January 11, 2024 — City Council Special Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[1:21] individuality so uh so if I come in with a metal head next time you know what does the metal head have to do with anything all right Taisha welcome welcome I just want to coign Mark's comments that everything isn't all sunshine and strawberry relates to Ai and has SC excited to navigate all that with you all nice see you nice see you Mr Mayor okay and with that it is 6 pm and

[2:00] we're all present so uh Elicia can we get the recording started please yes sir and channel 8 is ready good all right well good evening everyone and welcome to the January 11th 2024 meeting of the Boulder City Council our first meeting of the new year we're going to start with an announcement and that announcement is about the 2024 boards and commissions recruitment so if you're looking for an opportunity to get involved this is a great way to do it the 2024 boards and commissions recruitment period is now open until January 29th 2024 you can find the board and commission descriptions and vacancies online at bouldercolorado.gov government board- and- commissions and appointed members can now participate in person or virtually through hybrid meetings and members also receive a free RTD ecopass to enjoy unlimited rides on RTD trains and buses so please contact the city clerk's office for more information information at city clerk's

[3:01] office at bouldercolorado.gov or call 303 44138 and I will now call us to order and ask Elicia if we could do a roll call please yes sir thank you and good evening everybody and welcome back we'll start tonight's roll call with council member Adams present Benjamin present mayor Brockett present council member fers present Maris present shoard here mayor Pro Tim spear present council member wallet I am here see and Winer present mayor we have our quarrel thanks so much and I would now request a motion to amend the agenda for to add two things item 5 C which is an update on cold

[4:02] weather preparedness and item 7A the 2024 Library District trustee appointment committee assignments so moved second got a motion and second all in favor raise your hand okay that's unanimous the agenda has been amended and we will now move to our item 1A the N national day of racial hear healing declaration to be presented by council member Adams thank you so much mayor Brockett the city of Boulder is committed to advancing racial equity and acknowledges that we must all work earnestly to create courageous and supportive environments that acknowledges our tragic history promotes healing of wounds created by racial ethnic and religious bias and builds on Equitable and just Society so that people can Thrive as city leaders it is our duty Dy to protect the opportunity for people to

[5:01] learn grow and thrive in nourishing environments that do not violate safety dignity and Humanity further every person can exhibit an act of kindness or make a simple action that can have a profound effect on an entire Society racism and race-based stress are unjust burdens that present physical and psychological barriers to the health and success of people of color racial healing is a vital and critical commitment to the education social mental and overall well-being of all community members if we all dedicate ourselves to the principles of Truth racial healing relationship building solidarity transformative action we can all bring about the necessary changes in thinking and behavior that will Propel us as our Propel our community and the

[6:03] nation forward as a United Force where racial bias cannot be can be uh wait what does that say where racial biases can be recognized ah and most importantly un unlearned that was my add in my bad I know I want to get in trouble for it we the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado join the nation in declaring January 16th 2024 as national day of racial healing and urge all our citizens to promote the truth racial healing and transformation in the ways that are best suited for them individually to work together to raise our Collective Consciousness around the need to reconcile the unequitable pain caused by historical and current systems of Oppression

[7:00] signed by our mayor Aaron brocken thank you so much so much for that powerful declaration right Elicia can we go to our consent agenda please yes sir thank you our consent agenda is item two on tonight's agenda and it consists of items 2 a through 2D any questions comments or a motion I make a motion to pass the consent AG second got a motion in a second do we need a roll call on this CA no sir we can do a show a hands okay all in favor please raise your hand all right that's unanimous very good we do not have any public hearings this evening so if we can go to our Matters from the city manager now please yes sir thank you our Matters from the city manager are item five on tonight's agenda 5A is the community survey results

[8:01] thank you Alicia and I'll say that um this was my first Community survey in the city so I was super excited to hear and to see what we would um find out from our community it's been a while uh since we've had one since before the pandemic um so really excited that so many people responded uh I'm going to send it over to Sarah Huntley who will uh walk us through uh some sort of initial framing but uh we have our lovely consultant Jade I see you um to really walk us through the results as they did the survey themselves so Sarah I pass on to you thank you N I appreciate it Sarah Huntley director of communications and engagement I'm happy to tee up the conversation tonight we're very excited to have an opportunity to present to you as you know we've been working hard as a city together over the past few years to make engagement with our community more meaningful more inclusive and more trans parent a big part of engaging in the

[9:01] government context involves receiving feedback and as Council well knows we're fortunate to be part of a passionate community and we see lots of powerful examples of anecdotal qualitative and individual perspectives making a big difference in this very room as a matter of fact at the same time we know that these um individual um uh testimonies don't always give us the full picture we don't always hear from people who are unable to participate in our processes and that's where efforts like our community survey when they're done in a randomized scientifically valid way can really help us it can give us a much better understanding of what the viewpoints are across our entire Boulder Community since the late 1980s the city has conducted a comprehensive and scientifically valid survey at fairly regular intervals and the idea has been to measure Community sentiment around core Services broader Community goals and priorities as well as governance

[10:03] starting in 2014 the city began adopting a more consistent approach or survey tool so that results could be compared over time prior to that each time we did a community survey a council committee and staff committee developed a brand new measurement tool so in 2014 we started using a consistent tool it was used every two years from 2014 through 2018 and then as nura mentioned when we got to 2020 um just right after the pandemic began taking hold we made a decision to pause the community survey the reason was twofold one we really knew that there were vulnerable populations that absolutely needed our undivided attention and resources and we wanted to redirect critical funding to the then unfolding pandemic but we also recognized even then that this worldwide crisis was likely to shift perception so

[11:00] much that trying to just compare results pretending like nothing had happened differently in this moment would be really challenging but now here we are in this more of a I think what we might call a new normal certainly the covid hasn't gone away but we're in a new normal and the city wanted to recommit at the end of 2023 to the survey process this time around we opted for a hybrid approach we absolutely wanted to um have some indicators that have been consistent compared to the 2018 survey so working with poco which is the company we hired to assist us with this we decided to keep nearly 80 indicators the same as 2018 and we're able to look over time how we're comparing um to five years ago but we also added brand new questions that reflect some of the emerging issues we're facing or prioritizing as a community and this data in some cases is going to be starting point data that we

[12:00] can build on with the next several surveys tonight you have an opportunity to hear directly from the consultant who conducted the survey on our behalf poco's director of survey research and Boulder resident Jade arosia is here to share information about the methodology and the results before I turn over to her though I just want to say I know there's going to be a natural tendency because this is immediately what I wanted to do which is to look at these data points and start talking about specific solutions to areas where we fell short during our limited time together tonight however I'm going to encourage us to just sort of sit with the data a little bit understand it understand how it was collected ask questions that you may have that help us understand what the feedback is trying to tell us after our discussion I'll wrap us up with more information about next steps which are going to include opportunities for us to decide de and talk to talk and decide and explore

[13:01] together what we're going to do with this data that includes specific actions we might want to take in operations on the um sort of city manager side of the house or policymaking with Council directives or both um so we will definitely have these opportunities in the next month or two before the council Retreat to understand and and talk about what we might do with the feedback we're getting the other thing I want to do before I turn over to made is to acknowledge that no survey tool is perfect we've been on a journey in the city to better understand the benefits and disadvantages of quantitative methods of evaluating perspective and we've learned a ton in the last few years especially in the context of our commitment to racial Equity we know that surveys can be fraught with bias by hiring pole C for the survey and tapping into their expertise and just generally in the work we we've been doing inside

[14:00] the city on data collection we know we need to prioritize best practices around Equitable surveying this includes disaggregating feedback by race ethnicity and other demographic character characteristics and it also means that we need to find ways to wait appropriately when we find ourselves with sample sizes as we do in Boulder where certain populations show up in much greater numbers we're committed to this ongoing work in fact my department and the depart um Department of innovation and Technology have been talking about a potential pilot program around what some people call decolonization of data so that we can make sure that we are keeping up with the trends that are emerging in this field as well as the Innovation areas to solve some of the problems we know exist I'm confident that Jade can talk more about her organization's commitment to Equitable surveying as well with that I'm going to turn over the floor to Poco hopefully you see the presentation on

[15:01] your screen thanks so much Sarah for that thoughtful and detail introduction I believe that's the best intro I've ever received and I've been doing this for a long time um as Sarah mentioned uh my name is jocha and I am the director of survey research for Poco at National Research Center um and I'm very pleased to be here this evening to present the results of the 2023 Community survey to you all as Sarah mentioned um not not only am I a boulder resident but NRC is also based here in Boulder Colorado as well and in fact our founder Tom Miller got his start many many years ago working for the city of Boulder so uh definitely one of our longtime clients um before I begin I would like to acknowledge and give thanks to our primary contact for this project Chris passarelli um who was um very thoughtful and helpful throughout the survey development and implementation process um because we have merged um with

[16:02] companies uh since the last time you surveyed with us I'm just going to pause here and explain a little bit about who we are uh versus who we were when you last surveyed with us so National Research Center uh we have been conducting National Community surveys and Resident surveys across the country for uh nearly 30 years as I mentioned we are based here in Boulder Colorado and uh we are exclusive partners with icma and and NLC back in 2019 NRC merged with Civic engagement platform Poco um and really what this does is allows our company to provide a better platform in which to engage with residents on an ongoing basis um after your um every your traditional survey um efforts and also just in between um traditional survey years and also allows you to ask shorter form topical surveys as well and to dig deeper into specific topics

[17:00] the survey methodology for this year uh was similar to that given in previous year so I will give a a brief overview here so this was Boulder's 11th iteration of the community survey um and Sarah mentioned this but in previous years the survey had changed um significantly from year to year um and then for the last several years um Boulder conducted our templatized community survey the national Community survey this year Boulder to switch over to a customized survey format which allowed for more customization of the survey instrument itself and also for much more robust reporting um so that is new for the 2023 results we conducted the survey in this year from September 5th to October 17th and we employed what we call a hybrid mailing approach in which the the total sample of 6,000 randomly selected households 3,000 of those households received received two postcard invitations one week apart

[18:01] inviting them to take the survey online and another 3,000 households received a postcard invitation followed by a paper survey packet one week later the purpose of this hybrid approach um is to determine the difference in responses in response rates to the DU two different approaches um due to the fact that including a paper survey packet does significantly increase the costs of surveying um and so this is an attempt to gauge um how a successful in any given Community an online own survey with mail invitations is in Boulder we actually saw very similar response rates to these two different approaches um the online survey was available in English Spanish and Nepali on the survey packet itself which was a five-page survey uh packet recover letter and postage paid return envelope that was printed in English however all of the mailed materials contained um instructions and all three of those languages instructing them how to go online to take the survey

[19:02] in their language of preference out of those 6,000 total selected households who received a total of 895 responses for a 15% overall response rate and a plus or minus Mar 3% margin of error industry standard for a survey such as this is 5% or less so you can have extra confidence in the Precision and the validity of your results further about a few weeks after after the uh scientific random sample survey opened um there was a CommunityWide open participation survey available to the community at large this was an online only survey as well uh and we received 324 responses to that survey um the survey results from the random sample survey and the open participation survey have been kept separate uh this is a survey industry best practice um uh in order to ensure that the the data presented in the main body of the report

[20:00] are representative most representative of Boulder um however we do include the open participation results in the report and you can compare the results from the two different surveys finally the results were statistically waited the results to both surveys that random sample and the open participation uh were statistically weighted in order to improve the representativeness of the results be referring throughout the rest of these slides to uh The Benchmark comparisons so here at Poco we have a benchmark database that is a National Database comprised of over 500 comparison communities um and further because we are again based here in Boulder we have a wealth of communities that we work with in the Denver Boulder Metro Front Range area and so we are a also able to compare to provide comparisons to a custom subset of communities from our database that's here in the Front Range so throughout the rest of this

[21:00] presentation I'll be referring to those benchmarks getting now into our overview of survey results as I mentioned those benchmarks so we'll start with the national comparisons there were 107 items on the survey for which we could provide comparisons to the National averages of those 107 31 were considered higher 64 were similar and 12 were lower uh the cutof points for higher similar and lower are 10 points so anything within 10 points of the average rating considered similar and then more than 10 points higher or lower is considered higher or lower we also further designate in the report um as you review the the actual full report much higher and much lower and that is um signified by a difference of at least 20 points um there were actually quite a few items in Boulder that were much higher than the national benchmarks and some of these included Boulder as a place to visit ease of travel by bicycle and overall quality of natural environment among

[22:00] others I'll be speaking more about those shortly when looking at the Front Range uh Community comparisons there were also 107 items for which we could provide comparisons and in the Front Range 37 um ratings in folder were higher than the Front Range average 64 were similar and then six were lower we also had uh a few items that were much higher than the Front Range comparisons these included the vibrant of the downtown commercial area shopping opportunities and bus or transit services among others finally um because we have surveyed in many previous years for the purposes of this uh uh presentation I'll be referring when I refer to Trends it's to the most recent survey year in 2018 um versus the entire very long trend line that Boulder has so compared to 2018 results in 2023 um in order to be considered statistically different year-over-year

[23:00] the there is a 4% uh what we call margin of error rule of thumb margin of error to consider the results if it's more than a 4% difference you can consider it um statistically different so 21 items in 2023 were similar 13 were higher and then 44 were lower we'll be talking about these in more detail shortly um I do also want to note um although Sarah did mention this already um 28 to 2023 that is a 5year gap that is significantly longer than most of the communities that we work with we recommend Ser surveying every 2 to three years um so we are missing uh and many other communities also chose to foro surveying during the height of the pandemic so this is not unique to Boulder but it is something to keep in mind as you review Trends in particular that is a particularly large gap in time um wanted to focus on the five most positive or I should say most um notable increases in ratings over time uh so

[24:01] these were ease of public parking 22% increase in um over time ease of travel by car and then also storm water management traffic signal timing and drinking water um but those those increases of 22% and 21% respectively are very notable conversely we also have our five um largest downward Trends over time um you can see these are fairly large um decreases so these include crime prevention the cleanliness of Boulder air quality the available availability of affordable quality mental health care and then public places where people want to spend time there some fairly significant differences over time there moving now into the key findings uh this is a broad overview of the survey results there's a wealth of data in the full report this is intended to be a high level over rview of the results that you'll find in the full

[25:00] report so with that our first key finding quality of life is is high in Boulder about 85% of Boulder residents awarded excellent or good ratings to uh the quality of life in Boulder in 2023 and this rating was similar to the National and the Front Range benchmarks uh but did decline from 2018 to 2023 over to the right we can see a few broad U measures of quality of life here in the city um here at the top uh Des the star designations there is a legend there at the bottom of this slide um the Stars indicate comparisons to National and Front Range Benchmark comparisons and anything with that bolded line around it indicates a much higher designation so here we have at the top um n 91% positive Boulder as a place to visit and then in descending order Boulder is a place to live to work as a place to raise children to retire and the sense of community in the city um all of those that don't have stars

[26:00] next to them those were similar to both the national and the Front Range comparisons we also asked about a number of broad Community characteristics um and I did briefly mentioned these earlier but um for some of these so at the top of the list overall quality of natural environment in Boulder much higher than both sets of benchmarks comparisons at 94% positive also overall health and wellness opportunities Parks and Recreation opportunities and overall opportunities for Education culture and the Arts and then finally overall quality of transport of the transportation system in Boulder all of these were rated either higher or much higher than both sets of Benchmark comparisons um and when where you don't see the double line where you only see the the bar charts for 2023 that indicates that that question was not asked in the previous survey so we don't have Trend data for that question um our top uh individual Community characteristics that we asked

