June 13, 2024 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[7:06] good evening and welcome to tonight's study session for Boulder City Council I'm council member fartz and I want to thank everyone for joining us tonight we have three sort of four items on our agenda tonight the first will be the form-based code updates to implement the East Boulder sub community plan and our second is the Municipal Court sbpd quarterly update and then finally the rules um amendments to council rules of procedure before we go into our work items I would like to outline how this meeting will be conducted which will be very efficiently no okay we will review staff's presentation for each item and then we will have time for questions at the end of the presentation we will conduct our Council discussion with staff if you have questions please wait for staff to complete their

[8:01] presentation I'll now turn to council uh to city manager NAA Vander to introduce our first item thank you so much council member and I'm going to do my best to try to keep us on track and not talk a lot our first item is sort of a followup on the form based code work that's been done on East Boulder subc Community Plan and with that I believe I am going to KJ great thank you nura good evening Council Christopher Johnson and comprehens planning manager uh I wanted to just have a very quick opportunity to sort of set the set the table a little bit for everybody and introduce Sarah horn who's a senior planner uh on the team and will be leading the presentation and then also Leslie oberholzer who's our consultant from Koda metrics she'll be doing the second half of the the presentation and we'll really dive into some of the details of the form based code um the you know really the opportunity here is that we've worked hard over the last several uh months months and and really

[9:00] particularly the last couple of weeks to get this draft set of code updates uh prepared and available to the public and to yourselves we'll also be reviewing the planning board and really this is an opportunity uh to elicit your feedback uh and to learn from uh you know where where you stand and to hear from the community on this initial draft we'll be we will be continuing to make revisions and refinements through the end of the summer uh with hopes of bringing a final set of recommend later in the fall so just to be clear this is a draft and and we're looking forward to the discussion so with that I will pass it off to Sarah horn okay thank you KJ I'm gonna start the presentation can you see the presentation everyone all right all right well hello council members I'm Sarah horn as KJ mentioned I'm a planner on the city's plan team and it's great to be with you

[10:01] this evening my first time in front of you um to share updates on the East Boulder um subc community plan zoning project and the last time you heard about this project Kathleen King was sitting in front of you with two kids at home today she has three so she's busy there and while she's out I'm helping um bring this project help keep bringing the project forward with an amazing team of colleagues so just wanted to acknowledge that and then to remind you that Kathleen was before you in October of 2020 23 um to provide an overall description of the project and then she came back in March of this year um to discuss the zoning strategy and tonight as KJ mentioned our focus is going to be the form-based code updates and so in terms of our agenda I'm going to provide a brief overview of the East Boulder subc Community planning process and how its recommendations have directed the proposed changes we're going to present to you tonight then Leslie will discuss the form based code changes we're proposing in detail and that's Leslie over Holzer who I think KJ mentioned and she's our um consultant from kodom

[11:00] metrics and once she's finished I'll quickly touch on next steps and we'll have time for discussion so just to reorient everyone really quickly to the area we're talking about East Boulder is one of the 10 subcommunities in our city it's on the east side of the city and just on the screen you can see it outlined in black on the left and then on the right just quickly it's bounded by Foothills Parkway on the west the airport on the North Valmont city park and the power station on the East and arapo on the south and Within These boundaries the East Boulder subc commmunity planning process took um about three years to complete um from 2020 to 2022 and it included extensive Community engagement and developed a vision for the future of the area and based on the vision the plan lays the groundwork to provide a good environment for business and industry especially smallscale industrial like we're all very interested in keeping and Manufacturing spaces life sciences and Technical office space to introduce housing opportunities in this location where it's traditionally been employment based

[12:00] um and to celebrate and support the unique character of East Boulder and to Foster better connections um via the planned Regional Transit facilities within the area to the city and throughout the region and there are four areas of change that were identified as part of the planning process these are the locations where the community anticipates the greatest area of change in the future um they're highlighted in blue on the screen as you can see here there four and Leslie is going to talk about them in a little more detail in a bit and in order to facilitate and direct the change in these areas to be consistent with the community's vision um one of the recommendations included the included the consideration of the form-based code which KJ men mentioned and the form-based code is intended to help enhance the character of East Boulder to nurture housing opportunities where they um um are feasible and to promote a more economically resilient um and walkable place for everyone and in tandem with the subc community plan adoption and related to the areas of change the comprehensive land use app had to be updated to better

