the we haven't talked about this happening this year so I'm just trying to understand what we're looking at because

[242:00] there's such a very little amount of time left for this Council and I assume to be done for a January first implementation I don't know when we have to have our vote and such but the really what drives the timeline is the need to give businesses notice of any sort of change so you'd want to probably not do things in the last meeting of the council term um October November probably at the latest um probably a couple of public hearings would be involved in that so that we would have the ability to communicate the decision out to the community Taylor if if I um just ask for more elaboration right like the the statute doesn't really require a whole lot it just says You must confer with stakeholders so likely some kind of public hearing um which would have to do a first reading a second reading kind of thing and if it is this Council body that would like to do that then we would have to get that um before the council term so we would have

[243:01] to do that before probably Thanksgiving and then there's a lot of holiday time okay thanks thanks Rachel um I see Juni and Nicole Judy and Nicole go for it thank you representation oh my God you're amazing like eight minutes without any slides that was pretty awesome um you mentioned joining the county would undermine or Regional approach that's what I hear um and if that's not what you meant to say please clarify for me um but the county is only 15 percent so I just don't understand why it is not seen by through your research and even maybe um Lauren Kennedy why is it not seen as a

[244:01] stepping stone whereas we can do the county and then move forward uh with our own plan so maybe that could also be a question for or on a City attorney but I just to me in my head it feels like a stepping stone 15 and then continue on to where we need to get to thanks for the question Juni uh so what I meant by undermining the regional approach is that the city of Boulder in playing the leadership role that we have with this process would need to step back from the regional working group and I'm I'm not um sure that there would be any community that would have the resources to step up and really lead that work and make sure that all of the the organizations are being coordinated um and there's the sort of the confusion with engagement happening on sort of a similar thing but with different outcomes intended uh so that that work would need to be paused and it has taken uh over a year to get everybody at the

[245:02] table on these scoping teams and so just the the feasibility of that being able to pick right be picked right back up in January 24 um who knows what happens in the next few months fire flood pandemics and things like that of course we're making sort of a lot of speculation here um but the the benefit of joining this and really what's made people come to the table is sharing the work and doing the study and so if we were to move forward with something faster um I'm I'm not entirely sure that those two pieces of collaboration would be enough glue to stick every keep everything stuck together thank you for that I do have a follow-up if that's okay um my understanding as of today the county has not had its first public hearing concerning this issue is that I understand they haven't formally launched engagement yet we've seen a draft survey that I know you've responded to and given feedback on

[246:03] thank you for that that's all my questions for now thank you thank you Juni uh Nicole then Tara then Mark thank you um and first of all Lauren and Taylor I just want to say thank you this has been so much work over so much time um getting everybody wrangled and together and I just want to acknowledge that and appreciate it um one of the questions I had is you know if we think about the workforce in the city of Boulder we think about the workforce in unincorporated Boulder County what percentage of the workforce in the entire County are we talking about with those two involved so I asked this question earlier today to the county just to see how many employees and employers they have they couldn't didn't have estimates at this time I mean we can assume a much smaller fraction than a lot of other cities most

[247:01] of the workforce centers are in the Incorporated parts of the county um so so we're talking pretty pretty small compared to us oh no I'm sorry um so if you think about the entire County Incorporated and unincorporated like Boulder County rights so Boulder Lafayette Louisville all the places together plus the unincorporated we've got a pool of workers and I guess what I'm wondering is what percentage of those workers are we talking about if we have unincorporated Boulder County and the city of Boulder in that mix thanks for clarifying I think the answer would be the same in that we don't we don't have those numbers but probably a very small percent approximately if I can just jump in for a second approximately a third of um jobs are in the city of Boulder that are within Boulder County um and then another third are in Longmont and the remaining third are all of the

[248:02] other cities in Boulder County and unincorporated Boulder County okay all right so somewhere between a third and two-thirds were probably closer to a third and to two-thirds okay thank you um and then Taylor one of the things that I heard you mentioning is that um if we were to try to move forward with something sooner we wouldn't necessarily do any kind of uh we wouldn't have an escalation factor in there did I interpret that correctly and is that what the county is moving forward with as well because I was thinking they were they were going to have a wage escalator in the mix last I talked to the county their plan is to do just this initial initial 15 and then try to better Define a Target and an escalation next year seeing their draft survey I I wonder if those plans have changed there is also possibly some concerns about trying to

[249:01] um back into the escalation next year and I noticed Teresa just went off camera but if she wanted to speak to that I'd invite that I'm I'm terribly sorry I was distracted just for a moment could you repeat that Taylor um Nicole do you want to repeat your question yeah my question was um I'm just trying to understand if we were to um try to move forward with something January 1st 2024 um some sort of increase for that start date what I heard Taylor say is that we may not take into account any kind of escalation factor in that like the state minimum wage has like Denver has and I guess I'm just wondering is that what the county is doing are they taking into account an escalator and um yeah and if so would we be kind of moving with them on that yeah I can't I'm afraid I can't speak to