[27:01] about on the survey so we have um in 2023 our top items were F Fitness opportunities the availability of paths and walking trails and recreational opportunities all of those were rated positively by at least nine and 10 residents and we can see also the um opportunities to volunteer use of travel by bicycle uh opportunities to attend special events and festivals ease of walking and then opportunities to attend Cultural Arts and Music activities all of the were either higher or much higher than the national and the Front Range comparisons our next key finding residents feel positive about economic aspects of Boulder apart from cost of living so the overall quality of business and service establishments in the city this was rated positively by about eight in 10 survey participants um and then we can also see about three4 of residents gave positive ratings to the vibrancy of the downtown commercial area and shopping

[28:00] opportunities about 2third were pleased with the varet the variety of business and service establishments as opposed to equality and then 57% gave excellent or good ratings to employment opportunities as you can see each of these was um higher than either or both of the national and Front Range Benchmark comparisons with the exception of cost of living there at the very bottom of the chart 6% positive in 2023 um and this was much lower than both the national and the Front Range comparison uh while scores for many city services have declined Boulder still ranks highly among National and Front Range peers for several services so the overall value of city services um we can see that there is a slight drop from 2018 to 2023 from 66 to 60% positive um in 2023 um however this rating is similar to both both the national and Front Range

[29:01] benchmarks uh and then residents were asked their opinion on a total of 31 Individual Services on the survey I won't cover each and every one of those here but on this slide we can see the top rated city services um rising to the top with fire uh sewer Services recreational opportunities Boulder open space um drinking water Rec programs and classes ambulance recreation centers or facilities preservation of national areas um and storm water management and city parks so these again were the top rated city services in Boulder and those that were particularly higher than the national Front Range averages you can see they're denoted by the stars on the other end of the spectrum these Services were on the lower end in terms of positive ratings so we have um about half of residents or fewer gave positive ratings to each of these in 2020 3 affordable high-speed internet access snow removal code enforcement

[30:01] crime prevention land use planning and zoning and Street repair um each of these ratings did decrease from 2018 to 2023 um with the exception of affordable highspeed internet access we did not ask that question in 2023 sorry in 2018 our next key finding diversity equity and inclusion are important to Residents and most feel welcome and accepted in the boulder Community about four in 10 participants indicated that it is essential for a local government to focus on creating a diverse Equitable and inclusive City and another one quarter of residents indicated that this is very important only 12% rated it as not at all important residents were asked how welcome and accepted they felt in various places around the city uh nine about nine in 10 I should say more than eight in 10 residents reported feeling very or somewhat welcome at city parks trails and facilities in the Boulder

[31:01] Community Based on their personal identity and at City sponsored Community engagement activities these questions were new on the 2023 survey and they are also unique to Boulder so we don't have benchmarks uh available for them um these are the same questions comparing those um by racial demographics so we see 77% um of those who cons who self-identified as an an other race or multi-racial considered the importance of diversity as essential or very important 70% of white residents did so and then overall um as a whole 69% of residents consider this to be essential or very important um and then to the right you can see the breakdown of white versus other race or multi-racial um and just to um address the fact that we have very broad categories for these uh for race

[32:01] and ethnicity that is due to um the numbers of responses that we saw for um for demographic subgroups such as race um we can we do disaggregate the data and provide Cross tabulations by demographic characteristics and also by geographic location of residents however we can only do that to a certain point um because subgroups with too few respondents in them um those can comparisons yield um very wide margins of error that make the data not very useful or actionable uh next key finding homelessness is a significant problem in the city and residents are supportive of funding community- Based Services for the homeless and those in need so the wording of this question how important to you if at all is it for the city to contribute funding to community-based organizations that provide each of the following services to the homeless po population and others in need um so

[33:00] rising to the top of the list at least eight in 10 residents um indicated that mental health programs shelter during severe weather and substance abuse programs were essential or very important 79% uh Supportive Housing and then also 73% housing and rental assistance programs um and then further this question to the left um homelessness in Boulder uh residents were asked how much of a problem if at all they felt homelessness was in the city of Boulder um and 63% indicated they thought it was a major problem 29% a moderate problem only 1% felt that it was not at all a problem that is a recap of our key findings in 2023 um and I'm happy to go back to any slides as we get into the Q&A this is just a very quick snapshot of the Poo platform and the fact that you have the ability to ask follow up uh questions on the platform and to dig deeper into some

[34:01] of these results and and further reach out to Residents I'm happy to take questions Dave thanks so much uh for that fantastic overview and dive into the survey results really appreciate both your original work on the survey and and you're being here tonight and explaining it uh Council any questions for Jade um and we did get some fantastic questions in advance thanks to council members who sent those and for the answers uh that we got back on this Tina yeah hi um thank you so much Jade and Sarah for this presentation and for going over the results it was really helpful and thanks for spending um extra time on the survey validity and the process behind it it was also um really great um and also I asked a lot of questions in advance so I had most of them answered um separately but I wanted to follow up on the question about which which programs community members would support to address homelessness and one

[35:01] of the um questions I had is whether um I get an overall sense as a council person that community members would support most programs to address homelessness and this may not really serve as a ranking of which programs would be the best um in part because we don't um offer cost or success rates alongside with the program so I just want to make sure that there are no numbers here that would sort of caution one is saying oh no not that one it didn't get as high of a you know of a of a ranking as as another one yes but is an excellent point um the questions such as these are there's a few things to to point out first is the interpretation of the question itself and the way in which it is worded we did not attach costs or sources of funding to this question we also did not um indicate where some of these facilities or um um Services may be located in the

[36:03] city all of these would likely have a pretty significant impact on Resident ratings and so this is an excellent opportunity to follow up with more specific questions so that that contain that information I can see hands up but I don't know who was next can I ask a second I had two questions can I yes yes absolutely Y and my other question is just um one metric that I was curious about was the decline in a sense of community I think it was addressed two different ways um do we have a sense with our demographics that we that the overall length of time of residence in Boulder has changed between 2018 and 2023 that is a excellent question in terms of um you call that length of residency and we did that is a question that we asked on the survey the average length of residency if you will that's actually not a metric that we calculate but we easily could and we could we

[37:01] could uh follow back up with you with that information that would be great that's all I have thank you I've got Mark and then Tera well thank you for the presentation I I just have a couple of quick questions um do you have a sense of how long it takes to fill out this surve survey I mean it looks like it's a very long survey it is and is there any I'm not sure how to express this is there some sort of bias that could be created by the fact that you know only certain people are going to take the time uh and make the effort to fill this out probably people with more Leisure Time um you know I'm just not sure if it's if it's a survey where the answers are not a little bit skewed because of its length and complexity is that

[38:01] possible absolutely that is something that we that we do factor into the U the results so the survey is a five-page paper survey and you can also take it online we try to make the survey as convenient to take as possible um by offering online and Feer options um we find survey in the survey industry that a five-page survey is about the maximum that that residents will tolerate that is why some of these questions are worded broadly as they are there's just not enough space on the on this survey to to dig deeply into some of these topics that's better suited for follow-up um shorter form surveys um what you refer to in terms of those who don't respond is called non-response bias and it is true that there is um that is an attempt to Define um or at least acknowledge the fact that those that we did not hear from who were invited to take the survey but who did not respond may very well have different

[39:00] different opinions from those who did um with that said that is pretty substantially mitigated especially in the boulder um survey by the sheer number of responses that we received um with well over 800 responses whereas a a typical goal is about 400 um so we did still receive a very high number um of of Resident responses this year okay thank you um I guess my next question is is you know tourism is a key component of our economy you didn't do any polling on the part of tourists did you we did not in uh attempt to incorporate tourist voices into this this survey is specifically for Boulder residents what about Boulder businesses um you know uh you know for instance the polling results uh for feeling safe in our downtown areas I'm sure is a little bit different

[40:02] on the part of residents and business owners and it would be interesting and important I think to know both absolutely we do actually have we conduct a number of business surveys um some of the questions overlap the community survey uh some of them are unique to businesses and try to identify challenges within the business Community is absolutely uh something that we offer uh but then that was not included in the Resident survey effort okay I I I think that kind of excuse our overall picture a little bit but all right all right that's all I've got thank you I appreciate it very much sure Mark Karen all right my first question and hudos to the council members who asked all those questions ahead of time very impressive council members I wish I was as organized as you but I'm not so my two questions are um on page 73 of our

[41:03] packet and in a few different places it a uh indicate How likely or unlikely you are to do each of the following which then it says in your neighborhood during the day what does that mean How likely or unlikely you are to do each of the following in your neighborhood during the day like walk around in your neighborhood I think that is probably type he says page 73 and that is in the uh annotated tables I believe um so I'll direct you actually to I have the digital version in front of me okay instead to um page 22 in the report of results okay 22 22 22 okay so my question let me 23 has the has the data visualization on it page 23 so I guess my question then is and let me just get there somebody like tell a joke or something I'm scrolling

[42:00] scrolling I can actually just I think pop this over here oh awesome thank you and then just show you this thank you so my question is is why did you not say in your neighborhood during the night in um or in downtown during the night why not during the night is that because everyone's scared at night or um I mean that is one way to put it we actually did used to include during the day and at night at as separate questions on our template surveys we removed them actually just due to space constraints and because what we found was um very consistently that residents just feel less safe at night across the board both in their neighborhoods and in downtown areas with that said um that is certainly something we can add back in uh it's just always a matter of uh tradeoffs in terms of space on the survey I think uh for me it would be interesting to know how people feel at night in the downtown commercial areas um I think a lot of it of course has to do with lighting probably especially in

[43:01] neighborhoods um so there's that too but I would be interested in just that one little change um and then my second question was um you know when you asked about land use Planning and Zoning that the people had a less positive view yes find that better you than me jade there we go um what exactly does that mean like people don't and that's I would know what that means but I would probably think what do people think it means that's my question great question all of the questions on the survey are are the resident perception and and are very much impacted by that um you know being

[44:01] a longtime resident myself and also conducting these surveys across the country for almost 10 years now I would say anecdotally Boulder residents probably have a better sense of what this term means than average residents elsewhere because it is something that's so often talked about um but with and I I would say um you know obviously though there's also going to be residents who don't really have a good sense of all that this encompasses so this really just is to meant to be a broad capture of whatever the resident taking the survey however they interpret that and is very likely also to be influenced if there's any particular zoning changes or development going on in their immediate area as well so you think it's mostly zoning and development that uh people feel negative or positive about how that's going in general where we have seen I would say in general questions around growth development housing housing density um not not just in Boulder but uh Nationwide um where we've seen declines

[45:00] which is fairly often tend to be development related um like too much development there there's The Perennial uh issue of we don't want any more development but we also very much need more affordable housing um so and that's of course just as much a problem Boulder if not more as it is elsewhere yep but that just yeah okay that's it thanks Kar um any other questions or anyone I guess we heard from Sarah maybe we're not trying to interpret the results tonight but we can also make a couple comments if we'd like uh Ryan thanks Arin and thank thank you Jay thank you for all this uh this work and going through that all in such an expeditious manner um I I sent a few questions in but they were just a couple of hours ago so I'm I'm sorry to do that um and I don't want to put you too much on the spot but um I have a a few questions that are kind of on the thema I think of what Sarah said not to to

[46:02] worry too much about which is which is action and I mean maybe I'll just put it this way normally when I think about doing anything like a a customer service survey or a or um a survey of of people whose experience I'm interested in it's with the goal of informing action like it's sort of not that interesting on its own to know um whether somebody is satisfied or not so much as as it is what are their actual needs and preferences so that I can help get them what they need and Tara's um Point here on land use I think is really worth zeroing in on because I think you know we have a a national trend of urbanization and and increasing economic inequality which is driving a ton of issues um in towns like Boulder around housing and people who have the belief

[47:01] that um we need to we need to suppress the the migration into cities are not going to be happy with the direction and people who have tuned into the the science and and the planning that says actually what we need to do is we need to let more people live near where they need to go I mean both of those groups are going to be more unhappy under this scenario and asking them about their level of satisfaction doesn't tell us as much as um what asking you know where where we might go could be so anyway that's just one example and I don't mean to be critical but I'm just thinking about in general in the survey where are the places where we can um identify uh needs or preferences that that or maybe just action opportunities at like the high level like what are some of the big opportunities this tells us that Boulder should do um based on on what we've we've heard from people and I'm sorry Sarah you can call me off if we if we shouldn't talk about that yet but that's

[48:00] sort of my big question uh well I can briefly jump in here and just say that that's actually a wonderful um segue and topic too very much to deeper into we see this as very often a focus a strong focus in strategic planning sessions and next steps workshops that we conduct um you're in in terms of using surveys to inform um on a it's a very useful tool in order to do that especially in a uh special topic survey where it is pretty vital that the respondent have full information before being able to rate whatever it is that they are rating um they're going to rate you know X Housing Development potentially very differently depending on where it's located in the city um that's just one example or how much it will cost Etc um that is a great opportunity for just further like a special topics shorter form survey where we can ask a much more detailed question

[49:00] and even if it's an online only survey um what we've what we really see communities um doing more so is if it's a development plan where there's a mockup or something we can include images as well and ask residents to provide their comments and thoughts there as well lots of different ways to approach this okay thanks maybe I'll just ask one more question and and I'll um try to leave it at that it's and I mean it's kind of a different phrasing um how how should this be useful to city council I mean not in phase two but in this phase what um you know what what are implications that we should take from what we have here like just some I mean I I've read the executive summary I see what here but um I maybe just in your words like you know what what what do we do what should we do with this um great question uh in general um the the biggest drop that we saw here to crime prevention which is its own

[50:01] wheelhouse and separate from um from land use and and development so um I do want to broadly say here that we have seen safety ratings drop in virtually all communities um Nationwide and I know that sounds dramatic but it's it's pretty uh consistently true we have seen that um particularly in conjunction with the rise of very high profile uh news cases where there's been instances of um officer involved crime and such so we that has had a pretty profound George Floyd um that's had a pretty profound impact in safety ratings many of the communities where we work so that important context especially as you review the safety related issues on the survey um which we didn't really dive into too much here regarding the other um items that you see here um snow removal is always an interesting example to use because it is entirely dependent in our experience on the last snow that

[51:00] residents remember or the last bad snowstorm and so we can uh we can survey in the same community in March and then survey again in you know September and they get much better ratings in September because it's a little bit further back in memory um but with that said you know we're looking at these these particularly line items code enforcement land use um as part of a larger picture and so when we see declines in all these categories again it's just another indicator to really dig deeper into why and where I think you could really get more detail without having to do any more work um there are Cross tabulations by geographic area is one of the appendices in the report and so that can also give um pretty good insight into okay what in what areas of town are residents most or least pleased with for example code enforcement and land use and give you a better idea where to where to specifically to focus I was going to get to this after the discussion but we are going to be

[52:00] talking about some next steps um to really get to that question of what does this data mean and how should we respond to it including some engagement opportunities that we're proposing in February and one way we might look at it council member Shard is to look at the areas where we got these very low ratings and really do some some questioning of community about why do you think this is and what does this signal for us that we need to be doing differently so um I think there will be opportunities to dive deeper and you we could look at any any of the data in this survey but I suggest that it probably makes most sense to look at the ones where our community is saying hey you need to pay attention here thanks thanks for that Sarah and thanks for those questions R because I was going to ask a question about next step so that's great you'll be addressing that once we're done with our our questions and comments uh Nicole and then Taisha thank you mayor um and uh Sarah I think this one is probably a question for you and if you'd rather answer it in the next part that's okay too but I'm

[53:02] just wondering what can we do differently to get a better sense of how the communities um feel that we haven't really given a compelling reason to respond to the survey so the people who are kind of missing here um in in terms of their their representation and I'm really curious what issues they're noting and I'm asking this not just from an equitable represent representation perspective perspective but also from uh making our city safer and more resilient perspective because the people who are experiencing the worst impacts of our economic and climate and Social Challenges are really on the front lines of all the problems that we're facing in the community and so to not have their perspective as we're thinking about what our next steps and how are we going to use this data it just feels like a really big gap and and like we're missing some critical information that we're going to need as we are moving forward uh to address our sustainability and equity and resilience um goals soor