[13:00] align with the vision for East Boulder um the updates were made in locations in the areas of change and they're outlined here in red and the updates included these hatched the hatched purple um areas which is mixed use Transit oriented development and then the gray hatched areas within the red lines are um mixed juice industrial and then in the other areas of the East Boulder subc commmunity plan um there were no land use changes made to the land use map in the comprehensive plan was a lot of updates so just to quickly review the process to date along with the adoption of the subc community plan and the bbcp land use map we also up updated the transportation master plan connections plan to align with the subc community plan and so this kind of helps all the documents talk to each other and make sure they're all kind of headed in the same direction which is the vision the community has for the area and that brings us to now we're working on the first major implementation step to help realize the vision and all of that previous planning work that we've done and that's the future zoning strategy and the form base

[14:01] code updates so the last time we came to you as I mentioned earlier Kathleen reviewed the first component the draft zoning strategy which involves making strategic edits to the use table to allow preferred uses from the plan and then it also creates a road map to apply new Zone districts districts in the area of change as properties come forward with substantial Redevelopment or new development proposals and tonight we're going to focus on number two the draft form BAS code updates and that's where we need your feedback and to help inform your discussion in terms of community engagement just quickly I know Kathleen um talked about Community engagement last time but we've we held four focus group meetings early in the process we've had three technical advisory committee meetings and we held our last meeting this Monday to review the draft we conducted a business survey earlier this spring in East Boulder to understand how the businesses especially manufacturing and small industrial businesses use their spaces we held Virtual Office hours last week week and we posted the public review D Draft

[15:01] online on May 28th and that will be online for comment until June 21st and then just quickly some of the requests that we've um heard and are addressing through the form based code or the desire for more flexibility I'm in terms of design um to accommodate create creativity and Manufacturing and production spaces providing process predictability and providing spaces for micro mobility and those are just three this slide has a few more but those are just three some of the comments that we've gotten and in terms of concerns we've heard um that there could be issues with um our allocation of first floor to production space in some of the area um some of the floor height requirements um and concerns about whether residentials should be required or optional in certain areas and like I said these aren't the only comments but they provide a general overview of the types of feedback we're getting and some of the feedback that we've gotten and that are that is on this slide um is also being addressed through the zoning strategy and the use

[16:00] updates and then Leslie is going to walk you through the draft updates um in just a moment and this is the question we want you to keep in mind as she's doing that do you have questions or comments on the draft form based code updates as they relate to the east Boulder sub community plan recommendations so with that I'm going to turn it over to Leslie good evening I'm gonna turn off my um uh video just because my internet is a little bit laggy um I'm gonna uh highlight some revisions that uh we're recommending to the form based code as Sarah mentioned um these are mainly focused on how the code is intended to assist with the implementation of the East Boulder subc community plan but it also includes addressing some um General updates to the form base code but first off I always find it's helpful to just sort of revisit what a form-based code is meant to accomplish um form-based code regulations are typically organized around building types uh building bases or building frontages um defining specifically how a building

[17:02] is designed to relate to the public Realm of the street or other defined outdoor spaces um the intent is that the regulations will create outcomes that are fairly predictable in terms of building massing um building scale permeability and quality of the buildings but the regulations are not intended to design the buildings completely um and it is a misnomer that form based uh codes ignore building uses uh because the building form is clearly defined uh they can often accommodate more of a variety of uses additionally form based codes often guide where in a building uses are most appropriate for example in the ground store ground Story Only um in the rear of the building or in the upper stories only um appendix L of the city's land use code includes a map defining where the form based code applies um as Sarah mentioned the form based code in East Boulder is intended to serve only the areas of change uh with the goal of