[250:00] what the county is doing I I look um to Lauren and Taylor for that if the question is could we do we have to do an escalator now or could we do it later the statute is ambiguous as to this and so the you know the more conservative approach would be to determine um to determine the final number and and plan accordingly um certainly if the council has a tolerance for more risk than that we could adopt something now and then amend okay so it sounds like we could go either way and we're not totally sure what the county is doing okay thank you thank you thank you Nicole appreciate that I'm sorry my internet is starting to get choppy uh irony given our earlier discussion uh but there we have it

[251:00] um maybe it's why we're moving the direction we are but I digress um Tara then Mark okay Taylor that was an incredible presentation and I have it went so fast that I missed a few things so if you can go back to your facts about the county can you exactly wait are you saying that that who exactly is going to get this minimum wage increase in the county did you did you say it was just not not hourly work who exactly was it not does that make sense minimum wage ordinance passed by the county would cover anybody in the count unincorporated parts of the county so not our Incorporated cities and towns and the man the legislation doesn't allow any exemptions for small businesses or or anything like that it's as Teresa said pretty prescriptive so um anybody in unincorporated areas and you talked about something about hourly wages or how many people this

[252:01] impacts who exactly does it yeah do you remember that part of your presentation I was clarifying that it would would not impact um hourly workers of the Boulder County government system since they're located in the city of Boulder well they're not taking a very big chance are they then well how many people does it impact okay that was a rhetorical question unless you know all right my next question is actually do you know how many people it actually knew packs in Boulder County yeah no okay um the next question is is you you had a really good uh phrase something about 90 percent less than 20 employees can you repeat repeat that one more time went so fast yeah our latest estimates are in the city of Boulder we have about 8 400 businesses and of those businesses 90 of

[253:02] them have less than 20 employees and 97 of them have less than 50 employees just to illustrate sort of the um amount of small businesses that we do have in the city and sort of the engagement lift that this would take and the the various impacts that this would have okay 90 is a lot okay I have one more question and for this question I'm just going to read I've been confused because I missed the May meeting I was I wasn't there and apparently this was a very important meeting because this one person just wrote to us he's a restaurant owner and he says I am writing today to urge the city council to honor its commitment to a year-long stakeholder process before enacting an increase in the minimum wage did we make this commitment in May to the people we briefly talked about the differences in the timeline um 2024 was discussed but we

[254:02] prioritized at that time working together rather than working fast and we knew that doing something regionally would take longer and so the the direction from that meeting was to do the collaboration approach with the longer timeline great so we said 2025 in May and now it's almost September and we're saying 2024. I was initially going to push for this 2024 but now I'm very concerned about this particular fact because I feel like we have these commitment I didn't know about this commitment but apparently we had this commitment and so I'm just confirming we did in detail people 2025 in May I did all right that's all my questions thank you Tara um let's see Mark then Bob I only have one question but I want to preface it by saying uh Lauren and Taylor uh I want to thank you for what I

[255:01] think is an extraordinary amount of work that you've put in on this issue which is a lot more complicated and I think than most people recognize and you have done this community a great service and and what you have been doing my only question is is really one of context because I'm I'm a little confused how long was the um did the county work with us in a Cooperative basis um before they had an epiphany and and decided to jump ship the county has been working with us from the get-go we started around April of last year and it hasn't been up until a month ago about that we received word that they would change direction it wasn't until August 14th I believe though that the press release went out and sort of made the announcement more broadly and and

[256:00] and what I mean what happened they just saw the light on the road to Damascus and said uh you know we need to change everything that we're doing and abandon all of our Cooperative relationships and to you know so sorry guys uh that's the way it is I mean is that what happened or is there a context I'm missing there is um I mean there are strong voices in the community that are urging for something to happen sooner um and you these have been backed up sort of by the prescriptive nature of the legislation and it sort of laying out a lot of decision points that we wouldn't otherwise have to make and so that perhaps making it less of a lift there are still pieces of the legislation that we need to to meet in order to pass this and um I believe the county is responding to the urgency of the requests from some of the in the community and I don't know if Lauren wants to speak to that

[257:02] yeah I I would just also add that you know May when we presented in May Boulder was the first count city council that we presented to and so it's only been um sort of more recently that the timeline has been being presented to different councils and that those discussions have been happening and so they they I think as those conversations started happening the county just felt like that timeline wasn't aligned with what they wanted to see and what they were hoping for in terms of the direction that the cities would go okay and before we get to our comments and preferences um is it the view of both of you that we ought to continue in The Cooperative relationship and and do this thing on the timeline originally