[54:01] comment I think it's a great question and I think what I want to be really clear about is that no one technique for hearing from Community is the Beall end all technique um and I think that you know some of the other things we're doing in the engagement space to really have focused conversations and in targeted interviews with individuals who might much be much more comfortable giving their their feedback from a in a verbal way anyhow um it's critically important the work you all have been doing um just before the budget where the community connectors worked with communities of color and other um populations in our area that we don't hear from quite as often about what their priorities are that should be overlaying on this survey we shouldn't be looking at any one thing as the one thing the gospel of what the community thinks and I think from an equitable perspective we know that um there are

[55:00] preferred ways more comfortable ways where people are going to give information and it's often built on relationships and Trust right and a paper survey or an online survey doesn't convey that so what I see the um this survey helping us do is reach sort of the missing middle who don't participate because they don't have as much time versus they don't participate because they don't think their voice will be heard some of the other engagement and Trust building and capacity we're building is is better to fill that Gap so it really you have to look at all of these sources of information and the different techniques in in their totality I think I could add to this too and in fact I could actually talk about this for an hour but I will try to uh strain myself this is a a very uh a topic that I have been um that our has been very very involved in especially recently as we try to really dig into what we call

[56:00] hard-to-reach Residence and I did address some of this in the written comments but I'll I'll um briefly revisit here to say that it is you know a continual I guess frustration and Paradox in survey research that those under repesent underrepresented voices we are trying to hear from are are those that are the hard that are the least likely to respond to surveys and they are the hardest to reach and this makes sense in in in the sense of you think of younger residents or those with families who are might be lower income who you know they they have a lot going on and are not going to have the uh the luxury sometimes of taking time to sit and take a long survey such as this with that said and then in a community like Boulder as well when we do a random sample survey of the entire population while it is representative to a certain extent when we have relatively small uh subgroups minority groups um and and demographic groups we still there's a conundrum

[57:02] there in which yes we are technically getting the correct portion based on who lives in the community and it is still not nearly enough voices for us to be able to draw conclusions from um in terms of subgroup comparisons our our goal for subgroup comparisons just to give some insight is if we have 100 respondents in each particular subgroup that would give us a margin of error of plus or minus 10% around those results which is still pretty wide but it's it's close enough to be actionable um that is that would require an enormous amount of oversampling or is a um a approach we've had some success with is is actually targeting households we have their sensus data available for primary language spoken at home for and this is again from self-reported census data um from ethnic or or racial groups that we can oversample or particularly Target

[58:00] with survey efforts um there there's a lot of different ways in which um we are trying to address this problem and include more of these voices and certainly the much larger part of the conversation in the prep for the next Community survey but also should be part of the conversation in any interim surveying or polling that we do between now and then as well Cole did you have anything else I've got Taisha and then Tara thank you so much for um all of this work um you know as a as a new newly elected um data who who values and loves data um this is really critical so I just wanted to share just my Approach of when I read these kinds of things as a new per new council member so we can better understand so the first thing I do is I find out more about the firm who conducted the research so I was well aware of the accolades and the exclusive

[59:00] partnership with the national league of city and was really excited to read um the pro the the report so that's always the first thing that I do is find out who who actually conducted the research um and who are they who who else are they working with and so I saw that you worked with lots of other cities across the country and that was also very very um you know grounding for for me as I went into the research the second thing I do is I go and I find out who responded to the research I don't even read the first sections because if I read the first sections without knowing who responded to the survey then I'm going to assume that the that this information is going to include all the people in all the ways that I'm thinking that it's going to happen and so what happens when I go back into read the actual piece there and and I'm going to just say when I got to page 194 I believe uh my heart was broken um to see white non-white hispanic not Hispanic [Music]

[60:00] um it was very difficult to see and it and it actually made sense why PE community of color feel the way that many of us feel this Erasure that's what a raser looks like and so I also come to this dis this virtual dis having been a trainer of Equitable research practices to researchers when in some of my previous experien is with a a world-renowned research institution that had been around for 75 years and one of the things that struck me is that there's a whole body of research around Equitable research practices and and one of them is really around not only ensuring that we are disaggregating um but that within a particular category but there were also cross aggregating right because I need to know what this looks like from all of the different intersections that you already have the data for and so when we give these highlevel um presentations unfortunately the unintended

[61:01] consequences can be the fact that we actually end up erasing the very erasing the very people that we say are now a priority a people whose labor again was used to purchase this land a people whose land this actually is with our indigenous brothers sisters and others and so I'm very very mindful about marginalized people and marginalized groups um as somebody who's been here for 11 so again I just wanted to give you a little bit of background to and context of some of the questions that I asked and thank you staff again I went to staff directly um and again thank you for allowing those to be public as other um council members and community members may have had questions and if anything I want our community members to know that I care that we do care that we aren't going to just imagine a world where you are where that said black all other races imagine a world I don't even care if it's true it's just and again we all have our own set of best practices right

[62:00] one of my the pre the best practices that I use many of them come from the why am I always being researched by Chicago Beyond or Beyond Chicago and um you know and many others actually in in the research Community I also work with researchers in Noah and all all different kinds of places at the state federal nonprofit Etc and you know it's been really wonderful to see that disaggregation and so I'm actually very eager for the next steps I'm also concerned around some the siloing of our research and again this is something that I'm excited to work with the team on um because you know as you said we have that data around racial and ethnic perspectives Etc but where is it if it's not crosswalked I think of also the incredible work by the um Emergency Family Assistance Center um and the incredible survey that they did what I I would love to see if we're talking about a community survey I want to see the community survey I want to see all of the dimensions of our incredibly rich and dynamic Community um their voices are valued and necessary and might I bring up this is not who we are actually

[63:00] played off of the Riff of Boulder is the most beautiful place to live or happiest place to live there's a whole documentary around that and so again to have this presentation start off with Boulder is the most happiest place or the 98% again there is significant over representation in the data there's significant there's only 17 black people who responded between the open survey and the statistical survey there that that can't even begin to to to gather the um diversity within di in the diversity within the DI diversity of the diaspora and so again I am just eager for us to find ways that we can integrate um and align our qualitative framework um and um yeah I continue to and I'm eager to work with all of you you sorry I just want to make sure I'm getting all my points um yes um I think I got them all

[64:01] but thank you again and again I'm I'm really excited to um work with you all to make sure that Boulder is is Cutting Edge when it comes to implementing Equitable research practices um and um unfortunately I feel like we've got a ways to go with this also with the Hispanic non-hispanic part um our people with disabilities I know we didn't ask for that disaggregation level but again you know there are dimensions um and so I'm eager to hear more from our people our communities uh with people disabilities lgbq plus even in the breakdowns like male female there was no trans there was no you know mean come on you know we we know what what we could be asking and and I just want us to be leaders I want us to be leaders in making sure that we're telling the Fuller picture so thank you so much and again I read your comments and uh to my questions so I really appreciate that um but but again I also know a set of best practices that says something else and so I'm eager um and also again I'm

[65:00] hopeful that we can have more researchers of color uh on our teams to make sure that that important perspective is there because quite frankly I think that because there's more researchers of color we are actually able to now ask these more difficult and challenging questions but again we have the data to do the disaggregation so I look forward to continue to work with you and all with all of you thank you so much for the time thanks very much for that thank and thank you for your comments very much uh written and spoken uh very much appreciate the candid feedback um and I did respond um we did respond in written form but just to to Really underscore there um it's true the the randomized nature of the community survey is not capturing enough responses from our subgroups from our PE um uh minority groups to be able to disaggregate the data in a way that still provides statistical meaning meaning um in order to do that we would need to um considerably oversample and

[66:01] and specifically seek out and Target households of with families of color um thank you J I really appreciate that mention about the oversampling I did mention I did have that as a note and I didn't bring that up but that is what you traditionally do you do go that extra mile and again remember that part where I said that the labor and all that stuff and all the laws right so this is not charity this is really you know reconciliation this is really making this is not um some extravagant e externality um but this is really um deserved and it's just thank you absolutely uh with enough responses we will we can change the way that waiting table looks if we have a sufficient number of responses from residents in each of those um race categories we can wait and with more granularity we can statistically wait with with more um responses in those groups so very much appreciate your your comments and your thoughts

[67:00] there thanks sh I've got Tara this is comment time right Aon yeah this whatever you like okay so I just wanted to say that um this was really helpful to me on a lot of levels I'd say from like a big picture point of view especially seeing the difference like how men and women see things um where and I think there's so much we can do with this of course women like safety more well they're they're not like safety more they're more affected by safety I would say which we all kind of knew but um there are so I feel like we can use I'm excited to how we can use this as a way to this was a great way to hear from the community on on a large level and see where people let's say of different economic backgrounds agree or disagree and where people people in general agree like across the board on X or Y let's say um affordability for

[68:00] instance and I can see not on every place but in some places we can definitely make a difference in the lwh hanging fruit for instance snow removal so I'm excited to see next steps and where we where we can make a difference we obviously can't do everything here because it's not under our purview but there are things we can do to make things a little bit better for a lot of people and so I'm excited uh how we can use this um survey I was it was very interesting reading and um I'm looking forward to it great now I got Matt appreciate that Aon um since we're sort of going into some uh comments and and points on this uh first just thank you for this um it's extremely comprehensive and um your reputation certainly precedes uh you guys um and if

[69:01] ironically when I was I was in DC for a conference and your firm was brought up by a number of cities and National League of cities uh with regards to some other work so um uh definitely have a strong reputation um I'm just appreciative of of how we've started to build some of this uh and yes we have a gap between 2018 and 2023 but hopefully we can avoid having that Gap again certainly with external circumstances and get a little bit more dialed in um on what those pieces are but I think what what really impresses me is sticking with those National Best Practices it's easy the Temptation and I and I've seen this in a lot of sort of like educational assessment that we've done when I was at the university is you want to somehow uh make it specific to your needs and it's really easy to fall into that because that's where you want to go but then you lose the ability to make those comparisons um and then know where you are in space um and so those are it's hard to balance those things but I appreciate your best efforts to do so um and and something that came about that I thought was rather interesting were uh

[70:02] things in the survey that I think a lot of us from the anecdotal responses we get from Community really were kind of opposite and and I found that fascinating one in particular was with regards to the ease of travel by car and ease of public parking we hear the opposite of that but to see that it's actually significantly improved roved from 2016 2018 to now I think is a really good sort of grounding uh moment for us in the community I think it also sort of gets rid of this narrative that somehow we are uh uh only doing things with regards to bikes um but but clearly our car infrastructure is doing just fine by the survey and so that that's caused for us to think about what are next steps of how do we rebalance um what we're doing with regards to vehicles and bikes so I think these this is really helpful for us in that sense and I'm uh the timing of this couldn't be better going into our retreat um here in a couple months um because I think there's some nuggets in here that give us confidence in moving in certain directions should we choose to do so uh

[71:01] as a council so again just wanted to say thank you and there's just a lot of good stuff that I think we're going to be digesting for some time here um and really appreciate it and to something that Taisha brought up um I think you know whether it's through your firm or in other things we do maybe separately I do think it's really important for us to start to really dive into some of these subgroups and I say that in in form of our our the demographics within a survey that may not make statistically relevant in a comprehensive survey like this but if we go to them individually and Survey them as a group under themselves we can sus out I think some greater uh information that we can then fold back into this larger comprehensive um understanding of where our community at and where different groups are so I think that'd be something I'd be interested to certainly on the engagement committee side of things I know that's more Council and Community but um uh that might be something for us to look look forward to down the road just so we know uh where some of these other communities who are maybe not being uh fully understood in this comprehensive survey where they stand on

[72:01] a number of these issues so really excited about those opportunities again great work and and thank you so much thank you for the comments I do want to briefly say since uh we're talking about further engagement as well and it was mentioned earlier different methods of Outreach such as the in-person interviews um focus groups that sort of thing and there was a question earlier of course about different types of bias and surveying and so it is important to note that in-person interviews phone interviews any type of interaction with uh where you're speaking to an actual person uh that and elicit something called positive response bias so that is something to keep in mind people are more likely to give you a positive rating if they're talking to you versus uh filling out a survey uh on paper or online uh a good balance here that I I want to just put out there for you all to to keep in mind for further surveying is um there this is very qual quantitative data and not very qualitative uh following up with online short form surveys gives you the opportunity to allow um write in

[73:02] responses um and those can be really useful um again qualitative um but can provide more insight into maybe the why behind the you we can tell a survey tells us what residents think not why they think it they can provide additional insight there great thanks you got Lauren I have one quick thing myself thank you um I have to say that I'm most interested in hearing our most steps section coming up next so I might have some more comments again after that but I think for me um you know especially after hearing tesa's comments I I have a lot of concern that we didn't oversample you you know I think that while this information might be useful in seeing Trends over time um I don't

[74:02] feel like we can go forward with a lot of confidence with some of the gaps that I feel like these have um because just not only gaps in terms of the lack of over sampling but you know not knowing really how people interpret this and I get that we can follow up with more detail later but I have I wouldn't want us to move forward with sort of a level of overconfidence that could end us in trouble based on the information I think we should be honest with ourselves about where the strengths in this lie and where um we still have need to fill in with um to create a higher level of certainty thank you you for I do want to point out too there is one level of uh oversampling that is built into our methods and that

[75:00] is oversampling multif family housing that has long been something that we have done uh because those who live in attached housing uh are also part of that um hard-to-reach group that under respond to surveys compared to their counterparts and so by over we over sample uh by a five to three ratio in order to elicit more responses from those residents um and those who live in multi family housing also tend to be uh of some of those other check boxes in terms of you know younger residents or those who may be lower income who we're also not hearing enough from so I do want to just acknowledge that there is some oversampling certainly built into our methodology and it's also clear that there could certainly be more and different oversampling taken into consideration for future efforts understand I got Ryan and then Taisha thanks Aaron just on the comment side two things first I want to uh lift up what TAA said and that Lauren just underlined this is incredibly important

[76:00] and I wish I had spent more time um in noticing this uh issue myself and um we'll be eager when we talk about next steps to understand if there are things we can do to enhance our Fidelity um to the communities that we need to be paying more attention to in this part of the work uh and and if and also um really put a marker that for the next time we do an exercise like this um that we're spending the time and the resources to to really try to get that right so that's my first comment my second comment is to agree with Matt and um I just think it's kind of a uh it's quite the statement that the ease of public parking is up from 32% a few years ago to 54% um I guess that's s satis satisfaction and ease of travel by car is up from 39% to 64% so just I mean these are two of the these are just a

[77:02] lot of improvement in those categories conversely public transportation from 63% down to 56% air quality from 81% down to 62% um I uh I I think this gives us um some analytical grounding that Matt pointed out um that should tell us we need to get a lot more focused and aggressive about creating a less car dependent or multimodal human Center transportation system it's focused on access and accessibility over a vehicle through put um so thanks for that Matt for bringing that up that's all I have thanks TAA thank you um also just want to Echo Matt's comments I mean again it is a delicate balance about making sure that we can um be able to do comparisons across cities at the same time it is Boulder's tradition to lead the way and help other cities make the changes that

[78:01] need to happen so I'm really excited again to find and strike that balance with all of you I also wanted to lift up uh another critical part of our community that wasn't included in this and that's our unhoused um these are former teachers in our community 30 years at veteran teachers these are scientists these are and quite frankly although I care to know similarly as a renter I care to know what people who own homes think a rent program should look like or men and what they think a women's program should look like for example um but honestly I think it's absolutely critical and I was really impressed by Los Angeles I think they did the mo the large the most recent largest survey of unhoused people I think they had 1300 respondents to that survey and it was really powerful um to hear and again to see some of the alignments with some of the things that that are on the table from the Homeless Solutions section as well as some of the things that aren't so as we continue to consider next steps I'm eager to find