[18:00] implementing the subcommunity plan um East Boulder is unique in that the rezoning is proposed to not occur with adoption of the form-based code um so at the time of Redevelopment prior to utilizing the form based code the applicant would initiate resoning consistent with the future Zone districts map and the subc community plan which I believe Kathleen presented to you in March um so this allows a current property and business owner to continue to use or adapt reuse their property under their current zoning the code allows exterior modification and of course maintenance um as well as moderate expansions and additions without triggering conformance with the form based code use of the form based code applies with more extensive modifications and additions and with new construction or Redevelopment so in order to modify the form base code to implement the subcommunity plan we relied on many of the um broad goals outlined the plan such as the provision of housing in the

[19:00] area or accommodating production businesses which we'll talk about um in a little while um but the subc commmunity plan also clearly defines certain desirable physical elements and character Leslie we may have lost you are you still there business park there you go hey Leslie we lost you there for a minute maybe you could start at the beginning of this slide again connections oh okay um so let's see um I'm going to just jump to the the transportation connections plan um what I'm basically saying here is that even though we relied on Broad goals throughout the plan um there are two plans that specific specifically sort of created physical elements and

[20:01] characteristics that we want to implement in the form based code um first is the transportation connections plan um and you can see that I've highlighted the areas of change here um with the to area at arapo in 55th the flat iron Business Park and Valmont Park East and West um and then the second um is the place types um the place types were defined um in the sub community plan um and uh specifically for the areas of change the place types take the mixed juice uh future land use designations from the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan that Sarah showed you earlier um and take it several steps further by defining how land uses are intended to be mixed in each place as well as some of the key sort of physical characteristics anticipated for those places such as height um and building orientation to the street this place type information provides the basis for development of the form based code for East Boulder

[21:02] specifically the regulating plans um the regulating plans in the form based code are the key to new development the regulating plans Define which building and base types are allowed where they translate the new streets defined in the connections plan into a and now C Street frontages um and they locate other key elements geographically so the first regulating plan that you see here is the in arapo area the to serving the proposed um brt line planned along with arapo um this regulating plan locates specifically where ground story storefront bases are required those are the purple lines that you see kind of running along 55th in arapo and the new Koga um Court Extension um that's determined from the plan specifically pulled from the plan and uh the stamp plan especially for that intersection um the light blue

[22:00] color that you see here defines the General Building type locations um and a new workshop building was created to accommodate the industrial nature of the East Boulder area um and is allowed in the Innovation non uh residential Tod um Place type that you see here shown in dark blue so the light blue is the general building and the dark blue allows the workshop building or the General Building to be used um you can also see a grd of streets um anticipated to divide up these large blocks and create more permeability for pedestrians and cyclists through the area um and as you can see each Street has a separate sort of line type um which is the designation of either an a b or c Frontage type um the a frontage type is the highest level of treatment um it's meant to be more pedestrian oriented um with fewer driveways um and um all the front doors sort of located on the a the B is like a side street um it allows all

[23:01] those things and then the C is like the back um it's where sort of the back of house um activities can occur which is one of the critiques that we heard of the other two form based code areas like we need more places to put trash and on garage entrances the SE street is also the location where the workshop base that I'll show you in a minute um may occur um so in this location the General Building allows for five stories up to the maximum of 55 ft um in all of the locations except for the areas south of arapo where you can see Heights are limited to four stories um because of the uh proximity to the neighborhood to the South the Valmont Park East and West locations on either side of the park um include specific areas intended mainly for residential um directly AB budding the park that's the green that you see on the maps um these uh the areas on the

[24:00] outside of those green uh locations uh accommodate a really wide variety of uses um and include uh the workshop building or the General Building um the workshop building in the kind of reddish color only um these are intended to sort of allow for a similar mix of uses that currently exists today um but in a more walkable format for the plan um we also have carried forward the enhanced um p The Pedestrian and bicycle placeo that is planned for Boulder Junction along the north side of Goose Creek um should that area redevelop uh in the future um so that enhanced poo extends here as well um so you can see it with the dotted line along the north side of uh Goose Creek on the on the Valmont Park West um regulating plan and the final regulating plan proposed for East Boulder is for the flat iron Business Park area this location includes uh three BL uh Place