[258:00] um envisioned what is your recommendation oh I'm happy to jump in for staff so I don't put Taylor on the on the hook but I'll say for staff um certainly we defer to Council on how you want to move forward it will be it will be less uh we will have less engagement we will have to um I think we do have a risk in those Partnerships that we have created amongst those other cities um and we will have to do some explaining to some of the partners that we have done engagement in in terms of a new Council direction as we move forward um so I believe that it is status press in terms of being able to do engagement fully to pursue and to continue to pursue the original Direction but I will also

[259:01] say that we defer to you all as policy makers and we will move forward and adjust our schedules on this instance this is a different instance where it doesn't involve a department like housing or pnds and we're not having that kind of trade-off conversation here we're having a trade-off conversation about the depth of Engagement and how we can move forward or not and Lord May inquire as as to your recommendation yes yeah I've struggled with this one a lot I think Taylor mentioned and as noria mentioned there are really difficult trade-offs here you know we also are seeing dramatic need in our community um I think it's worth trying to pursue the faster option while also trying to keep our keeping um Staffing the

[260:01] longer term Regional effort to the extent that we're able thank you oh uh thanks Mark I appreciate that um Bob yeah just a couple questions on on this the decision we made a direction we provided before was that in April or May I was trying to look it up to trying to figure that out was that in effort May in April which one was May 25th thank you I appreciate that um and um we kind of took a pull of ourselves and I think that the majority of the consensus was it was 2025 for the change um and so I'm trying to understand I know that there's voices in the community there's been places in the community on both sides of this for for as long as I've been on Council um so that's kind of an ongoing thing but other than the County's change of heart that was announced last week has there been any any change that's happened any external change that's happened between when we made our decision on May 25th and now

[261:01] it's August 24th three months later for halfway to the end of the year from there um has there been any like any any new new things that have happened I know that you base have been making the rounds with us with the cities and the cities sound like they're all uh saying 1125 so that hasn't changed if anything's reinforced or made a decision so has there been any other than the County's kind of change of heart that they announced last week has there been any external factor that we're not hearing about or not thinking about that would cause us to make a different decision now at the end of August than we made at the end of May the only thing I can think of is that Edgewater also has passed a new minimum wage um the reason I say this is just because there is a 10 cap that the legislation outlines um only 10 of municipality or groups across the state can raise the minimum wage past the state

[262:01] and then then it caps and so the Edgewater joining and pursuing it of course there's conversations across Boulder County Fort Collins had tried to do something and it failed and I wouldn't say that this is an imminent threat in any way shape or form but it is just something to be mindful of yeah well can I ask a couple questions on it first just to make sure I understand what Taylor just said and then jump in but ten percent of what is this 10 of the state population or 10 of the number of cities or what's the 10 percent of it 10 of municipalities of the municipalities and how many municipalities are there in Colorado I don't know the answer that question however the legislation also says if you come together in an IGA um on so all of the municipalities in that IGA would only count as one in that calculation which is also a big reason why the the collaborative approach made this more advantageous is it fair to assume there's more than 100 municipalities in Colorado 272. 172. Okay so 10 272 is 27 and

[263:04] Edgewater is one so that probably doesn't put a whole lot of pressure on us is that right it sounds like there's no one else in Colorado about to go now so it's not like there's 26 people ahead of us online that are going to do something next week okay so so other than Edgewater sit down I think down near Denver right but died in the Bridgewater is some suburbs there yes it's right next to it it's right it's where Sloan Sloan lake is near Denver yeah anyway it's a long ways away though because I think maybe this is a mood okay so my question the way I read something that came out from the state was that if a county went first all the cities within that County got swept up and counted as one of you know counted as the same one so do you know Taylor if Boulder County does it even if we don't do it simultaneously we still count as one and one with them even absent and IGA if we that's what this is of the statute or an update from the state so just wondering if anyone if

[264:01] you or Lauren had looked into that so that point may be mood but I'm not 100. my only knowledge is through an IGA but it could be that the legislation's interpreted that a county passing would act as an umbrella of sorts I'd like to look to Teresa and then they have the statute up if you'd like me to read the few sentences Rachel sure no it matters but it says for purposes of determining whether 10 of local governments in the state have enacted the local minimum wage law when a County enacts local minimum wage law if a local minimum wage law is enacted by any local government located within that County only the County's minimum wage law accounts towards the calculation of the 10 percent so I think cool thanks did you just want to call a queen there Rachel was that your only piece there I think it was nice oh the with the lawyer move I like