[79:01] out um what what our what our unhoused community wants thank you so much thank you for for your comments there that the the unhoused and and homeless population is by definition I would say the hardest to reach and that we do not have a physical address in which we can we can get to these folks with that said there are obviously other means of contact and um you know homelessness is is an issue in Boulder it's an issue in many communities in which we work uh and so you're absolutely right capturing these voices and um the challenges that they face is is also extremely important in addition to those who have actual residences here in Boulder uh well so my my big question is a segue to Sarah which is how is the city going to make use of this information in next steps that we take in our community keeping in mind the extremely important comments made by T and some

[80:00] other folks here about who was sampled and who was being represented in these in these in this data so Sarah maybe you can talk to us about next steps here a little out from this sure so I think in general some of the really great learnings just from the Fe comments tonight and and some places that we can explore is how we approach surveying across you know for the future for all surveys that we do in the city and other ways of gathering research in terms of this particular Community survey I can tell you that outside the context of council um the city manager's office and directors are already starting to really absorb the data dissect the data ask questions about what it may or may not mean and city manager will continue to work with us on the sort of changes we might want to make in shifting our priorities around the operations of the city so services that are more operational in nature for Council I think you have a unique opportunity

[81:00] given the timing of the survey as you a couple of you mentioned we have some new council members so you're just sort of starting to look at their totality of all the ways we get feedback from our community and th that totality should be shaping your priorities um I as I think we've we've said previously we are looking at doing a council Retreat probably in March still trying to settle on some dates but that's a little different than the January Retreat that we used to do and that gives us a couple of months not a lot of time but to do some more community outreach and engagement around this particular survey tool if we wish to um to try to get more feedback around some of those areas where we didn't score as well or where it's gone down um to understand what some of the implications are later this month my team will meet with your two newly appointed Council engagement subcommittee members Matt and Tara we have a meeting scheduled and one of the things that we're going to talk about is a question that Matt asked me which is

[82:01] when do we get to hear the community's response to the survey and when can we dive deeper into where there might be appropriate Lanes of action for us to take and I um spoiler alert we're going to recommend to the subcommittee staff that we hold at least one community openhouse that really um allows us to look at this data with community members in a public participation kind of context and we hope many of you will be able to join us that will be ideally sometime in February so that at least for that sliver of Engagement you can bring it into your retreat as you know your retreat is typically a time where you either refine priorities or identify priorities from a policy perspective and this survey can be part of what informs that again it's only part of what should be informing that um and also it's an opportunity to talk about any process changes you might make um and so there could be some feedback that we could get at the open house around some possible

[83:01] process changes as well so we intend to use the next month to um go deeper into what the data is telling us um and start to think about ways that we can do even better jobs of collecting feedback in a more Equitable and representative way in our community Mary just you want to add to that yeah I just wanted to add and I I just want this has been a um a fabulous conversation in my perspective and I appreciate the conversations I've had with some of you before this meeting I and wanted to add I know that um Ryan has just invited me to a meeting with the community connectors on this very data as well and that this is um both the substant comments of this data point that we have in time and pushing us to continue to consider are there different ways are there better ways are there deep deeper ways to think about um how we're representing the totality of our community are welcome we have been thinking about some of that internally

[84:01] and um I know we're still working on sort of thinking about the equity index we we created uh that just starts to disaggregate data I know we've been thinking about partnering with other um possible Partners in community that are really taking a deeper look at what disaggregation or decolonization of data looks like so please know that we hear uh what you're saying we understand it and we lift up that balance of this is information that we have at a moment and how do we balance those as we move forward so I just wanted to um share out an appreciation for the cander of the conversation as we continue to um listen and improve ways in which we're hearing if you will thanks for that Lauren Tina and Nicole thank you um yeah I I understand that this is the data that we have right now but I think as we move forward with sharing it out you

[85:01] know that we need to be um clear and transparent about what this data represents and what it doesn't represent and so I would encourage you to also think about how we are communicating the holes or gaps in this data um as part of that communication process that we're having with the community thank you Tina Nicole and terara NOP Tina dropped out oh here I am sorry can you hear me yeah go ahead okay um yeah kind of echoing what Lauren is saying and also um I think relative to Taisha that this data is just one small way of finding out what's going on in the community we have lots of different ways to reach out to people and we should be reaching out particularly to people who are not necessarily represented and also just being cautious with things even even like the parking one big difference between 2018 and 2023 is that we're now at a 30 to 35% vacancy rate in our offices downtown and so when

[86:02] we see these big shifts in the postco environment how can we just do a little bit of extra communication around you know what is the cause of this sentiment that's causing the experience it may not have anything to do with having built more parking or encouraged cars but just this really big you know change in our environment after the pandemic thanks Nicole and you um I just wanted to kind of asterisk Lauren's idea around sharing out you know some of the context when when we do share out that survey just kind of capturing some of the things that we've talked about tonight love that idea um and would like to see that moving forward um I was also wondering because you know um uh what you were talking about Sarah was that we are getting some of this information to try to inform um The Retreat and and and our thinking around the retreat can we before the retreat

[87:01] hear about the connector's discussion if they're open to sharing um some things with us as well as kind of the community um the community thoughts that from the engagement with the survey I think that would be really wonderful uh to hear as well um and I just wanted to kind of get back to um a point that Taisha made about um silos and and I think just sort of a future ask for the um engagement committee or who whoever is looking at this in the future is that when we're getting information um from a survey like this that is just one piece of a bigger puzzle can we maybe not just get it as one piece but kind of get a a fuller picture as we're interpreting it just so that we're not um kind of led to thinking that this is one piece because I think sometimes when it gets communicated out to community um and even when we're hearing and it can sometimes feel like this is it this is the picture and then it gets hard to kind of undo that message that it's not the whole picture it's just one piece so

[88:00] I'm just wondering about in the future if we can kind of hear more of it more of that picture together because I know that there are many other ways that you all are engaging um with community and that we're hearing from people and and I I know it would be a longer meeting but um I think it would be a a potentially helpful one there so just a flag for um the next time this comes around thanks get tar and then maybe we'll wrap up well I just want to say that as somebody who's done a lot of community engagement including go to all different neighborhoods door too talk to people on the phone of all types what is great about this uh survey is that sometimes across the board in all our different communities in general not detailed because I agree with you that I wish that I could call up some of those people and say well why do you feel this way exactly it wasn't enough information but in general you can say every most people 90% 80% feel this way

[89:01] and I think there's a lot we can use this for so I hope we don't just throw out the baby with the bath water that's a bad phrase but I just hope that we can use this for some things because the community is trying to tell us something and not everybody reads all the and I'm not pointing fingers but it's hard to read all the emails that come our way I mean there's so many of them so this is one glance into how people in the community feel and I think it's fine to say okay we have things that we can do better and even though it wasn't perfect and we wish it was this and that still in all this is another way for us to know how many people in the community feel and so I hope we don't just throw it out because of the many reasons we'd like to but we can use it as one part of the many ways that we try to engage Community um all of us separately and together as a city and so that's what I have to

[90:00] say Tera thanks um Taisha I just want to um assure Tara that or commissioner or councilwoman sorry I'm still acclimating to the new role ter I'm no longer commissioner I'm no we're no longer commissioner we are Council folks and that's awesome um T I have no uh commission uh councilwoman minor I have have no intention you know this is definitely valid it's just you need to know what it's valid in who whose voices are we hearing in it that's all and when we don't when we don't provide the limitations of the survey data and findings in our reporting people don't know what the limitations are and unfortunately then they think that this is what everybody feels and so that's really the challenge but I would argue no this is a very valuable in all of my comments there is value in this in this survey and I look forward to um leveraging every single scrap of what we can use to make sure to strengthen our

[91:00] city collectively so thank you so much all right and with that then I will Jade we just thank you so much for all the work that you did to to get us to this point and while um we're talking about ways in which we can do other things and and better things in the future we do have a great set of data in front of us as Tara and Taisha just noted so really appreciate everything that you did to make this happen for joining us here tonight thank you all very much for your thoughtful comments and uh and feedback and um happy to continue the conversation and help uh brainstorm ways to continue to reach um these segments of the community that we currently are challenged by so thanks again for your time tonight okay and with that we'll wrap up this item and Lea if we can go to our next matter please yes sir our next item under Matters from the city manager is item 5B

[92:00] it is the update on the facilities master plan implementation thanks so much Alicia and I know this is one council members that you have heard a lot about uh I certainly he hear a lot about it um and appreciate all the intentionality that um Joanna and her team um put to this so Joanna I'll kick it off to you before we send it to Michelle wonderful good evening council members I'm Joanna Kanan I'm the director of facilities and Fleet and uh as was mentioned we're going to be talking about the facilities master plan but I do want to begin by recognizing the term Master obviously um that's not something we want to continue using uh it's a reflection of of what we have had in the past um and so I do want to acknowledge that that we are working to get that term removed as well as figure out what the common terms that we want to be using going forward so um our our

[93:01] facilities plan was actually accepted by Council in October 2021 and it was uh significant in the sense it was our first comprehensive strategic view of all of our city buildings and then laid the groundwork for how we're advancing our work across our building portfolio so the purpose of tonight is to provide an update uh and context on the plan as well as an update on the financial strategy in terms of implementing that and so this will hopefully help inform Council ahead of some important decisions that we'll be bringing forward later this year as well as next year on a variety of projects some of which you have um I'm sure heard about like the Western City Campus so with that I will pass it over to Michelle crane who is the city's architect and Senior manager manager and she'll lead our presentation this evening thanks Joanna um and good evening council members it's a pleasure to be here in front of you again um

[94:01] talking about our city buildings and the importance and impact uh they have these valuable assets so I'm gonna go ahead and pull up the presentation and Michelle do you want to uh address about how you'll be in the three sections with pauses I will yes um I have that in the early part can everyone see that great yeah I will get to that in just a moment just how we'll break down the discussion tonight to just kind of bring it into chunks for people to um to give us comments and feedback um so I am going to start though before I get to that with just quickly going over uh the key issues that we have been talking about in our master plan or in our plan um for a while now and these key issues are one our current buildings are old and they are not currently meeting our social our environmental or our financial needs and the city also has a history of underfunding our operations in

[95:01] maintenance and it has resulted in a large um deferred maintenance backlog so we're constantly addressing emergencies and responding to failures in buildings and lastly the big issue that we want to address in surface tonight is the importance of a well-funded operations and maintenance plan not only to lower our total cost of ownership but also as a key climate and resilience strategy so our purpose here in the study session is to emphasize the importance of taking care of these large Investments we're going to talk about after we complete those initial constructions and we're going to talk about ways we can accomplish that so um to Aon to your point this is the way we've gone ahead and structured the conversation for this evening um what I'm going to start with is first providing a background and just some key information on our facilities plan and the long-term Financial strategy that we presented to council last may we want to recap some of the

[96:01] policy direction we received at that meeting and then we'll stop and we'll pause for any questions around the plan itself for that Financial strategy and would love to get some feedback um on that work then in the second section we'll come back and I'm going to dive a little deeper into the maintain well key initiative of our plan and go more to how this is really a climate resilience strategy and I'll also touch on the key capital projects that we are advancing this year and then again we'll pause and we'll um allow some time for questions and discussion on those two pieces and then lastly I'm going to provide some background and update on the work we've been doing exploring a public private partnership to help us accomplish all these goals um and that'll be kind of the last pause when we can allow for some more questions on that particular work so at each section we will pause and allow Council some time to just have some feedback um on what we had just discussed and in any questions have hey

[97:01] Michelle I'm sorry to interrupt I don't know if you can come a little closer we're getting a little bit of crazy feedback or or just description sure is that any better hopefully okay um so what we are hoping that you walk away with this evening is just a good understanding of the current situation in our building portfolio uh and the solutions we're developing to address the challenges as we move ahead and as Joanna mentioned there will be decisions coming forward to council both this year and next and so hopefully this is some good grounding and background ahead of those a lot of those decisions will come either through specific projects or a lot of them will come through our 2025 budget process so with that um I'm going to go ahead and I'll move into just some background on our facilties master plan so our city building portfolio consists of about 75 buildings and just

[98:00] under 2 million square feet and is at a current replacement value of about $700 million we have some buildings across the city that have been dispersed by Design to serve specific areas of the community and others that have been added uh over time in a much less intentional way that now we're actually creating challenges for our community access services and they make it hard for staff to work together and take care of these buildings efficiently our buildings are on average about 50 years old and half of them roughly were built before or prior to the 1970s we have underinvested for decades in their maintenance and the result is that we are regularly chasing failures like some of these photos you're seeing on the screen um last year we requested $1.3 million outside of our budget cycle to respond to emergency repairs in buildings in our facilities plan we discussed the life span of a building

[99:00] and this point when operations and maintenance becomes exponentially more expensive and sort of after this inflection point um we are at or past that inflection point in many if not most of our buildings and we are again struggling to keep up with repairs um and fixes come at the cost of abrupt disruption of service to our community when we make costly repairs under emergency conditions We are failing to address climate resiliency or social goals for our buildings so we're simply kind of fixing the brakes and trying to get things back up running quickly in past presentations um I've discuss this in depth in financial terms and about the higher total costs of owning buildings and operating them in this manner but tonight I also want to present the importance of ongoing preventative operations and maintenance is part of a stratey stry to address the climate crisis and keeping buildings reliably operating means reliable programs and services to our community this is

[100:01] resiliency and it ensures that those who most need our services can get them when they need them so our facilities plan looks to chart a new course from that which I just described we are proposing Solutions in a framework to make strategic investments in buildings so that when we invest we are making impact on all of our city goals two key initiatives were proposed that are fundamental to turning the tides on our city buildings and making these positive impacts the maintain well key initiatives so that is taking care of what we have in all of our city buildings uh will result in these four principal outcomes so a lower total cost of ownership achieving our climate action targets and decarbonizing our building stock resil resiliency through reliability and predictability and lastly we improve Equity when we take care of the places and all people come for services and ensuring quality

[101:01] access the other key initiative was to consolidate services so those I mentioned that become scattered or sometimes duplicated across the city over time and this will result in greatly improved customer service experience both in the physical way uh people experience our buildings themselves but also operationally and how deliver our services in a more centralized and consistent manner modern facilities will uh provide better accessibility they can be all have provide all inclusive amenities features uh we can provide better healthy indoor air uh indoor envir air environments which is increasingly critical uh as our outdoor environment degrades and through consolidation we can address duplication of services and buildings and provide more functional and flexible spaces than that can be better adapted to the Future when needs change and we are building High performing buildings that cons serve resources like water are highly

[102:00] efficient provide redundancy and resiliency and reduce our carbon impact so last May um we presented a long-term Financial strategy to help Implement these key initiatives um and that strategy identified some key ingredients that are very specific to buildings that could be leveraged to help fund large building projects so each block here represents a various funding source that when it's combined is how we develop a total funding necessary for a project so it's made up of you see in Blue City dollars from our general fund or other dedicated sources and the orange blocks here represent really unique opportunities in buildings to provide or generate funds through efficiency um I'll talk later about these um generated efficiency funds as part of what we call an availability payment in a P3 structure but when we vacate current buildings so poorly performing inefficient buildings we can

[103:01] capture savings and they become annual funds towards efficiency or efficiently operating and maintaining new projects we can also avoid large infrastructure replacement costs in current buildings and lastly when we vacate old buildings as part of a consolidation the sale of some of those buildings will generate proceeds necessary to help fund new capital projects so leveraging these orange blocks in particular is essential to both reduce sort of the initial Capital that we need on a project um for one-time sources but it's also used to reduce the amount of ongoing debt financing we have shown in the past how vacating buildings to consolidate services and staff to the new Western City Campus at Alpine balam could unlock several million dollars annually now directed towards these existing buildings we avoid millions in future uh