[25:01] types in the plan The Innovation to um along 55th um which would be mixed use uh with a general building in that sort of light blue color um and then the Main Street Live workplace type is located in the plan along the east side of this area um on the regulating plan it includes both the general building and the uh Workshop building in the darker blue um it's limited to four stories in height and is intended again to accommodate a wide mix of uses including production uses residential and Commercial uses and then in the center of the destination workplace um which uh allows for both the general and the workshop buildings in the dark blue areas um we did revise the structure of the form base code a bit to introduce base types um the idea behind the base types is to allow the bases to sort of plug into the ground floor of the buildings um which helps to reduce some

[26:00] of the repetition throughout the code um all a b and c frontages would accommodate one of these base types um the storefront base is essentially at grade with the sidewalk has large windows and must include specific uses such as retail service oriented and production uses um the storefront base is required in specific locations per the regulating plans as I referred to earlier those sort of purple lines um but may be used um elsewhere Square the sort of default base is the general base which has the same transparency requirements as the upper story so you can see the base part is highlighted in green um on the diagrams um and it allows the ground story to be elevated above the sidewalk to accommodate residential or office uses more comfortably um the new workshop base which introduces garage access and somewhat lower requirements for entrances and transparencies um which is meant to accommodate kind of production um businesses and the workshop base is

[27:01] limited to C streets so those sort of back side streets um on the General Building um but is uh allowed in sort of varying configurations on all frontages of the workshop building so throughout those kind of dark blue areas and the red um one key revision uh that was made to the form based code is the introduction of a variety of spaces along the street um instead of a consistent Straight Street wall um which is you know sort of the old school way of looking at form based codes um on longer buildings a streetcap plaza or a courtyard is required to break up the space um in East Boulder the frontage setback areas are also more generous uh the intent is to create more Gathering spaces and increase the landscape um along the street two complaints that were heard from implementation of the form base code in other locations um additional this allows for a wider range of spaces to accommodate

[28:00] uses such as um Mobility hubs bicycle parking and outdoor dining um another goal of the introduction of these deeper spaces along the streetscape is to allow for longer buildings um and longer buildings are more affordable to build uh than multiple smaller buildings so they allow for a single sort of vertical circulation or single mechanical systems um and we were very conscious of the cost of development within the forign base code especially in conjunction with the goal of um more affordable housing um without reducing design quality um the proposed changes organize frontages better than the previous code did um they allow for reduced transparency and um different materials on facades that are not visible from the public realm um and then further on the sort of B and the new C streets we've increased the flexibility of materials especially because East Boulder has a more sort of industrial feel we felt like we could introduce some um other

[29:00] materials uh into the pallet there and finally we've added a few measures to reduce the cost of submittals and the level of design that's required at the time of submitt so these reductions will hopefully help with the goal of introducing housing and housing that is more affordable um in East Boulder uh with the new zoning districts for East Boulder uh housing is allowed um the form base code for East Boulder also carries forward the requirement from Alpine bosam and Boulder Junction for residential uses in larger buildings um the requirement is limited to those locations where housing is allowed by zoning District um and they are limited by building type so the general building and then the row building um in order to sort of balance the housing needs with a desire to retain the production uses in East Boulder which brings me to the final couple of slides related to um implementation

[30:02] measure unique to East Boulder um one of the stated goals of the subc commmunity plan is to continue to provide smallscale production spaces throughout East Boulder uh just to recap a few items that have already been mentioned um the form based code areas of East Boulder are limited to the areas of change those areas intended to introduce housing into East Boulder um the remaining areas of East Boulder are intended to remain as is um with their existing Zone in um also the form base code does not kick in until larger additions or modifications or Redevelopment occurs meaning existing businesses can carry on with their current zoning um further the future zoning districts defined in the subcommunity plan uh mainly the uh mu2 and mu4 include a really wide range of uses with many production uses and light manufacturing uses allowed within it and then finally the new workshop building and workshop base um is intended to accommodate these uses in all of the form based code areas to some degree um