[265:02] I don't know that Bob was done I just wanted to colloquy on that one point I didn't mean to stop the whole I was I was done you guys answered the question it sounds like other than Edgewater acting which is maybe 127th Statewide limit um there has been no external factors in the last three months since we made our decision to cause us to change to make our decision all right uh any other questions before we move to comments and uh ultimately offering a direction for staff any other questions all right uh let's transition to comments and and of course uh if you know mindful time is 10 20. you can keep comments brief but ultimately kind of provide um some clarity love to see a a majority will if we have to straw pull at the end because it looks like it might be pretty binary here um but let's start with comments and if we sense that there's maybe some ambiguity on Direction maybe we'll straw poll to really sort of give that

[266:00] concrete Direction so uh have at comments and uh offer some Direction Lauren thanks um so as I mentioned earlier I did struggle with this but I will support moving forward with a faster timeline because I know how much our community members need this but as I said I also have significant concerns I'm concerned about potentially undermining this work that I and others have put into this larger Regional effort I have concerns with how difficult it may be for a number of our businesses to deal with changes in such a short time frame an erosion of trust uh I know how long it took to convene this working group um and that the burden that the county leaving that group has placed on the remaining members but um and Boulder pausing

[267:01] is likely to cause you know more instability but you know I I just feel like we have to make the best decision with the information we have I hear Representatives that work every day with people in our community struggling to make ends meet and they're pushing for immediate action and saying that that is a higher priority to them than this Regional effort um and so I feel like I have to take them at their word and but also hold out hope that we can do both efforts that we can continue moving forward with the regional effort and then our partners in the business community and other municipalities will continue to engage with us on this topic thank you Lauren I see Rachel and Nicole thanks Matt thanks Lauren um like Lauren this has been a tough one for me I um I wrote down a couple things I there's a saying in Al-Anon say what you mean and mean what you say you know we we just

[268:02] said like 88 days ago that we were going to do January 2025 and as far as I can tell you know I I think it was only maybe only Aaron said let's let's try and do it in 2024 um and so you know I was very cognizant at that time of of the difficulty of of making minimum wage in Boulder we were assured that um very few or no employers at that time were actually paying minimum wage that that the actual going rate is is at what we're looking to make it right now um I I don't think there's been anything that changed in that time um you know I I think we all knew that certain programs were going to be ending and and you know it's it's really hard to get by in Boulder and I don't think any of us are dismissing that and yet we we committed to everyone uh less than three months ago to to follow this path Taylor said a

[269:00] couple things that stood out um one is we will not have an economic analysis and we will be going based on speculation and as a very data driven Council that is that's why I voted for 2025 in the first place like I wasn't willing to to not know the answer to some questions I asked about how it would ripple effect onto employers that are subject to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates and and would they be able to staff based on those federal dollars that that aren't going to come in at the right rate next year um you know small razor thin margin non-profits things like that that sort of and some some very vulnerable populations and and again as I said then like I the last time I was involved with a minimum wage hike I was in Michigan and um doing a job where we were Staffing group homes where it was really hard um unforgiving work with a lot of body fluids and um injuries and things to staff and and it's hard to get people to work those those difficult jobs and you have to

[270:00] stay a bit above above minimum wage and if you raise minimum wage without building in time for them to raise it two dollars above minimum wage you're not going to have people who are willing to do the literal Dirty Work in our County so that's I without an economic analysis and the answer to my questions I find this very troubling that we with a couple noticed a couple months noticed two employers would would change course and not say what we meant and meant when we said it feels um a little bit hypocritical of us to be honest um I I was at a thing this week where I was saying that we might do this and somebody said well what about Taylor it was somebody for one of the other cities like she's still going to help us and you know whatever we say I think the answer is probably no I don't think that we're loaning Taylor out who's getting a second job within the city to to help these other cities to do it so I think if we're pulling the lifeline here like we need to know that there's a good chance that Lafayette Longmont Lewisville and Erie have been abandoned for the minimum wage efforts and I I know that my job is a city but I think

[271:00] as a region we also want everyone to thrive and the people in those cities not making minimum wage and us getting out of step and I don't think that we're gonna somehow round back and say well next year we're not going to raise it because we want to wait for these other cities to pick up like we're gonna get the same pressure next year or you all will that we got this year like we need more money right now and so raise it we're just going to be out of step the the whole point of a regional effort is is dead to me if we do this so it's fine if that didn't matter I was told for four years it was really critical and mattered so it is it is confusing to me um I don't think that anything will be different in a year you know part of the problem was in may we were like there's just not enough time to do this by January 1st it sucks but there's not enough time we should have done faster in 2022 and early 2023 but here we are we can't do it in time I don't understand how three months closer to January is is better for that so you know there's just there's less time and um you know I think we are we are um