[104:01] infrastructure needs in these buildings and again the sale of some of them could provide significant additional one-time funding most of the buildings being vacated are in the Civic area and we um our team are part of that part of that team working on that next phase of development so we will be bringing more information specific uh around our city buildings and and decisions that need to be made as that project advances so again in May of last year we proposed two key policies from that long-term financial plan I just went through that were supported by Council to help fund and maintain new building projects first is to dispose of City properties that will be vacated by consolidation and what does disposal really means is not repurposing them for something else once staff vacate but either tearing them down which is the case for two of our buildings New Britain and Park Central which are in our high Hazard flood zone or selling

[105:02] them for future private development the second policy was to ring fence savings or put like a virtual barrier around that savings that comes through efficiency um and make that go directly towards funding new building projects and ongoing Mains so since receiving that council's support in May to take this direction staff have advanced details of our funding Strate strategy and the specific budget requests will be making as part of the 2025 budget process so at this point I'm gonna pause um and just stop here for uh Council questions really around our facilities plan and our long-term Financial strategy thanks Michelle Council questions in this section Mark Matt Ju Just just a couple of questions um have you estimated the capital cost uh not merely of the five projects that

[106:01] are scheduled to uh be developed in the next five years but of the entire transformation of our Capital assets to meet our environmental goals do we have any sense of what we're looking at here um we we don't um we are starting to we've been putting together of the decision Matrix if you will really looking building by building at you know what are the Capital Improvements needed in each of those um and starting to kind of get more granular we've prioritized a number of buildings that are kind of critical if you will um in infrastructure needs and so those are some of the initial projects you see but the challenge with putting a total Capital cost is it's so subject to timing and when you actually might build those produ projects um you know escalation on building projects can be uh significant just a few years out but it is our goal kind of in our next phase

[107:01] of working through our facilities plan and the next steps is to get more specific on each building like what is the plan what do we need to do in this particular building is it just incremental adjustments to uh infrastructure to meet our goals which is the case in some buildings or in others do we really need large renovations to meet those goal so that's that's kind of the next steps past these current projects that we've identified as priorities okay because if I recall memo those five projects you were talk we were talking about were about $ 250 $280 million just for those and it's got to be larger than that because uh it's $1 150 to $200 million estimate uh just for Alpine Balsam so you know you're you're looking at probably what half a billion for those five buildings and then some Untold number for the rest and um I I think we have to work in the context of

[108:01] what the total program looks like um not um doing a peace meal and and suddenly finding out we can't we can't do the next five buildings um you know we we need to plan for this um in with the knowledge of of of what those commitments are going to be um my second question is can you explain a little more about how the ring fencing of Energy savings actually work I mean if if your energy bill declines by 30% do you assume that there's going to be some allocation uh of that amount from the general fund towards the facilities Department um you yeah so what what the ring fening really is in it's from both energy but it's also oper operations and maintenance so a number of the buildings that we're talking about consolidating um in our facilities plan we assessed the just the ongoing operations and

[109:01] maintenance funding and it was at the time I think it was like $1 a square foot which was actually two times the industry standard for operating and maintaining buildings it was around $5 a square foot um that typically buildings are operate and maintain it so there is savings inherent in just op operating our buildings more efficiently right now we're chasing failures we're fixing things in emergency conditions so we're paying a premium at doing that so when we build a new building and out of the gates we've got something that's well oiled and operating well in our current operating budget we have money dedicated towards you know those current those existing buildings we vacate them and then we can redirect that uh funding towards those new buildings and that's the idea of ring fencing the savings if you will and redirecting them towards operations and maintenance of those

[110:00] buildings so in in effect you're saying that those savings become a source of dedicated funding that's right and and and I raise that issue because we we have you know issues with respect to the proliferation of dedicated funds for one purpose or another and and this appears to be a form of dedicated funding is is that a a mischaracterization well it is leveraging the Savings in order to operate and maintain those new buildings uh in a manner that we want to to not kind of get us back into the state that we're at today um those savings could be leveraged in order to do that and so that is you know we are talking about putting kind of that fence around those savings so that they can be used essentially for the same purposes they are buildings today um but not dispersed elsewhere okay I I think that answers the question it is kind of a form of of dedicated funding um and and please don't don't infer from

[111:01] that that I'm I'm um thinking adversely about the program because I'm I'm very very strong on on proper maintenance of our Capital assets but this is this is a technique that that um and to some extent you know we moving away from um I thought uh a very significant portion of our budget is now dedicated funding for one purpose or another and this is piecing off yet another form of savings uh on a dedicated basis so um I think that's worth some some further conversation and I I I do look forward to your more complete um uh detailing and estimation of what this program is going to to cost us uh because uh I think it is a a number that is going to be breathtaking uh when we when we see it in full thank

[112:00] you thanks Matt then Lauren thanks Aron uh and Mark I actually appreciate those questions um because they are somewhat uh related to where I was going which is thinking about like our bonding Authority and what what how can we use our assets and leverage them um to uh accelerate some of the work that we're trying to do um and so there were two places I was curious about is can we borrow against some of these current assets that we have that are sitting there and can that accelerate by by borrowing against that by issuing debt more or less can that give us some money to then more urgently tackle and frontload some of these projects so we have less risk later on so that's a question I'm curious about what's our bonding capacity do you know do we have any overhead before we risk our bond rating so that's a that's something that I'm curious about and then similarly is you know especially when we're thinking about like these you know our climate work on this is you know could we borrow similarly using that bonding 30 could we borrow against

[113:00] the climate tax more or less and get money early to make those more rapid investments in that very important climate work that has urgency right that that $5 million a year we're kind of waiting a while for those coffers to build maybe we can borrow against that and get some accelerated work done so so that's something that I'm curious about is just are those tools available to us and if so to what extent um and maybe if we do embark on them do they create risk in other areas like our bond rating or other things so that that's what I'm just approaching this the this approaching it the same way Mark was but just maybe from a slightly different angle on on on how do we achieve the overall goal which I think is important with our Capital assets yeah those are great questions I'm actually gonna um ask someone from our Central Finance to talk more specifically about our bonding capacity and maybe help address those we have so I and I didn't mean to make Jonathan Cohen squirm in his chair uh by throwing out you know issuing debt on on that climate check so I'm sorry

[114:00] John I appreciate that Michelle I think you're trying to phone a friend here and like it yeah um so whether uh Charlotte or Mark and I know Cara wanted to be here and is not feeling well but if someone could assist that would be really great good evening Council Mark wolf assistant city manager I have to put an old hat on briefly um oh you're back in Mark yeah thanks um we do have uh bonding capacity against the climate tax that was authorized uh by voters I don't know that capacity off the top of my head um but that is a possibility if it's in alignment with the climate tax language um borrowing is an option for this project and Michelle will get into it in a little bit more detail it is a policy Choice whether or not we pursue a P3 or borrow for for the project uh and borrowing and the ongoing support of The Debt Service that in essence is a a a again we're making that choice and that amount of ongoing money we're using to

[115:00] pay the debt service is not available for other things um the the ring fencing specifically uh gets at the ongoing operating and maintenance which we wouldn't be borrowing for there's an option to include that in a P3 which we'll outline in a moment um the the ring fencing isn't a dedicated funding s Source per se uh if we self Finance whether we borrowed um regardless of the source of funds we're borrowing against uh that that operating and maintenance would still be subject to annual Council appropriation which uh to Michelle's presentations uh in the memo um we haven't been great at over the you know decades and so I think that's a a big policy question to um dive into is not only whether or not we borrow for the capital side of things but how we think about ultimately financing and budgeting for the ongoing uh operating and

[116:00] maintenance I appreciate that Mark was a good response so I mean I leave it to our trusty Financial team to figure out I just want to make sure that those options are on the table and we consider them uh given the urgency of some of this climate work and the dire some of that dire nature of we need to accelerate that work on our facilities and other things so appreciate that thank you I I appreciate those bigger picture framing bigger picture questions um that Mark and Matt both brought up um I have a couple of sort of questions more about some of the language we're using um on our graph where we talk about sort of building life cycle and end of life as we think about sort of the usefulness of buildings I would really like us to think about that as more um maybe before it needs a major Rehabilitation or something like that because I mean the reality is that

[117:00] often the structures of those buildings don't they could still serve a purpose whether or not they can serve the purpose that we want them to um effectively is is the question so and and also looking at that graph that was kind of around the cost of building maintenance over time are there things that we're doing as we move forward to try and address that on the design Side by making buildings that are easier to maintain over time yeah absolutely so just and both your questions so great points um so we are very much trying to adaptively reuse a lot of buildings and I'll actually get into that with alkine ball them and our team has done sort of extensive work now on multiple adaptive reuses um and at times recognized when some building forms are very challenging um and when

[118:01] they're kind of cost prohibited but I would agree our preference is to reuse a building um before we try to tear it down and do something else so I appreciate that um that comment and um definitely wanted to take that approach um as far as uh your second question you can remk me what you were just as we look at these new projects um on the design side are we making sure that we're asking for buildings that have lower maintenance costs over time as part of how we're dealing with those issues yeah that was so that thank you was a key part of what we presented in our plan is right now just kind of given the way we've evolved into this situation sort of some underfunding in making critical infr structure Replacements and and moving forward we're in a very reactive state so everything is kind of reacting to Something's failing and so it's it's coming at a high cost one thing just

[119:01] maintaining well in existing buildings and when we build um and put in new equipment when we properly fund kind of infrastructure renewal and operations and maintenance we can do more preventative and predictive maintenance and so we extend the life of equipment and that was one thing we actually presented in our plan um in some graphs and and could walk through that in detail at some point but before a piece of equipment fails if we maintain it it's like putting an oil change in your car it's you know getting ahead of that failure it's before things rust it's before things start to fall apart that we can really extend the life of equipment and um we aren't responding to repairs so that is the approach we want to take to reduce our costs but also extend the equipment life yeah and my question was more about as we look at designing buildings with new systems ensuring that those new systems are systems that won't require as much maintenance you know that that the that we're taking into account the life cycle

[120:02] costs of build of the building ownership for the buildings that are being designed yeah I'll get into this a little bit more in a minute and so it's an interesting balance but really one challenges is as we drive towards really high performing energy efficient buildings they're actually becoming even more and more complicated they're more like really um technical machines as they automate and they respond to their conditions and I'll get into that a little bit more in the next slide what we are trying to do and balance when we work with our Engineers on new buildings is sometimes we can over engineer buildings and make them their systems very complicated so we do balance looking at simple simple systems but one thing that's really complex is all these s systems now talk to each other and they do that autonomously and so that's still uh really Demands a high level of

[121:00] attention from an operations and maintenance team to keep that system running well when it does it's efficient um but it's not some way that we can kind of just peel back on on looking at it thank you um and then I Al saw that that number for the buildings that we're looking at letting go of as being .8% of acreage I assume that that's including parks in open space um I'd have to go back and look at exactly but I it it I think excludes open space okay includes Parks but excludes open space but I could reconfirm with that number the acreage there yeah I mean I would just be interested in seeing it it as a number that doesn't include Parks or open space sure yeah thank you right thanks Michelle and Joanna for

[122:02] your diligent work on this um I have two questions on I guess climate and energy strategy uh I sent a hotline on this again it was just before the meeting and I apologize for the late notice um but the the first one is um I I really enjoyed reading about the focus on energy analysis and having a um a climate compatible approach with the buildings um and when I think about a modern approach to energy and buildings I think about land use and transportation that focuses on or a transportation approach that focuses on accessibility and this is a timely point for Boulder because our um update from climate initiatives on December 14th pointed out that transportation and land use is one of the most pernicious problems that we continue to have um with our our uh need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and um so my question is it it feels to me in the the

[123:02] reading of the proposal there's a lot of focus on buildings inside the building Rel relative to that on um how people get to the buildings how we might or might not induce demand um and I'm just wondering if you've given access or accessibility um much thought with respect to the the climate strategies and I don't want to put you too much on the spot so if the answer is um we need to think about that more that's fine but I just love to hear you maybe just speak to that yeah absolutely so um we did get a response off to your questions but I'm happy to share I I actually shared a diagram that I'm G to pull up now um so we have thought a lot about access um and let me see is that back up there um so can we all see that screen so uh gosh I think this was back in 2019 we um did some analysis particularly when we were just starting

[124:01] to really think about consolidation um so first uh our we have staff scattered and services scattered across the city and one thing we commonly hear uh both from community members trying to access services but our staff is they're getting in their car and their driver from one place to the other place to another place to get something within the same day we know our staff are doing this too they're driving from one building to another to meet with different people and so that's very inefficient um so consolidation and bringing all staff and services to one or two Central locations that are easy to access and in places that provide multimodal transportation was something that we were thinking about um this little kind of high level Urban analysis if you will started to look at um the location of Alpine balam which had been purchased by the city but it noticing that you know this this yellow is really highly residential and it's where we

[125:01] know there's a lot of people living now and it's on Broadway which is a major um you know roadway through here so this was one location to feel like centralization could uh help um with that and then the other as we looked kind of out east what were the opportunities because we can't fit everything at Alpine Ballam we have a lot of other services and and still other things um to accommodate we started to look at where the Boulder Valley comp plan was uh forecasting growth in the future and that's in you know the East Boulder area so this is where we see people but then we also looked at where staff were Comming from and the current Municipal service center which is out on uh the Pearl Park way um extension there um is a property that the city already owns it's a large amount of land there it is sort of a way potentially to intercept a lot of people coming into the city and

[126:01] provide services out east before they may have to penetrate deeper into the city so those are some of the things we are thinking about um when we think about city services especially with those two big consolidations but um even with smaller uh potential consolidations of servic is thinking about where are they accessed are they easily accessed by many months so those are some of the the the things that we've included so far thank you for that Michelle and thank you to you and the team for responding so quickly and coming up with the graphic uh nevertheless um my second question maybe I won't put it to you because you sort of got to it but um I asked if there was a thinking on Transportation demand management sort of in keeping with the high performing um aims of of the program um I I my suspicion is you have time to kind of work this out but I'll just maybe just leave it with the thought that you know the go the government's own facilities here with with our facilities we have such an opportunity to play a leadership role and show developers that are coming

[127:00] to us in providing TDM proposals that planning board and the transportation board are often saying you shall try it again with um we have such was such an incredible opportunity to provide um a role model um so if you feel respond to that but otherwise I'll just I'll just leave it it it well it is part of the work that we do whenever we develop a a project we do have to do Transportation demand management studies on those projects um Alpine ballism in particular is a very aggressive um model with that so I think in that particular um project we are leaning the way uh in um what we're trying to accomplish there thanks a lot Tina and Mark and we do have two more sections of this coming up as well yeah I just um and I think this my comments probably relate more to the next session section but because Ryan brought up the location of the building I'll follow up on it now and I've had

[128:00] some concern about having the services on the very western edge of Boulder given how we're dispersed and where employees are trans are coming from and so given that we're doing two campuses um I I just hope that we keep that in mind that we might want to be thinking more about the central location I don't know if we need two locations um the other piece is when we purchase this land and given that this was reconsidered in 2019 at a meeting and then the 2021 plan was also adopted but one of the big changes after covid is that the price of office space has gone down and the availability has gone up um so just when we think about the best use of our limited resources and trying just to cont you know cont cont template should we already be starting to load services in central Boulder based on the location the ease of it access across the community and also some possible Financial gains for the city um and the

[129:02] last piece is also just where do we put Council chamers um and thinking about how the central part is more Central for people who want to come in person um it's not that easy to get to the Alpine Balsam with our existing Transportation I know all of us have a shared goal of increasing that um it's actually where I live and it's really hard to take a bus anywhere you can go up and down Broadway all day but that's about it so um those are just some considerations about access to council itself and also forward thinking you know how much do we invest in both sites versus one centralized site that's more accessible to our employees and probably our community but those are just considerations um and things that I've been thinking about when I'm thinking about Alpine balls in particular and just the overall landscape of where city services are located thanks Mark actually some of um Tina's