[31:01] but I'd like to explain the new production space requirement that we hope to directly retain small business um small spaces for these kind of production um uses so as Sarah mentioned a survey of local businesses provided us with guidance for the design of these spaces um that can accommodate production needs um and some of the results are shown there in that kind of green box similar to the residential requirement and the form based code we've created a production space requirement um for now we've defined that 10% of the ground story of larger buildings would be reserved for production space and that space can occur in either the workshop or the storefront base um those spaces are intended to be a mix of smaller scale spaces between 500 and 5,000 square feet um for the survey results and the spaces are intended to be reserved for this list of uses at this time um it's a pretty wide range of uses um including

[32:01] things like research and development and um industrial the full industrial classification media production art studios and workshops as well as uh small theaters and production space um so we hope that uh we're still sort of workshopping or working with this um production space requirement but we're hope that this is a starting point to sort of figure out a way to um maintain those spaces moving forward in all areas of these folder I'll turn it back over to Sarah oh thank you Leslie um so just really quickly um before we get to the questions and discussion I just wanted to go over the next steps with you um as I mentioned at the beginning the public review draft is posted on the website and it's open for comment until the 21st we're going to go to planning board next week on the 18th to review the draft with them and as KJ mentioned earlier we'll whoops we'll continue to collect feedback and make refinements over the summer and we'll be back probably in the

[33:01] fall depending on the refinements um with a final set of recommended updates and those um will come in a package um an amendment to the subc commmunity plan will be needed and it will require both planning board and Council approval and um we'll have to um add the future zoning map um which will be necessary to guide the rezonings um as part of new development or or substantial Redevelopment in the areas of change like we talked about um and there will also be an ordinance to amend Title Nine of the boulder Revised Code um and that will require um planning board recommendation and Council approval and that will be to make updates to the form-based code the use table and any other relevant sections of the code that we have to update um per regulation so with that I just want to remind us of the key question um do you have questions or comments on the draft code um updates as they relate to East Boulder specifically as they relate to Boulder or generally if you have questions about that so I'm

[34:01] happy to open it up for discussion thank you Sarah um I think it would be great if we could start with questions like we traditionally do does anyone have any questions that they want to kick us off with I see Tina thank you okay I um thank you for all the information it was really helpful um I had a couple of questions one is when I went back to the original East Boulder plan from a year or two ago um you there was mentioned a desire for parking maximums in some of these areas is that something that was discussed as part of this or would that be outside of the form based code piece yeah I can jump in uh quickly thanks for the question Tina um that the parking requirements would be a would be a separate um you know code process to to update so we did not consider any

[35:02] parking requirements as part of the form based code okay can I just jump in too so I I'm Brad Mueller director of planning and development services I will just add to Christopher's comments that we do however have a Citywide review of uh Transportation enhancements that include parking and uh and that will inevitably get into parking maximums and minimums and potential elimination okay and then another question I had is a little bit specific um and I love how we're adding more public spaces and um and more and some Landscaping do we have an idea of who maintains the new additional space particularly with the increased um setbacks is that City maintained or do the owners maintain it and then separately I saw that the potential payo would be a public private and it would be maintained by by the private entity and I am curious how that agreement

[36:01] looks whether that's a written agreement or whether it's in code like if if we sort of if we talk about what the expectations are yeah I can I can start on that and then Leslie or Kanani pooa is a principal planner with us on Urban Design they may be able to speak to how the poos work in Boulder Junction which is another area where the form base code applies um but as far as uh the the any of the sort of outdoor spaces that would be on private property but sort of seen as an expansion of the streetscape area those would those would be maintained by by the property owner not not necessarily by the city you know there would be City Maintenance within the right of way but if it happens to those areas extend onto the private property generally those are maintained by property owner okay thanks and that's all I have thank you Tina and great job on

[37:02] timing and under three minutes um Mark you're up next and then Matt and then Aaron I only have three questions um uh do I understand correctly that that every applicant is going to need to apply for new Zoning for their project is that a misunder understanding on my part uh it could be so there are definitely there are certain areas of uh of East Boulder well the majority of East Boulder you know is not covered by the form based code so those those properties continue forward with their existing zoning within the areas of change or within the areas where we've proposed for the form based code to apply uh the future zoning map identifies what would be the most appropriate Zone District going forward based on the subc community plan some of those are the same as what's there today um industrial General as as an example um you know and and then there are some areas that would require a change in