[272:03] really going to be leaving at least some employers in a really tough spot we already knew that the struggle is real for people so if we were going to do this May 25th was the time this just feels ill thought out and um and unresponsive as As Leaders of of a regional effort as well as Regional as well as of our city thanks so I'm unfortunately not supportive of 2024 I'll be looking for January 2025. thank you Rachel uh Nicole Aaron thentera thank you I'm just gonna Echo everybody's comments this is really hard this is a really really hard place to be to be looking at these longer term trade-offs um potential longer term trade-offs with shorter term benefits to people um I you know I know that we are closer now to the implementation date but I think that's also given us a little bit more time to see just how dire this

[273:02] situation is for people in our community and you know initially we were not sure if for example the numbers that effo was seeing which were completely unprecedented earlier this year and double anything that they had ever seen in terms of individuals going to their food bank we didn't know if that was going to continue you know we thought well maybe it's just because of the end of some of the federal benefits from December uh 31st 2022 but it has continued they're still seeing over 600 people a week in their food bank and it feels like every month that we're waiting is just pushing that that difficulty that we're putting on people's lives even farther into the future we're just making it more difficult longer the county is the key Regional partner even if they don't have a huge Workforce in unincorporated Boulder County they're still a key Regional partner of ours and that they decided to lead with a faster implementation in my view this does

[274:01] change the landscape of a regional effort with every year every month that we delay we're paying a pretty big cost in what we pay to the people who need food assistance the people who need help paying their energy bills the people who need rental assistance and the people who end up living on our streets because they can no longer afford their rent some of the folks from effa did a little survey of their users and some of the clients and some of the things that they said were an increased minimum wage alone won't fix the income unequal that plagues Boulder but as part of a comprehensive strategy it's very important I'd like Council to understand that nowhere in Boulder County can someone working a minimum wage job for a single person to afford a studio apartment life has gotten really hard a higher wage will help feed our family and keep our homes warm a living wage is a matter of survival this town has a lot of vocal hate for

[275:01] the unhoused but it's almost impossible to climb out of poverty prices for food and housing are never going down again so we need wages to go up I think we really need to work together here with the county and the region on on wages and what people are being paid it's a both and situation so I'm kind of feeling similarly as Lauren um while I would love to spend time to work more on a regional wage and keep going with those Partnerships and I hope we can people are telling us they need this right now even knowing that the consequences may be that the regional effort falls apart nonprofits are telling us that we need this even as they themselves may be impacted by higher wages and they're telling us that the most impacted people or the most marginalized so I would like to see us move forward with the county with a 15 increase on January 1st 2024 and then

[276:03] work with the county on a wage escalator thank you thank you Nicole appreciate that Aaron Tara the mark yes I'm finding myself in a similar places Lauren Lauren I thought you articulated well uh the potential benefit of the of moving forward while also you know being concerned about some of the trade-offs it makes it a difficult choice but um I'm going to be consistent here because I was the person earlier this year who said this year still has an opportunity for us to move forward and um the participation of the county means that it we could still do something as part of a regional effort because I've always valued the regional approach throughout this and so so we have now we have two Regional choices the the county now are potentially other cities next year um but I do say that the advocacy from effa and other folks representing uh low-income workers and younger workers has been persuasive to me about the

[277:01] possibility of moving forward sooner rather than later so would want to um defer decisions about what a final number is or an escalator or anything like that to next year when we can do the full engagement and I you know because the economic analysis is going to be really important to that the detailed Outreach the year-long plan to make those larger decisions but um doing a smaller increase now seems doable to me so thanks for the consideration thank you Aaron appreciate that Tara the mark okay I came into this meeting actually not sure I was going to vote I kept going back and forth I think um listening to the last council meeting the amount of people that are struggling and also students was just intense um also I came into this meeting not knowing because I wasn't at that meeting that we actually said in May that we were not going to do this until

[278:01] 2025 so I don't see how this is a good idea to all of a sudden change I I should have known that because I wasn't at that meeting I'm not you know taking blame off of me for not knowing that but now that I do I just I don't see how we can change the 2020 2024 even with uh the way things are I'm just going to read you two emails like Nicole that I'm going to read and not and the problem is is we all can see both sides here and it's hard for all of us um so this person who owns a restaurant says um like I said I'm writing today to urge the city council to honor its commitment to a year-long stakeholder process before enacting an increase in the minimum wage we are paying far more than the minimum wage because we pull tips with the entire team my entry-level employees make 20 to 25 dollars per hour after tips I would like to have my voice heard on an exemption for tipped workers we are struggling with very high food