[130:00] questions are are mirroring some thoughts of my own H have we ever done a survey of staff to see what their preference is where they would like to be located uh we have done some extensive extensive engagement with staff um and there um is interest um between both but there is interest in in the Eastern Campus and actually for all the reasons that Tina just talked about we also think that that Eastern site is a is a really great opportunity um honestly between both neither one actually accommodates all of our services we actually have quite a few services but between the two we do accommodate the large portion of services that could be centralized okay because I I'm also beginning to have some concerns about the cost of the Alpine Balsam project uh and you know whether it is worthwhile for us to spend $200 million for that uh

[131:04] as opposed to dedicating those funds to an Eastern Campus uh where we we own the land and possibly you know looking at Alpine balam as an opportunity for a very extensive and frankly even dense housing um and and so I think there's some uh you know I hope there's some thought process going into this uh that we're not just kind of going and lock step down down the road because the expense of of that project is is just enormous it's got to be the largest uh capital expenditure we've ever comp contemplated um and and it's for an office building um so I'm I I'm hoping that that you will continue to think about these things and and consider the Alternatives uh as we go forward because uh we're talking about some enormous

[132:02] numbers thank you TAA thank you um want to Echo many or um cosign support many of the comments and again just really appreciative um uh especially the comments around climate climate initiatives the energy needs um the water needs um really just thinking um you know we don't have the city doesn't have a climate risk assessment which is that longer longer term strategy piece and I know that's something the climate office is really interested in and so just curious about that intersection um also just in general around Community Education around this type of uh the types these types of decisions because they are really so complex and so how can we um you know what is currently being provided when we're talking about these things to our larger Community um and uh again you know again how does that the crosswalking the information we got from

[133:01] the survey how does that then impact and inform this conversation that we're having so again I just wanted to to lift that up but in general um really excited to to have some deeper thinking around this um more education around this so I don't know if there's an upcoming Friday lunch thing if that's already on the list but I would love to lift that up for continued conversations you know especially when we're dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars um I think you know having some stronger additional um training and education I would definitely love to to be a part of that and then lastly um just the ecosystems approach so again um you know uh buildings are not an island so uh how does this intersect not only with Transportation um but some of the other considerations in addition to the city staff that needs to get there but as Tina indicated um those in our city needing to get to certain facilities and where they're going to be located so um and of course accessibility for our peoples with disabilities Etc but in

[134:00] general I'm just really interested in how we're going to be innovating and even just like the kind of cement we're using in these buildings you know what I mean like I just um yeah I'm I'm eager but but ultimately I'm really deferring to many of my colleagues right now as I'm on boarding significantly in this area so thank you great well it seeing no other hands um how about we go on to the second phase of the presentation great thank you these are great comments and we're excited to share more too and and address a lot of the feedback so thank you for the feedback so far let me go back to sharing and Michelle you are being occasion a little hard to understand so sorry about that he seems to assume it doesn't pick up well um I'll move in okay so this next initiative we will go a little bit deeper into that key initiative of maintain well and talk about it as a climate um and resiliency strategy um and I'll also talk about

[135:00] these key projects including Alpine bosam in a little bit more detail um but some other projects we're advancing in 2024 so uh with the maintain well key ini again we're going to focus here specifically you know on how um it impacts achieving our climate action targets and decarbonizing our building stock so we really are looking at this is it is an energy story our built environment is responsible for nearly uh half of our total Global emissions and most of that comes from building operations once they're built it comes largely from ongoing heating cooling and ventilation loads from lighting and something we call plug loads which is anything that you plug into the wall or into an electrical outlet and in new high performing buildings there are great ways of reducing the impact of these loads and gaining Energy Efficiency but they do

[136:01] come with ongoing monitoring fine-tuning and constant adjustment so this ongoing attention to our systems and infrastructure and maintaining our buildings well um it does become a carbon reduction strategy so now just addressing a little bit more um how we look at and what we're looking at with our high performing buildings which are what we are building um when we build these new projects they are complex they are highly integrated machines and they are becoming more and more capable of autonomous decision making um I think many of you probably control some aspect of your home from a phone whether it's a doorbell the same package has arrived and it's still there on your doorstep or you can turn your heat on before you leave for your house house our commercial buildings are doing the same thing but at a much larger scale and to accommodate the needs of a lot more people all at once uh they rely on a network of

[137:00] sensors all over the building that read local conditions like if a window's left open or if a room is left vacant and then they trigger actuators and dampers and valves and all sorts of things accordingly to help adjust and close and operate those parts to maximize energy efficent and they are becoming smarter and smarter um they can actually forecast weather data and make decisions on how to adjust equipment they can shave demand loads by understanding if the afternoon is forecasted to be hot and so that list of complexities goes on in how buildings are responding to their micro environments in an ongoing way so the industry is acknowledging of this increased complexity with this need for an extended transition to operations period is constru construction completes and as we occupy buildings and this process is critical in identifying in pre-planning preventative maintenance um that must be performed to achieve ongoing Zero Energy

[138:03] performance so this kind of leads into another concept our team is working with and that is the concept of zero over time so first in the case of high performing buildings that we just built following that initial transition and oper ations we have to continue investing in that preventative maintenance to preserve those Zero Energy targets and maintain that initial Zero Energy over time but there is another way that our team is looking at this in buildings that aren't necessarily like front and line for um big energy retrofits or Renovations or Replacements we are still working to transition those buildings in an energy efficient kind of way and convert to all electric but we may do that more gradually piece by piece um so as a specific piece of equipment fails when we make a replacement we will make an effort to replace it with an all El electric piece of equipment that's highly energy efficient um but it's

[139:00] incrementally moving us towards our energy goals in a lot of those buildings this approach does cost a little bit more than just business as usual which is making simple like for like Replacements but those don't get us towards meeting our energy goals um our facilities team is working in partnership with Central Finance on these strategies to bring forward funding requests for major capital projects but we're also coming with a funding plan on the heels of that for the proper operations and maintenance of projects once they're constructed um and these are strategies that we're developing more through 2025 budget process so now looking at those major Investments that we've been talking about um since 2015 or from 2015 um up until currently we have invested about 37 million on four buildings which was following a period of little to no investment from the 1990s until then and we are now planning to spend about 280

[140:02] million more by the end of this decade on these projects um on the right hand side um so that large jump in numbers is indicative of two key things one is there is a lot more square footage in the projects that we're proposing that are kind of quote unquote on deck and also a lot more infrastructure involved in those projects but this is also what you're seeing is the cost of escalation on building projects from you know a decade ago to now the cost of building has rapidly increased but another key point of this slide is that upfront construction costs are actually just about 10% of the total cost of owning an operating buildings so for these nine buildings the total cost of operations over some 30 year period of time which is a typical lifespan of a building although we would expect our buildings to last much longer but that's in the neighborhood of3 billion doar so operating and maintaining these buildings properly H or not has major

[141:03] swings in that total cost of ownership and when we don't operate them well we lose the value of those original upfront Investments so now looking at some of the major capital projects we're advancing in 2024 starting the replacement of Two Fire Stations um the Capital Construction of these two projects is funded by the community culture resilience and safety fund we are currently looking for sites and once we acquire them we will promptly begin design and construction on these stations uh it is likely one or both would go in front of planning board sometime in 2025 and would be a council callup option and we would anticipate construction to be complete on each of these stations before 2030 um our fire stations are kind of small in square footage each one of them um but they actually have a pretty high energy use intensity so these two new

[142:02] stations along with the Fire Station 3 being completed this year uh they'll be all electric and they will be high- performing buildings so we as we are looking to address our fire stations we look at them more as a total system to reduce energy consumption and increase efficiency across all the stations by as we make these improvements trying to align our mechanical and our electrical and other systems in buildings um in this way we drive efficiency in buildings across that system and we can look again to redirect those financial savings back into ongoing maintenance to support the recommended funding levels we're making in buildings um so those are those blocks those orange blocks I talked about in that Financial strategy again looking for efficiency here to help Drive um operations and maintenance in new buildings when these new stations are built with the same type of equipment using the same types of filters and sets of commands we can drive again with

[143:00] efficiency in that Savings in their ongoing preventative maintenance and start to take advantage of economy of scale and maintaining like pieces of equipment so the renovation of the East Boulder Community Center will advance in 202 24 with funding also largely made available through the ccrs fund the renovation will modernize the facility to improve the community's experience and stay competitive with the surrounding area we'll also have the opportunity to address much needed improvements for Access and inclusion to many areas of the center and a major Focus will be on the nitorum and pool area with major enhancements planned there so less visible with these centers but equally important is the Deep energy retrofit that will also be part of the East Boulder Community Center renovation project the three Recreations the three recreation centers make up a third of our annual energy consumption across our

[144:00] entire building portfolio excluding only our treatment plants so as we work on the renovations at East we are examining the programming and the services across all three centers and that'll take place we'll also address the infrastructure needs at the other centers to develop an efficient an effective approach to proposed projects that are going to be needed at those locations in the coming years so here again we are thinking about our recreation centers as a system with similar components and equipment and systems to help Drive efficiency across all three centers as we make a lot of infrastructure improvements so now we'll look at the Western City Campus um development of the western City Campus at Alpine balam makes some significant advancements in our key initiatives to consolidate services and we'll look to achieve a lot of the outcomes I identified earlier by designing modern High performing buildings in 2024 we are going to start

[145:01] infrastructure improvements on the site uh that'll include flood improvements in a new Greenway along balam uh Road improvements on Broadway ninth and balam and Alpine we'll also start the construction of the new 11th Street that is going to cut through the site and then some underground utility work we do anticipate coming before planning board in the second quarter of this year we have made form based code and site review submissions that will go to planning board at that time we are expecting to go into construction on the western City Campus in 2025 and have that completed sometime in 2027 so our work on Alim Ballam has already provided a success story when it comes to preserved embodied energy um carbon emissions from buildings is really broken into two key categories upfront carbon which is that which is associated with the materials and the

[146:01] transportation of materials and what it takes to build a project up front and then operational carbon which is what it takes to heat and cool a building and operate over its lifetime um at Alpine balam we have been leading the way on a low carbon Redevelopment in 2018 we made an Adaptive reuse of the Brenton building we converted this sort of at the time and energy hog into the city's first all electric highly energy efficient building and we reused the existing concrete structure concrete being one of the main contributors to embodied carbon and then we also completed the sustainable deconstruction of the hospital which was another great approach to preserving embodied carbon was was predominantly through directly reusing the steel from the hospital on our new construction projects like Fire Station 3 you can actually see the steel from the hospital in the engine apparatus base and then we crushed a lot

[147:02] of the remaining Concrete and brick from the structure directly back into the hole on site which helped avoid a lot of Transportation emissions from taking material away and bringing new material back um the whole development will make make use of three existing buildings out of the four that were purchased on the site uh when the hospital was taken down it found new homes directly in the ground or a new construction and this has been evidenced by the 94% diversion rate we have um achieved on this project at the end of the construction of the western City Campus we will complete a full life cycle assessment up to this point that captures that preserved upfront Carbon on this Redevelopment and compare that to traditional developments but the next step once we occupy these buildings is to continue to achieve those carbon reduction goals and minimize operational carbon by maintaining the build as well and so I will pause again um at the

[148:03] end of this section to just um see if Council has questions and feedback on uh the projects that we're doing and some of the sustainability aspects of the maintain thanks for that Michelle I've Got tisha's Hand up and then Tina no I think that's from before and I just didn't lower it my apologies okay no worries uh Tina yeah thank you so much for explaining the process and um I think it's just awesome how you're able to meet these environmental goals in the deconstruction of the building and a lot of those efficiencies are exciting um and also just you know my experience on Schoolboard we did as you're probably pretty aware of some large bonds and we created a lot of cost savings through efficiencies and operations it's never a really exciting topic to talk about HVAC and materials but it's incredibly

[149:01] important so I'm very supportive of this work the one small question I had is when we design the buildings are we designing them for a um for people being in the office five days a week or we did we make adjustments as our working structure has changed and we've become more flexible in how and where people work were there any impacts to that thank you yeah there were huge impact so when we started this project um gosh back in the end of 2015 when the site was purchased and we were first assessing reuse of the Pavilion building um for City staff and consolidating of services I think we expected at the time being able to consolidate four maybe five um kind of current city buildings or staff from those buildings to the campus and at now we are looking at being able to consolidate upwards of 10 we're still kind of looking at that map the challenges um back before covid when

[150:03] people were in the office five days a week it was like simple addition and subtraction you know one person one desk now it's like complicated calculus trying to figure out you know how people use desks and spaces and really understand understanding how to create a supportive productive work environment but also the flexibility that people can come and go from desks so it's involved a tremendous amount of internal engagement with staff with departments with directors to really understand the values we're trying to achieve here how we're trying to serve our community and what that looks like for staff coming to the site but the long story short is we we have readjusted greatly to um be really efficient with how this building is used used uh to support more staff and really bring most departments together to work more efficiently together I'll just chime in with a a comment which is that I really enjoyed

[151:00] that uh the report about the sustainable deconstruction of the of the building so impressive and the the way that we're reusing the old steel for the new fire station is a story I tell all the time and people really love to hear that about how we're not just uh using it but we're reusing it close to home and even within the same the organization and saving ourselves money in the process so just amazingly well done there all right thanks um yeah the the rehabilitation that was done on the Brenton building is so amazing um and I also appreciated that study and looking at kind of the hospital building and the deconstruction and I do just want to for full transparency point out that you know we're not saving the total embodied energy of that building right by taking concrete and crushing it up

[152:01] that doesn't mean we can have an equivalent a building again for no environmental impact right the Portland cement the part that sticks the concrete together that is the most um taxing part of that you know we we turned concrete into gravel which is it's great that we filled the hole we didn't need to transport it I love all of that but I think that it also um you know isn't saving as much as an Adaptive reuse of that building would have and I understand that there's reasons that we couldn't do that there but um just yeah I um did also want to touch a little bit on the energy use and the because you were talking about how technical some of the systems are in sort of these high

[153:01] efficiency buildings and while that can be true I think we also need to make sure that we are designing them in such a way that they work fairly passively as well because that's a big part of resilience right if we need these buildings to um be places of community gathering in times of emergency having them being able to function relatively well even when they don't have power and things like that is an important piece of building our community to be more resilient and so I would caution Us in relying too heavily on very highly technical um building Control Systems because I think that those there are ways to do sustainable buildings without that or to not rely as heavily on Those portions and I think that that should definitely be part of

[154:01] what we're considering I would also really like to see these buildings going to design Advisory Board I didn't see sort of any of them being flagged for that and since we have a board that is largely designed professionals um I think that would be useful I especially because it's a city project and they are design professionals I think that these could go in front of them at relatively early stages so that we don't need to lengthen the entire process but um I think that would be an important step as well okay that's it thanks if I can just great comment and thank you for the feedback and and agree one one thing just to um emphasize you're you're absolutely right with the passive strategies first I will say it just like in the Brenton building one of the first priorities we bring is to making really

[155:00] sound building envelopes um and ensuring that our buildings are tight we noticed actually through some power outages in particular the Brenton building performed better than all of our other buildings and being able to sustain temperatures and so I just couldn't agree more p strategies are kind of first and foremost but then we come in with this layer of some some active strategies on top but appreciate the comments thank you great well not seeing any other hands we can take us to our third and last section Michelle okay um in this last last section we want to talk about the work that we've been doing and share um on our uh public private Partnerships to help our city buildings help our city maintain our buildings well for all the reasons I've been talking about so the concept of a P3 was first

[156:02] brought up in our facilities plan and since that time we've continued to explore it in much greater detail um on the specific projects we're advancing now uh the city has done p3s in the past so it's not entirely new with this structure with buildings would be unique and it is a significant undertaking especially with the cost and the complexity that we've been discussing um soort so to support this effort our staff team has brought on ernston young infrastructure advisors they have a depth of experience helping organizations and municipalities across the country including in Colorado and locally in Denver to help establish P3 Partnerships um the general structure that we have landed on is what's shown here on the slide so the city would hold a contract with a prime developer to design build Finance operate and maintain a building or a set of buildings uh in this structure the prime developer then has a debt Equity partner and then hold separate contracts with upfront design uh build teams or the in