[38:02] zoning which essentially establishes the the underlying uses and then the form based code would would help to direct the um the physical form of the building um and I should just note that you know that requirement to um to uh come into compliance with that future zoning map and apply the form based code would only apply if it's a substantial Redevelopment so an addition to a property that's more than 40% the gross floor area or a complete renovation or or you know Redevelopment of a site it it is not the application for new zoning going to be extremely time consuming uh generally rezonings can be processed as part of a site review so it does it does occur you know currently under our existing processes okay my my other question is the concept of required residential for buildings uh over 15,000 square feet I I have a

[39:01] recollection that when we last discussed this matter um we gave guidance that that that was to be an optional uh requirement or about a requirement to be optional uh for those types of projects and um obviously we've we've heard from a number of people who have a great deal of issue with uh respect to that requirement sure yeah I'm happy you rais that um because as as you have heard from from property owners and others we have as well and started you know to have those conversations around that topic so when we uh I you know uh purposfully went back and listened to the adoption hearings from the sub community plan at the end of 202 2022 um just to remind myself of those conversations and make sure we hadn't missed anything the understanding from staff um from

[40:00] those conversations and from those meetings was that there was a desire from Council to ensure that the continuation of these business and industry uses would continue forward there was never mentioned very specifically about the mandatory requirement or not from residential at least based on my you know review of the of the meetings um what we have done and what we're proposing is that within that that highest intensity Transit oriented development location that has both the MU tood land use designation within the comprehensive plan and then also the Innovation to place type within the sub community plan that's where we have uh utilized or applied this General Building form that if larger than 15,000 square feet it would have it would carry that residential requirement partly in to supp the future Transit that that we anticipate will be there um and I will

[41:02] mention that this is this is not a new thing um that's you know come out of come out of the blue this is a requirement that currently applies to the Boulder Junction area in specific locations as well so this was a you know a mechanism that we used in Boulder Junction that we carried over to apply particularly to those transit or development locations all right I I'll have more to say about that in in the comments uh section and I I assume that you have similar thinking with respect to uh requiring uh production space in larger buildings that's correct and that that grew out of um that is specific to East Boulder and grew out of the recommendation and the desire both from community and Council and Boards of how do we you know how do we continue to try to maintain these spaces for these service type of uses business and industry so wanted to make sure that in a in a case of Redevelopment we were

[42:01] still trying attempting to replace the space for those things and withh hold those locations for kind of that that short list of um of potential uses okay I'll reserve the rest of my comments for comments great thank you thank you thanks Mark was five minutes just so you know my goodness next up Matt and then Tera I'm loving the the time cop here it's it's it's great um thanks for keeping us honest um so my question KJ kind of centers around this balance and I know Brad speaks of this all the time of like predictability and creativity and striking that balance and so question I have is is what we've seen in some a lot of form based code is in order for people to get uh ex a lot of people apply for exemptions out of the form based code and that works them through a process but it also reduces predictability because they're basing their plan on perhaps getting those

[43:00] exemptions and so I'm wondering how can is there a way in which in this current setup you could be embarking on the form based code but maybe opt into some discretionary process early on to sort of maybe quickly vet those exemptions in like a concept review so that you kind of know are we even in the right ballpark because that might add some predictability so that when they get further down the process they kind of have like all right we know we're kind of headed in the right direction or quickly get the comments they're not and not waste that so I'm just wondering how can we bake in mechanisms for off-ramps or enhanced creativity um in this process because that's what we're hearing from a lot of folks that that own property and are looking to to make some creative spaces they might feel no pun intended but a little boxed in on some of these rules wanting to maintain some predictability but enhanced creativity yeah yeah so from a procedural standpoint through the form-based code process there is a required uh preapplication meeting that with our development review staff and so that's the essentially it's the