[279:01] prices and property city state federal taxes and I think why that is important is because these are people who employ people who um we need to keep our restaurants um healthy they're struggling a lot because they employ a lot of lower income workers there's there's a part of me that's worried that if they close it'll have the opposite effect I'm not sure it will but it might but also we promised and I also promised to some people that I would do whatever Lauren said but actually Lauren's been struggling too and um we're both instruct we've all been struggling but in this case um at this last minute I said I don't know how we can promise something and unpromise it I will say that there are two sides to everything right and there is um this non-profit that wrote to

[280:02] somebody and said if you change the minimum wage the problem is is my budgets are already set for this year and if you change it excuse me already set for 2024 and my grants are already established for 2024 and if you change it now I'm going to have to let some people go because I can't do this that's how close her margins are and that's how close some of the restaurants margins are and I'm only saying this not to change people's minds honestly it was because this was my struggle it's like we tailors extremely I thought emotional plea was that we she worked so hard and Lauren worked so hard and if we lose Longmont if we lose these cities now because we did this that would be a terrible thing and it's true that it's a maybe and a maybe and maybe and maybe it won't but there's too many reasons right now after not even been able to make up

[281:00] my mind until just now I mean just like a half hour ago for us not to wait till 2025 for me between Taylor speech and these uh restaurants and the non-profits that have their um rants already in order and we'll have to let people go I think it's a big enough reason to just wait one more a year till um 20 January 2025 and that's what I think thank you Tara uh mark them about I'm going to agree with Tara and Rachel on this um having gone to such lengths or have having Taylor gone and and Lauren having gone to such lengths to create this Regional Cooperative structure um to Simply abandon it um is going to have some very far-reaching consequences uh other cities are never

[282:00] going to trust us again having been a leader of uh putting this Coalition together and then simply abandoning it um why would any of these cities ever trust us to be steadfast in our approach anytime going forward listen everybody on this Council uh is desirous of seeing um wages go up and you know minimum wages increased there's nobody here who's uh against that but it to do the economic analysis to understand exactly what it is we're doing to bring other cities along with us in doing that it is something of great great value and to Simply say uh you know uh we're out um Longmont sorry uh Loveland sorry you know we you know don't have any more time for you it is to me a um

[283:00] a strategic mistake I mean we are leaders here and and leaders have to have a little bit of consistency in how they approach things and just a few months ago this was our program now three months later we have a new program and I I I don't think that makes a whole lot of sense so I'm going to agree with them both Tara and Rachel and um uh not go with the 2020 the 2024 increase for those reasons thank you Bob and then we'll need to hear from Judy yeah so I'm gonna make it four I'm gonna agree with Rachel and Tara and Mark uh for all the reasons they've said um you know maybe Aaron was right back on on May 25th when he was the the sole percent Council that thought we should do it by in 2024 but um that's not the way we voted and and uh so here we are

[284:01] three months later and I just haven't heard any change and circumstances that um that has would cause us to suddenly three months into a seven month just seven months remain in the year to change and I now have to do in a very very Rush fashion I worry about um staff's uh time I worry about our time uh we only have a few more Council meetings left on this Council and and if we decide to do this we're gonna have to jettison some of the things that you all I think want to get done by November I don't know which those things are going to be I guess CAC would have to decide that on Monday morning um you know I think was telling to hear that we have 8 400 businesses 90 of which have fewer than what was it 20 employees um and these are non-profits these are small businesses these are minority-owned businesses we've heard from several dozen of them today terrified that we might actually do this um and we've heard from the Chamber of Commerce we've heard from the Latino Chamber of Commerce uh we everybody we've heard from uh that actually

[285:00] employs um folks that said oh my God you told us three months ago it was me one 125 and we were fine with that now suddenly three months down the road and only four months before the end of the year you're telling us you might do something different and and the only thing that's changed in the last three months is two or three County Commissioners changed their mind last week last week two or three either two or three it depends on who you talk to two or three of our three kind of Commissioners decided to do something different um and we would um throw it blow out the regional approach we'd alienate our sister cities that we've been worked so hard with over the last year we would do significant damage to many of those 8 400 businesses uh and uh and and we don't even know we don't even know um how many employees we'd be helping here because we haven't done the economic analysis the very thing we said in May that we need to do before we make a change we don't know if it's a thousand employees 100 employees or ten employees

[286:01] we have we have no idea how many people were helping here I don't doubt that that people need help and I think we're all in favor of increasing the minimum wage but we simply haven't done it and so we don't know who we're impacting positively who were infecting negatively which is just ready shooting and maybe if we had started this in May and if we could get the other cities on board back then maybe that was achievable by 1124 but it's just too late folks I mean it's just we're we're jamming this we're jamming this and we're gonna get it wrong and we're going to piss people off and it's just not the right way to govern so I am not going to be in support of this I want to stick with the decision we made three months ago I think it was a correct decision and quite frankly it's too late to change thank you Bob Juni yes you did say that you need to hear from me so here I am um this has been a very tough conversation and I was the council member who led that meeting and