[157:03] then longer term operators of the building and I also want to address the great question that was brought up by council member wall over hotline with the ownership of assets under a pre Theory just to be clear about the structure that the city is pursuing there in this Arrangement the city would maintain full ownership of our public buildings and properties and this isn't a com this is a common arrangement with public agencies um the partner would not hold a lean or rights over the facilities and if the contract was terminated by default for the city the partner would be due compensation but would still not have any rights of ownership over those properties so what this really is and and what we've um come to really understand a good P3 is today is a strong relationship between City and a strategic partner who can help us maximize our goals and Investments it is

[158:00] an opportunity to establish standards of quality performance and create a framework for measuring success across all of our buildings to achieve our environmental and social goals and lower our total cost of ownership um through performance guarantees it would be part of a contractual relationship we can ensure a higher degree of reliability in our buildings greater predictability in our budgeting and this reduced risk of emergencies some of the key challenges uh with entering a P3 surround just the complexity of the relationship itself these contracts are long um they're highly detailed it's a process to get through the negotiations and then to manage the contracts uh once they're in place and these p3s also come with a higher cost Capital however those costs can be overcome through efficient operations and maintenance that typically a P3 will see as compared to how the city has historically performed on its own we are doing that comparison

[159:00] as we evaluate the P3 um our exploration of a P3 over the summer involved direct discussion with the private markets so we went and talked to developers contractors operators in the industry who would be proposers on a formal request um again in the summer we asked for the feedback on the structure that we're proposing and the details of what we're thinking and generally in the bullets here um show kind of the specific areas we touched on in helping to shape our next steps in the procurement and our overall approach in many places we found alignment between what the city is looking for and uh What uh P3 or partner would want to achieve as well so there was some good alignment most of all there was a lot of alignment around values today uh the private sector is equally focused on achieving environmental and social goals and they actually have a depth of ways that they've already been accomplishing this on projects how they've been measuring success and how they have tied that to

[160:00] Performance guarantees private investors are also equally interested in developing a good relationship and a partnership so we are not really proposing just like handing over our buildings and then walking away this really is an integrated day-to-day collaboration between the partner and ourselves to execute operate and maintain our buildings together they emphasize that importance is a relationship and this ongoing partnership as much as we were um and then in this good relationship these industry Partners they can help us access additional resources more efficiently help us pursue other sources of funding like in big grants and they can provide a lot of economy as stale so we have identified sort of an initial scope of projects that would be included in an initial offering to the private Market to propose on in the first phase we would offer the Western City Campus the East Boulder Community Center

[161:00] renovation and at least one of the fire station Replacements um following a demonstrated success of the partnership uh and this way of implementing and maintaining building projects we've identified additional projects that could be considered for inclusion which could be more uh work on the recreation centers and the development of the proposed Eastern City Campus the structure of the overall agreement kind of at a high level would include the total costs for both the construction and the ongoing operation in manance for that phase one project over whatever term is agreed upon whether that's 20 25 or 30 years would also Define an availability payment which is the amount of money that the city can make available on an ongoing annual basis the partner would actually help us quantify that so as they help design alongside with us and and look at systems and they help identify the types of efficiencies that can be achieve they

[162:02] help us develop what could be um that availability payment within our budgets they make performance guarantees which could includeed incentives for exceeding performance but it would also include penalties if they're not meeting our standards and there's a mechanism for incorporating future Scopes would also include and they're very used to open Book pricing so really having an open um very transparent um pricing index on overhead soft costs and then also a process for including local competitive subcontracts so again all these elements uh we discuss directly with developers and their standards in a P3 approach today so at this point we are preparing a formal request for qualifications and we're planning to release that sometime at February we would then short list candidates from uh what we receive and issue a request for proposals by the

[163:00] spring where we ask candidates to detail their financial and Technical approach to these projects and Partnerships and while these two steps are happening um staff are completing our own assessment of how we would self-perform this work so that is how we traditionally go about constructing and maintaining the projects and how we would fund this on our own so that we can draw a kind of a comparison um to understand in way the pros and cons of the city self-performing against the proposals that we received from the P3 at that stage after the RFP this would technically conclude what we call our exploratory work on the P3 and we would do a final kind of thorough analysis of what we've received and we would formulate a recommendation to council and whether or not we should proceed into a P3 relationship and this would be a key noo or go noo decision point with Council so should Council uh decide to proceed and Advance with a preferred

[164:00] partner um that partner would then become integrated into our design processes and our with our consultant teams they would help us finalize project designs and engineerings so that they can come up with that gross maximum price and that guarantee on um both The Upfront construction as well as the long-term operations and maintenance of the project once they develop that GMP on those both those pieces that would again be another opportunity um it's it's kind of late into the entire process but it is another opportunity to um for a council decision point to move forward with that project or to continue to go a more traditional so I did we did provide a lot more information in detail in the memo on some of those contractual phases and some of the process um in those supporting attachments but this is where we are at today in that exploratory phase and the work we've been doing in a a private partnership and so that is of what's our

[165:00] our last section and then sort of two counselor questions we have is just questions and feedbacks on the work the exploratory work in general but also wanting to understand if there's additional information that uh could help Council in forming a future decision on that okay thanks again Michelle uh so Council questions and any add additional information you'd like to get uh for future decision-making opportunities I got Tina Nicole and Mark yeah thank you so much for helping me understand I'm not sure if I'm entirely there yet this is a New Concept for me so I just um I'm not a financial expert uh so I'm going to do my best um just the first question is in the in the package you described you included both of the fire stations and I also felt like I heard that those could be um paid for through the CRS tax is that is did I hear that correctly or are they being treated separately or the in the same

[166:00] grouping they are funded so both those and and the rec center The Upfront Capital Construction is funded through the ccrs fund um in a P3 the city does bring funding to the table what what could be an advantage and what we're exploring and we would like to hear from the P3 is how they may help operate and perform the ongoing operations and maintenance in maybe a more effective way than the city could on its own that would help Drive kind of cost efficiency over the long term so they would still help us build those projects we would bring that funding to the table but they would also perform the operations and maintenance of those projects over a term okay so then and then when we when you've um put out the price or describe the price of the for instance the Western campus at 168 million does that include is that just the construction cost or is that the cost of Construction

[167:01] Plus maintenance over a time period what is that that is the costs that have been incurred in the future cost it's the Capital Construction costs and that includes infrastructure so it's not just the buildings it is a large amount of infrastructure across the site that supports both the housing and the Western City Campus a large portion is than the the Western City Campus itself but that is not the operations and maintenance okay so that and so when we do the comparison that'll be separate from we the operations and maintenance for the Western City Campus is part of kind of our comparison so that'll be a new number we'll be bringing forward okay um thank you so much Nicole Mark and Lauren thank you um thanks so much for the presentation and all this information um so I just I think what I'm most curious about and I'm just

[168:00] lumping these third and fourth questions together because they are very tied together for me um in terms of the company values you know I know talked in the U memo about finding companies whose values are aligned with our city values um and I think you know I'm just I think that's going to be uh something that I'm just sort of interested in um and that would inform a future decision for me and I think my my more immediate question is how are we um assessing that like how are we kind of going in and looking at that are we looking at you know where if it's for profit company where where are they getting their money from where are their Investments going um those kinds of things but I'm also really uh interested just from an employee perspective for these companies um are they using uh union labor for example are they paying Fair wages um are they uh do do their employees or the people that they that they have working on projects are the benefits that they're receiving comparable to the benefits that um city employees receive

[169:02] right how are we just sort of assessing that we're a fit um in that regard um and I think a a sort of separate question and I understand you may not have answers to those right now that's why it's sort of a three and four together these are the things that would inform a decision um the other is whether the joint disparity study that we're doing with the county um May inform some of this work in thinking about Partnerships and looking for um you know groups that are led by or you know have very um heavy involvement from um underrepresented and you know women underrepresented minorities um in the kind of business space thank you they're great pieces to include as we we've developed that RFQ I think to ask for those requirements so I appreciate that feedback I think we'll we'll move forward with those Mark and Lauren um yeah let let me just understand something about what we're talking about with the uh the firehouse

[170:02] for instance we're talking about reducing our financial commitment under the ccrs but still providing some Capital under ccrs towards our obligations in a P3 arrangement is is that correct no we would be bringing the the capital forward so the P3 really I think the financial advantage with the P3 is potentially their ability to operate and maintain these projects um over the long term uh and and help with funding and and help with the systemwide approach of maintaining a system of fire stations in a really efficient way we would be bringing the the capital that's been identified through the ccrs fund to the projects but we would not do be doing that with respect to Alpine Ballam would we we don't have that that that degree we we are we are by and large bringing the capital we have identified the

[171:01] capital for all of these projects we are looking to the P3 to potentially leverage um efficiencies and savings to help with ongoing operations and maintenance and help Drive some Capital costs down but the city has identified by and large upfront Capital which is necessary to bring to a P3 they don't just sort of generate the capital themselves um so these projects all three of the projects have um identified city funding sources what would be the identity of the funding source for the $168 million for Alpine balsom well we have identified sources in the general fund um but we've also been looking at uh the different departments and the ways that um they would be going in there to build kind of a a total package of funding but that is something that we're working with with Central Finance and and that we will be

[172:00] bringing forward in the 2025 budget process is that full funding strategy but we have been working as a team to identify and how this project would be fully funded um if we if the city chose to self perform okay and and given the complexity of these Arrangements um and the process moving forward I would ask that that you communicate with us on a periodic basis um not simply at the end of the movie um with a 300 page packet um if if you get an analysis from a P3 partner it would be interesting to know early what they they are proposing um how we view it uh whether some of uh Nicole's questions can be answered at the outset as opposed to you know at the end of the at the end of the movie um and so more information

[173:02] early is is going to be very useful for us especially given the the degree of complexity of what we're looking at here um and I'm saying that as somebody who who made a living in you know the Real Estate Field real estate development this is this is not easy stuff and um trying to do it uh you know on a on two weeks notice with a 350 page pound page uh packet is is just not realistic for us so periodic updates and and uh um transitional memos I think will be very very useful to us and and I hope you will uh be willing to provide that absolutely y okay thank you thanks Lauren thanks um so the public private Partnerships the private section of that right private

[174:00] companies they are always in this for the profit so there intrinsically is going to be an additional cost over what it would cost the city to self-perform the same work because this company is profiting off of this contract presumably or else they're going bankrupt that's right yeah yeah that's correct so to me it seems like the main reason a lot of the in my experience the efficiencies from these often stem from the kind of experience they bring to the table and um the choices that they make to to increase efficiency I think if we so in order for me to feel comfortable with making a choice like this I think I would really need to understand what kind of experience they're bringing um that we

[175:02] think the city really needs um because we're essentially paying for some kind of information that we don't have that would be challenging for us to acquire other ways um so yeah I think that that's the main thing that I want to understand um a little bit better before I would feel comfortable with going that direction also because one of the downsides that I see is that as electeds I feel like it limits our accountability if something is problematic there is a Less Direct connection between the public and um sort of who's responsible for this and how we get it fixed right away having an outsourced contractor responsible um and I've seen that with some of the other contracts that we have with the city and some of the difficulties or frustrations

[176:03] that um I've seen from the public so how we address those two things are things I would be interested to understand better thank you o Ryan thank you again m Michelle um I have two question well I guess uh I will give you two questions because your question was what questions do we have so my first question is I don't know if I missed this but um just in a general sense um we're being asked are we interested in pursuing a P3 and I I don't have in my mind a clear sort of Ledger of like here's a scenario a with the P3 and here's scenario B without it and then here's sort of like the pros and cons or however to think about that maybe that comes later but I think that will help to understand for us to understand what um if we say no like what so what does that leave us with um so that's my that's I guess that's for future just sort of the the framing um

[177:01] that I think I'll I'll need I think we we we do plan to bring that more um side by side comparison um and and are continuing to pursue a root and have the to self perform if for some reason we all do decide that's not the right way to go so great okay wonderful um second question and this is picking up on our earlier discussion about transportation and accessibility this kind of straddles um maybe the first question in this one um but I as I was listening to the different people talk I was um suddenly realizing that I should have just I should be more deliberately say that you know part of my vision for this this um reimagination is is um when somebody looks for employment at the city of Boulder and they're trying to decide should I go work for the city that they um they can imagine doing it without owning a car that they can imagine if it's whether they live in Longmont or leville or or Boulder or whatever that

[178:02] it's it's really Transit connected and also if they have a disability and um are going to be walking there or how moving however there with kids that they really have a good way a good network of protected and convenient um ways to get their outside of of a motor vehicle and that this is a gold standard and similarly that the public I um you know when the public says I need to go pay a visit to the office and they look on Google Google Maps that that like Transit is competitive and getting there so um my thought is on the question of the P3 C can you imagine the scope of the P3 to include a consideration around this around providing um it could be both on the design side if we maybe we have this in house but um you know there's a there's just a tremendous amount of value to be unlocked in um not having to build parking if you can make the transportation Alternatives work well um

[179:01] but then also on the on the actual operation side um I don't want to suppose that we would need like a special private Transit service but some consideration of um Transportation ensuring that there's good Transportation options for employees and we're really providing the gold standard for um accessibility and you know in a new facilities development so my question is basically can you imagine the scope of the P3 to include this yeah I think we can think a little bit about that and how that becomes part of of some of the performance standards and and frankly I mean that's one thing when we've been talking with the market um one thing that he they brought is they have their own Innovations uh that you know and so I think we can ask more around that for sure great thanks so much man I saw T I see tesa's hand in front of me on the que so I just want

[180:01] apologize I missed you there TAA and then Matt please worries thank you so much Matt um so I just want to again Echo and appreciate Ryan the reminder of the question that we are being asked so thank you so much for that um and to that you know I am I am certainly weary of a of a of a public private partnership that continues to lean on the private side as far as those benefits I feel like um our city has constantly invested in these private partner priv private Public Partnerships and gotten the raw the raw side of the deal um to Lauren's earlier point in question um what are the driving incentives of these um you know companies and and unfortunately many of them are not using an ESG or blab or you know social benefits of those kinds of things and so again I just really want to honor I also appreciated Nicole's comments around um you know the Boulder County study um and vendor vendor

[181:01] selection I'm also um thinking about uh subcontracting as well um there is a there is significant money being made um through the private Partnerships and unfortunately the lion ship of that continues to be with those who have historically benefited from inequitable systems and so therefore I'm very interested in continuing that conversation and um am eager to see those types of um Innovative strategies um leveraged in this work um so that the The Lion Share is the public good since we are taking the biggest risks um on the front end and often have gotten the shortest lever of the stick um I want to make sure if the there's anything else also um unfortunately and and I mean this with so much love in our heart um our climate goals um unfortunately um are not aligned with the best available science data right because it's it's aligned with what we are capable of doing together right that's not

[182:01] unfortunately always the same thing as what our client M experts um have to say I often uh tickle at the or tickle or cry uh at some of the misalignments between what a sustainability offic office would say a client initiative or metric of success should be versus what um quite frankly you know all of us all the stakeholder groups need to agree on and I think one uh glare uh one U powerful example of that can be seen through our the conversations that we're having am around minimum wage right um so again I have no no Illusions around the complexity of these issues but I again I want to I want to lift this up because even our talk with net zero um you know is is is um is not as aggressive as as we need to be um and so again how are we how are we moving beyond Net Zero um in the work that we're doing as well and so um thank