[44:01] equivalent of a concept plan and so that's the opportunity to bring forward an idea you know talk the we meet with all of the various disciplines our transportation Engineers storm water Etc and work through you know work through the process work through the the kind of checklist that would be associated with the form based code and identify where they may need exceptions and and whether or not those would be feasible um the other thing I'll just note too is that particularly in East Boulder we you know this is feedback we've heard as well on the existing code and we've made adjustments related to the depth of required setbacks or where the building is located um you know some of the requirements for transparency and materials those kinds of things so we've tried to loosen those up uh considerably from from what they have been U we propos to remove the golden rule that is part of the current form base code so um you know we're trying to trying to free things up a little bit and allow for

[45:00] that greater level of creativity I I appreciate that but I'm just wondering could we could we create a space where you know someone take their own taking their own action say I want to embark on a more discretionary process because what I'm creating is way out there and instead of giving you 34 exemptions I can kind of just vet this whole thing to planning board to council kind of get a soft blessing and that may also allow some clarity for staff of of okay maybe maybe those quasi judicial bodies are actually maybe open to this and then you kind of synergize around it again I'm just wondering if there's a way to hybridize that discretionary process as long as they're opting in I don't want to force them down that path so I'm just sort of curious if there's a way to kind of create multiple tracks so to speak um to maximize the options available to us can can I jump in Christopher unless you've got a yeah go ahead a few thoughts as well but yeah please yeah so I appreciate the um kind of observation and the the of of that uh councilman member uh

[46:01] Benjamin um I think uh you know this study session is a time to take in those ideas and we would want to bring uh an operational solution that I think captures the spirit of that I I know that you as we are careful about wanting to overlap too many th things so uh I I certainly understand the spirit of that and how that can be um important to to your earliest Point um balance the cre creativity with the predictability and uh I I'd say uh we hear that and and we can kind of noodle on that and bring forward a good operational solution to that Christopher I think you I think you covered it yeah I think we're you know we're cautious about creating these parallel tracks because it you know It ultimately becomes an administrative um Challenger can where you know it it creates some unpredictability actually as you as you do that for the applicant or for staff um or even for yourselves but certainly that's that's absolutely

[47:00] something we can we can look into and V with the development team and see what might be possible is that it Matt perfect on to you Aaron thanks Lauren and I'll just start with say KJ I noticed that elimination of the the Golden Rule thing and thought that was a great change so appreciate that nod to creativity um there but I do have a question um which is um what is the callup process so if an applicant has gone through the form based code and has been approved that they've checked all the boxes what what allows planning border Council to call up that that decision by staff what's the threshold ye yeah and and colani you may be able to you know to chime in on this as well but um the you know from from my understanding currently you know planning board has the opportunity to call up a form based code review um it this is I I will admit

[48:03] that the form based code is a still a fairly new tool within the city of Boulder there's only three projects that have gone through it and Aline bwom is working through the process right now uh planning board has chosen to call up all three of those projects um over the last several years and uh my sense is that it's you know partly due to it being a new tool and trying to gain of comfort and understanding of it and and be comfortable that the the rules or the regulations that are within the code are actually you know yielding the outcomes that we're interested in um I certainly you know think that there is opportunities to potentially reconsider that the you know the goal of the form based code is that it is a fairly routine or objective process and and is intended to be uh staff staff L staff driven um you know to try to remove some of the discretionary portion of it and remove some of that ambiguity I appreciate that but it was

[49:01] it was actually was kind of a technical question what is the threshold necessary to call up a project by planning board in the form based code I believe Kanani do you have an answer I believe that that has changed now it's two people is that the recent changes in the use tables yes but but there's no threshold in terms of maybe the scale of the project or anything like that they they have the the ability to call up essentially project could be anything in the previously was one individual planning board member but we changed that threshold to two that's correct okay great thanks that exceptions list within the form based codes might help guide some of that call up potential but it's not mandatory to meet those for the call up great thanks and I had other questions but KJ answered them in a one-on-one earlier so thanks for that KJ that's all I got thanks Aaron on to you Tara Lauren if I don't use my whole