[287:03] I did hear the echo that you know council did want to wait until 2025 but as of today we've received a lot more new information we've heard from Taylor and we've also heard from Lauren who's been spearheading this particular project and based on what I hear from her today which is hey I'm willing to support the 15 As I push forward to increasing or minimum wage and doing the regional approach and because of that I'm willing to support um where she's heading I'm willing to follow the county but of course there are concerns and the thing is I I do feel that this is a little bit of hypothetical conversation we've been having for the past hour or hour and a half because the county has not done its

[288:01] public hearing on this particular project so we don't know for sure 100 this is going to go through that's my understanding as of right now but ultimately I will support it um but I would ask Nicole uh Lauren to continue uh to push to get us to join the regional approach in getting uh the work done and because I really believe honestly as I was thinking through this a bird in the hand is much better than a bird in the bush and it's it's that simple for me we need to increase minimum wage uh or wages in the city and in the county and following the county actually might provide us some best practices as you're doing the work Lauren so ultimately I will support it today um and I hope I really hope that you will continue to pursue

[289:01] um increasing or wages because again I think for all the reasons that Nicole mentioned earlier thank you thanks Judy I I see you Tara's hand up sorry I forgot to say one thing I just want to say I have a slight bit of aggravation with the county even though I love the Commissioners dearly they're not taking any chance because they're not even talking about their own workers in unincorporated Boulder County so it's not like they're taking a risk with with Community engagement but we're taking the big risk and that's why I'm bothered by it it's like it's easy to say if you have how many workers in unincorporated Boulder County to say oh we're getting Forge ahead and do it but it's a lot harder for us to do something like that when we have not done the community engagement um and let the people speak who are the employers and gosh it pains me so much because people are really suffering but

[290:01] I have to say that the argument that the county is doing it they're really not unincorporated Boulder County is doing it and that is a really small small part of Boulder County so that's what I forgot to say sorry I hope I wasn't too impassioned no uh you weren't Tara we appreciate that um I'll try to close this out um I mean there's certain inalienable truths about what's going on here right I mean there's folks that are indeed suffering absolutely have needs and this is these are these are the things we see we see the impact um that fa has has is seeing on a daily weekly monthly basis we see those impacts we also see the fact that we have to follow the data that we've committed ourselves to following in order to make sound decisions and I I struggle with the with being

[291:02] fickle about when we hold ourselves to those truths of we are making data-driven decisions to when we are not or we are willing to put aside information or or not have it at all I struggle with uh the consistency factor with that um there there is no doubt this council is gonna act in 2025. if the Consortium don't have their act together and other folks are dragging their feet are dropping off we're gonna have we we will have what we need to make our best decision for ourselves and I'm committed to that and it sounds like all the rest of the eight folks here are willing to do that and I sure hope the candidates running for Council are willing to do that um so I I I I think that there's an absolute need for us to show good leadership and good governance and uh pulling the rip cord with three months to make a decision to make that impact when we don't know really who's going to

[292:00] be impacted I I it's not good governance it's it's poor leadership and and I think those statements earlier about our reputation is absolutely key I mean we already carry a reputation that is not that Pleasant by other cities in the community I sit on the CML policy committee and I hear it all the time there's a righteousness that is seen about us we just do what we do in spite of others all we would do is feed that narrative so the next time we go to sit at a table or we want to collaborate on something as important or bigger we've just made it harder for ourselves to have our voice heard um and I think that that's something that that we have to pay forward for future Council so that when they're at that table their voice will be heard because we've made good leadership and good governance decisions on on really critical issues where we say we're going to collaborate and we follow through with that we can't fall into do as we say not as we do um that's that's just I don't think that

[293:00] flies um so I'm going to look to stay the course um because it's it's the right thing to do but to those that are committed to to wanting to see minimum wage we will get that done and we will chart the right course to get that done and we'll be helping our community um along the way so um uh that I hope that sort of adds some clarity for staff I hope uh staff knows it um I just took a talent it looks like you know those it was pretty clear as when you first dropple but it looks like you know it was a 5-4 um to stay the course um so hopefully that gives staff um clear Direction on how to head um as we uh close up um I want to maybe offer any any final Clarity um Taylor Lauren do you guys have what you need to move forward um before we close out so I just want to check in with that real quick thanks for the opportunity Matt um councilmember Benjamin I do have what I need to move forward and I wanted to give a shout out to Lauren just for