[183:00] you again for these opportunities this is also a growth area for me um and so I'm I'm you know eager for continued learning opportunities and and I really appreciate the expertise of fellow fellow council members and staff um to help shape um this very very important and critical issue uh I would be remiss if I didn't bring up biodiversity Wildlife corridors all of these things I'm not hearing any of the impacts of what's going to happen Beyond humans and unfortunately I don't take a human first or human only perspective so I'm always going to be curious of what are the implications of um you know wildlife of our Urban um canopy I know uh or urban forestry especially in the areas that we're considering uh for Area 3 and other areas is um again I think that we have a unfortunately a perception versus reality issue with um with our biodiversity because we are so nature rich in so many of our areas but I go back to that photo that we had of the slide of who lives in our city and when I look at that Eastern component or E

[184:01] Eastern section of my city of our city um it is not um as green and robust as the the western parts of our city so that is also a consideration that I'm eager to hear more about thank you thank you man' thanks Aaron um just want to uh well two things um with public private par ships I I get the I get the concern about uh the motives that profit uh drives on some of that but the flip side is it's also driving economic Vitality for an entire different wing of individuals and groups who otherwise might not receive that if we don't enter into that I mean it's the whole uh that's why government funded projects are such strong economic drivers um in in across the board so I just want to make sure that as much as we have concerns we also do understand the benefits that that those have economically through our community and Beyond um I just want to give a a a plus

[185:02] to what Ryan was bringing up with regards to the gold standard because I think that's something that gets lost and and and maybe that also ties into what Taisha was saying which is there's what we can do and there's what maybe we should be doing um and they're not the same thing and and and you know certainly with regards to our facilities and how we think of connectivity I mean we're Bolder and and there's there's a part of that that reputation that has preceded us that we could live up to by being that gold standard for all to have that experience but also be that example for others whether it's our buildings or connectivity so I I you know it comes at a cost but I challenge us to what can we do that's the best on the Front Range I mean it can be something small but that's a step than just what can we do uh that's just better than what we have been doing so it's it's it might be semantics but it's important because it sets a tone and sets us on a course to

[186:00] incrementally always one-upping ourselves but also our sister cities which uh is a healthy competition when you think about it um so anyway so I I just want to one up that with what uh what Ryan was saying and plug what where Taisha was going with that right and I'll call on myself here I just think my colleagues have made some really excellent comments and points so really appreciate that and and Echo those I just want to particularly second um what Nicole first brought up that if we're going to work with a public private partnership that we need to make sure that it's living up to the values of our city and of our community our city organization and that everyone involved would be well treated well compensated in alignment with how we would treat our and and compensate our own employees and the positive work environment etc etc etc so it sounds promising uh potentially financially but has to live up to our values as as an organization and as a city I don't with that said I don't see any other hands up so I think we can

[187:01] conclude this and just say Michelle that was incredibly well done very detailed information extremely well presented great answers and Joanna as well uh you all do an amazing job on all of this very complicated stuff so thanks so much and we so appreciate obviously we've been taking lots of notes and I know answering some questions in the moment um and and really appreciate I know there were some uh deeper questions deeper conversations and and happy to continue to follow up I know we reached out and offered some tours of the Alpine balam Western City Campus site and happy to to follow up with more details about that and also figure out how to respond to some of the more um deeper conversations one p point on the engagement piece that may have gotten kind of probably lost in the shuffle because it's happened over many years but we actually started the Alpine Balsam conversation as part of a vision plan and then it went into an area plan

[188:02] and um so we had lots of Engagement and conversation so I'm happy to reference back to some of that information if folks are interested in that and and also the point about our part of government our Civic part and and actually that was something council did weigh in on in terms of wanting to make sure the seat of government remained where it is in terms of the downtown so um again great conversation really appreciate it and I know we took a bunch of time tonight and and really thank you again yeah appreciate all the feedback this was great very helpful thank you excellent so you did get everything you need no followup questions okay great it's good to hear all right well with that if we can go to our next matter please all right sir thank you our next matter is item 5c under M the city manager and it is the update on cold

[189:00] weather preparedness and I understand we have hot news on cold weather preparedness email came through n you want to talk to us about that I don't know if you're trying to take um Matt's dad jokes from him hot news on the cold front and not to trivialize the challenge of the cold weather but we have news on on this front yeah um well thank you mayor and I I really want to appreciate Council and the community interest in how we're addressing the upcoming cold weather for our unhoused community it really is something that um it lives in our minds we think about it we know you do too and we just appreciate the highlighting of what we're doing please know that staff and our incredible partners out the county have been working on this for a while um since we first started hearing about the severe weather potentially coming our way uh and there are protocols that we follow as we as we go through that effort earlier this week we implemented our cold weather protocols across the city and the county this included a change to operations at the

[190:01] boulder shelter for the homeless which expands its bed capacity by 20 additional beds and waves any nighttime stay limits for standby clients in addition to overnight Sheltering um options the boulder shelter for the homeless will also remain open during the day uh for individuals to be able to stay within the facility when critical conditions like this are forecast um transportation to and from downtown on the boulder shelters provided for free every day and I know um they continue to see if that can be augmented as we move forward our city and county staff along with our office of disaster management which deserves a great shout out as they help us when we um take on these Endeavors they've continue to coordinate and communicate through regular and daily conversations to monitor conditions and when I say daily I mean sometimes multiple times in a day uh because weather conditions change we've also continued monitoring that changing forecast um and have been talking with our partners at the National Weather

[191:00] Service based on those latest forecasts as of this afternoon we understand that weather conditions for this weekend appear to be continuing to decline with windchill temperatures reaching from zero to - 20 below well the last few days we anticipated um or well the last few days we had anticipated two days of extreme temperatures the forecast was changing it was frankly hot off the presses this afternoon when we were talking with odm and we believe those extreme temperatures are going to carry us out over the 4-day period the national weather service has issued a windshield warning from Saturday afternoon through Tuesday morning and we believe that has now gone into Friday as a result our h HS staff and countywide partners have implemented the next step of our protocols which is to open an additional emergency warming shelter at the East Boulder age well Center we're utilizing the operational capacity support through our office of disaster management and emergency Operation Center there's a lot as you can imagine

[192:02] of logistics as we're thinking about these decisions and is one of the reasons we take time and care to make sure that we've got those in place um before announcing where we're going to be and what we're going to do from mats to food to bathrooms to specialist support to security and more the team has been and continues working on all of that as we speak uh and appreciate those that are actually way into the night continuing to work on that um as we as we're meeting we're currently working to staff this emergency shelter from Friday night to Tuesday Morning dependent on finalization of logistics and I'm happy to report that I believe that um our staffing and resourcing should not be an issue as we see it currently but um we'll continue making sure that that is the case the good news is our Outreach partners that support the unhoused community um have been working with them to find short-term Sheltering solutions for a while now and been communicating with them since last week um and making sure that folks have supports that are

[193:00] available that we're understanding where their needs are that we're understanding what folks are planning to do because they're not always waiting for us to react right we've heard that many of our unhoused community members have already begun to make those plans to seek indoor shelter this weekend through individual support n networks and we're really happy to hear that but those conversations have been happening with our County Partners since last week we continue and remain dedicated to supporting all in our community and encourage everyone to share with their networks that the windshields this weekend and early next week are going to be severe and we encourage those to do what the national weather service has told us is to stay inside we will continue to work for those that are outside have a place and warm place to be so we do all that we can to protect and to ensure the safety of our unhoused community that is my update you have seen that we have sent a press release out we will continue to stay on this work with our partners we understand too that several Partners in our community

[194:00] Beyond just the city and the county are perhaps expanding their availability to take folks in and we appreciate that as that moves forward so um mayor I I hope uh that's the end of my update um I know if there are additional questions that some of our staff who've been working on the operations more directly are here but um I believe what it shows is that we continue and we have protocols in place to really make sure we're moving forward um and we are trying to be very thoughtful as we like so many of you like so many in our community could not live with ourselves if we were having temperatures that severe and we weren't leaning into that as we move forward so just appreciate that well Maria thanks so much for that and thanks to everyone at the city organization and office of disaster management and our nonprofit Partners um who are making this happen is it is going to get viciously cold and so so glad we'll have those extra spaces for place or space for people to go one question that I have is can you address um transportation about how we're going

[195:00] to make sure people are able to access the the East B the rec center yep um we have and we're continuing to finalize that as we move forward but we are working with our partners to in inre transportation to the shelter um as we move forward um we are going to be continuing to think about ways in which we amplify that messaging to make sure that that happens we often find um and in particular I actually thank our partners in PD that through the night when they're doing the patrols they are thoughtful if they see one someone in community um to make sure that they know where to go and that we can help if need be um but we are continuing to finalize the frequency of Poss POS options for transportation and we will link that out um as we know as we continue to learn more with our partners it's great to here any other thoughts on this matter Matt thanks Aaron um thanks for the

[196:01] update area I'm uh you know sent that hotline Monday with sort of the aspiration that we would uh get to this place so I'm great that we're here and um I appreciate Aon bring up that Transportation uh question um the one of the questions I have sort of centers around um the the operational challenges that we faced when we did this similar in December 2022 and sort of how we've come from that to make sure that even though it was successful in terms of the number of people that sought out um shelter at East Boulder Community Center ESP SP rec center but how are we making sure that operationally I just want to make sure that we've got Lessons Learned effectively and we're going to have a much cleaner operation because I think one of the concerns I have is if if these are a year apart are we really building that lesson learned and are we getting to a place where we can have these as um um Shelf ready plans that we can Implement and each time we get

[197:00] significantly better um I just want to make sure that because I think there's instilling that confidence in community um which is really important um for us to do and so some of that might be messaging but some of it is are we actually uh uh fulfilling that and getting a lot better um at those things when we are doing it in a hurry bringing everyone together and there's a lot of just intrinsic chaos that comes with dealing with extreme weather um and the preparedness that comes with that uh intrinsic chaos is is a good term for that so I thank you for that question uh council member and we'll say that um you know after our events um we have some after action briefings amongst what went well what didn't what do we need to do more of um and what did we get right and what did we get wrong and so that continues to build um some of the Lessons Learned are about the right kind of Staffing as we're thinking about that we are looking at um uh folks a FK Staffing component that includes um

[198:01] types of security some uh folks perhaps in our Care Program Mental Health Service um professionals um we have some training involving for staff that are perhaps volunteering um that would not necessarily be in this work space how do we provide that training early on we as City also understand that this is a long weekend it is um a time where a lot of Staff perhaps who are volunteering this is not their option so how do we continue to provide and have adequate Staffing throughout the days because it is harder when the days are longer and providing stiens and um perhaps some comp time and days compensation so we don't have to scramble for additional staff to make sure uh that we have um all that we need there the we are enhancing continued Partnerships with uh those in the county and others in community that are helping to provide um mats and food and being able to um provide those additional support provisions and so some of that we

[199:00] learned from last year some of that will continue to learn as we move forward this year as well um but please know that after every incident like this and certainly after every emergency that we have we debrief and we learn from those lessons and we get better um and so really happy to think about um additional ways we hope that this will be um every time we have an emergency event like this or um a critical event we get more seamless in how we um move forward I think the Testament to that is that while we monitor we are quickly able to um to move forward Believe last year we had an incident where on the heels of the weather of last year and that kind of Polar Plunge if you will of temperatures dropping so quickly and severely in an hour period last year and we did not have for example the library where a lot of our folks go to because we were dealing with meth remediation we moved very quickly there within an 18-hour period we are moving very quickly here and the amount of ease and

[200:00] I would say coordination uh to me in watching those two events play out um shows some learning as we move forward and we will continue to um enhance our protocols and make those better as we move forward all that Nicole you um and I just wanted to Echo uh your thanks to staff and um thank you thanks thanks for the overview but uh not just for the work that's been done this week but just for all the work that has gone into creating this plan in the first place because you don't get to be able to stand up something like this in the span of a week without having a really really solid plan so just thank you for that and the continued work on the plan as these events happen um so that it can get better every time more than when we did this process last year during the cold spell that we had um I really have an appreciation for just how many departments are involved in getting all this together um HR dealing with all

[201:01] of this extra time that folks are going to be working Parkson wck the care team HHS Communications Transportation um all all of our emergency services so just thank you to everybody who is working to make sure that our community can stay safe this weekend as these temperatures get really low um and thank you especially to all the staff that are going to be working extra time this weekend um while many people are off um making sure that people stay safe so just a lot of appreciation thank you so much appreciate that mayor protm and we'll say that I extend that if you if you permit me that to our partners too at the shelter and our partners at Boulder County who've been essential as we move forward so appreciate that yeah did O Nicole well said thanks to everybody for the way you've jumped on this and um I know I've been quiet I probably am getting something sick as we speak but um really thanks to everybody for this and thank you Nicole for those

[202:00] really kind comments well said and I hope you feel better soon okay uh with that um Elisha can we go to our last matter please yes sir our last matter on tonight's agenda is item number seven matter from the Matters from the mayor members of council 7A is the 2024 Library District trustee appointment committee assignments very good well I guess I can start this one off here uh so something that we missed a little bit in assigning uh taking our Council assignments is that we do need to have two people from Council participate in the selection of the library board trustees uh there's I believe one position up this year so we need two council members to join two members of the County Commission as well as two ex officio representatives from the Library District Board of Trustees um last year Nicole and I did this when we selected the whole set this year I think it's just the one person so we

[203:01] need two council members to take that on I'm happy to let somebody else do that this year so I'm hoping uh two folks are willing to raise their hand it's a relatively it won't be an enormous commitment this year because we're just interviewing for one position but do expect some interviews reading some materials and and a couple of meetings to make the determination and with that who wants to raise their hand oh I see are we getting ready to to do what I'm sorry so it's looking for volunteers to be on the library district oh God no kidding I mean you know again I know that um uh uh as I'm sorry I thought we were ending the meeting I was like wait I don't know why U but I I'm definitely interested in in learning more and and if there's if folk if you know if there are not two other people that are like yeah then I I'm I'm happy to step aside but um I got to serve on the steering committee for their um

[204:01] Community literacy work over the last couple of months and um just really been impressed by the team and and the efforts there and and happy to serve and um but yeah again I I I know that there are others who are also very interested so I I'm I'm happy to to be the backup thanks for volunteering Taisha one one more council member or do we need does someone need to be basically it's looking like I'm not gonna be the backup all right Tina raised your hand thanks so much Tina thank you Tina yay and uh just want to make sure sure nobody else wants to compete for for the spots but looks like Tina and Taisha it's two spots Taisha you're not an alterntive I know I was like wait a minute so it would be my pleasure to work with you on this very important issue so

[205:00] thank you fantastic thank you both so much for volunteering and then uh there'll be followup Chris are you Chris mchu are you going to do the followup for this yeah go ahead and follow up with folks and get you some more details so thank you so much great and then would we do a formal appointment on the consent agenda next week yeah we could do that sounds good all right Elicia I think we're at the end of our agenda that is so true sir and what a wonderful first of the year meeting so wonderful any final thoughts from anyone seeing none I will G close you know what it is it's the brown hand you know I don't know what to do it's hard to see against the background so I'll marinate on that my apologies ER is hard to see it so uh I will work on that again see technology brown and black people involv in that probably not alas I'm happy that we have it so uh but I did want to uh

[206:02] you know close as we started which was on the national day of racial healing um you know I'm really really honored to have um Amy Kane who is our Equity program officer uh for the city of Boulder participate in the National um League of cities race equity and Leadership um um session actually that they're going to be having on January 16th uh it is a virtual from 3 from 2: 30 um and it's a part of their Equitable Pathways to Municipal healing and action um with a real focus on the Four A's of racial healing framework which is acknowledge apologize atone and act um and how municipalities featured are incorporating the framework in their local communi so again just honored to know that the work that we are doing um is not just here in a silo but it really is a part of a broader National effort

[207:02] um and again that we are doing our best to um acknowledge apologize atone and act so thank you so much thanks for that it's a good way of coming full circle on the meeting and seeing no other hands I'll 25 p.m thanks so much everyone have a wonderful rest of your evening good night