[294:00] being so awesome like it's been she's a really fantastic person to work with and she's been a really great leader of of this project and um you had a lot to wait tonight so thank you for the thoughtful discussion and also I'm not going to be your assistant to Council in like two days but I know but Taylor I'll say this like kudos to you as well you have done a lot to move this Consortium forward um the cities have shared that on how you have been critical in this endeavor and you know we're just so proud that you have represented us so well throughout the Consortium of City's work um and I just want to assure you and ashore Council and Community we will continue this effort we are invested we want to move forward on minimum wage we want to support our community and we will continue this effort with our partners as we continue to to move

[295:02] forward and know that we are committed as well thank you for that area and a last bit of shout out I know we're going to lose you to uh being our assistant you've done an admiral job taylor um but we won't not see you because you'll be over in climate initiatives but what a great send-off in many ways because you've helped walk us through and lead us through a tremendously important and Monumental um project and so um couldn't think of a better way for us to spend time with you um with you sort of delivering and showing great leadership on an important issue like this so thank you so much Taylor I see two hands up for some final thoughts and comments I see Aaron and Mark I just have to add to the thanks for Taylor Taylor you've worked incredibly hard on this and done a phenomenal job and then uh gave a wonderful succinct perfect presentation tonight and uh thanks for sticking with us for yet another late night um and uh just deeply appreciative that that all you've done in this role um with minimum wage and then as the

[296:00] council assistant just super super grateful mark yeah Taylor it's been a long time since you were merely a an assistant to the council you have become a policy maker and a major player in this and I greatly appreciate all the work that you've done and I look forward to uh the work that you're going to be doing going forward um so thank you again thanks guys Lauren Juni yeah I can't let everyone else get away with congratulating Taylor without me getting some words in there um you know we definitely wouldn't be where we're at with this um work without the tremendous amount of effort and help that you've put into it and yeah I look forward to seeing what you do with climate initiatives and to continue to work together thank you thanks so much Lauren oh God all right the gushing continues

[297:02] Juni you know I think adding to the gushing is not gonna hurt Taylor so I just want to say I we've worked together for almost four years now and it has been a pleasure and honor to serve with you because you serve with us actually um I appreciate your work that you've done and I look forward to seeing you grow in your new field and I wish you the best and I'm still here um yeah just reach out anytime and I'll certainly will reach out to you because I'm definitely going to need help um when I'm doing environmental legislation so I look forward to engaging you in a different capacity thank you Taylor awesome thank you Jenny all right Tara Rachel I'm Bob where's the ball first of all you're so smart and I learned so much from you especially all about the First Amendment remember that Taylor yeah

[298:02] but I want to say it pained me to ask you for business cards I'm like Taylor is so smart and I'm asking her to get me business cards it's embarrassing so I'm very exciting excited sorry I'm tired too I'm very excited though because climate initiatives is really the future and you're the future and so I know it's not goodbye you know it's going to be collaboration in just a new uh and better level you know so all right Rachel then Bob then Nicole real quick gonna add that um I mean I guess it has turned into goodbye Taylor even though you're not going so I wanted to participate and say that this is not Taylor's first rodeo like tonight is minimum wage but I I think of our first rodeo in terms of regional leadership as the gun violence prevention Regional initiative and I don't think we would have that either um and and have had success with a lot of cities participating uh they needed

[299:00] Boulders leadership and that meant Taylor in that capacity as well so thank you you've done great things for our city and this current role thanks Rachel Bob Nicole I'll just say two words Cindy Carlisle your council member Cindy Carlisle several years ago who insisted that that Council needed an assistant and we were all kind of skeptical about that and the former city manager said well I guess we'll give it a try and uh Taylor has proven her worth and she's proven Cindy Carlisle right we did need an assistant and you've been more than an assistant you've been you've been our friend you've been like a 10th member of council and we are going to seriously miss you uh our loss however is Jonathan Cohen's gain damn him and um we look forward to many many great presentations just like tonight from you on behalf of the climate team so thank you for uh for growing with the city and we need to more now more than ever thank

[300:01] you thanks Bob all right Nicole finish it off I'm gonna show my thanks Taylor by giving you an extra minute of sleep I just want to say thank you and congratulations thank you guys so much I'm like gonna go cry and drink a beer now um I'm gonna have more words to say to to each of you uh later it's been a lot of emotions um this was my first step into like first job out of school and then really stepped into my career and this has really set the tone for how I'm gonna lead myself as a professional for really the rest of my career so thank you for all being sort of comrades in that and I'll let you all get to sleep now but I guess Matt take it away and close ass oh uh thank you but yeah it's not just uh leading yourself you'll be leading others along the way too um all right well uh 10 55 um we we got through a lot tonight um we're gonna close out this meeting thank you all have a wonderful night and

[301:01] uh we will see you uh no meeting next week so we all get a little bit of a respite we'll catch up on the first week of September enjoy a Thursday off good night see you later [Music] foreign [Music]