[50:01] three minutes can I pull my time to another section of this study session sure thank you all right so then I have one very simple question KJ Flat irons's Park we all know is not an actual Park but it's a business park so I guess my question is is if you drive by you see that beautiful new building and it really does look like a business par so good for people if they want to put housing in there and we wanted to give it the option but why would my question is why would you do that uh 15,000 feet must have what was it 40% residential was that 40% 50% yes 50% in flat IRS Park when it's really like I'm worried so I'm I'm worried that it's going to like let's say a a business has an old building there and they want to redo the whole thing now they have to all of a sudden like make it 50% residential to

[51:02] me doesn't make sense so instead of commenting later or before commenting later I just wanted to know what your thinking was sure sure so this is this is a sort of interesting um pathway of how we you know how we've come to this um I went back through some of the history of the East Boulder subcommunity plan it was it was before I had actually joined the city and unfortunately Kathleen is out on br to leave so we don't you know we don't have her history and brain to share this but upon the research that that I um did earlier today to kind of understand how we how we landed here is that originally in the 60% draft of the subc commmunity plan the the park was identified as the destination workplace um Place type which essentially uh allows for either a smaller Workshop building that could be fully non-residential or would allow for that taller General building that also carries the residential requirement but there would

[52:00] always be that off-ramp of using the workshop building to to do a office or Life Sciences or you know whatever it needed to be um through uh Council study sessions actually in July of 2021 and then uh March of 20 or April 2022 there were comments made about the you know potentially missing an opportunity for an area to introduce additional housing and understanding that 55th is intended to become more of a Transit Ridge Corridor there was um you know there were some comments and ultimately we ended up changing the subc commmunity plan to identify that section the Western portion of clat ir's Business Park along 55th to be that Innovation to designation as opposed to the workplace designation so that was ultimately what was adopted through the plan through the subc community plan and so you know as we as staff were working through the recommendations and

[53:00] developing the draft of this form based code we were under the assumption that there were opportunities for existing businesses to continue to operate to completely renovate existing structures to even expand those structures by 40% all under their existing zoning and their existing uses but only once they cross that threshold or go into a much larger full Redevelopment that's when we wanted to try to introduce some of the residential um desires and recommendations from the plan so that's why that is included for that area along 50 f um if we receive comments otherwise then we are certainly open to making that making those adjustments as needed but that's That's the basis of of why that's in there right now is that it Tara Perfect all right I had a couple of questions um one the first one um you had

[54:02] mentioned to Mark about you know new zoning going through typically can run in conjunction with a site review process through form-based code we're trying to reduce site review process right and go through a non-discretionary process so in this case wouldn't changing the zoning indeed be a bigger additional process it it would be an added later because particularly if the form based code were reviewed by staff and ultimately not called up by by um you know by planning board then the rezoning would be an extra layer we do think that it would be a fairly straightforward process because um part of what we're proposing in terms of this package of amendments is that um is that we would amend the subcommunity plan to in include a map that shows what those future Zone districts should be so if

[55:00] you're coming forward you are proposing to be in compliance with the sub community plan that should be a fairly routine process you know from a staff perspective and from a review perspective by planning board and city council to say yes you are you are you know coming into compliance with the sub community plan um it it would add a separate process but we think it would be relatively straightforward as opposed to um uh you know the typical rezoning process says today uh we don't have that very clear direction we don't have a map that says this is what it should be it's more of a discretionary review to understand is it consistent with the comp plan Etc could it be administrative if it's coming into compliance with a plan that we approve U if I can jump into that and uh to answer your most recent question we we can certainly look into that uh council member fuler I believe the legal advice we'll probably get is that as a zoning property right we do need to go through a public

[56:00] hearing to do that it would be unusual to change it but I think the key Point uh to add on to what Christopher was saying is that we did explore the reciprocal which is to uh if you will uh have City initiated rezonings of these to make it in compliance with the community plan and that ultimately um was not supported by some of the public feedback we got it also felt a little heavy-handed recognizing that people could come in and make the choice to do that I I want to double down on Christopher's Point too that you know where we maybe have a history of rezonings uh maybe feeling like kind of tortured unusual thing this really should kind of fall in line um if it's consistent with the subcommunity plan and I would Envision these being much more expedient than maybe what we are used to seeing in a rezoning okay thank you um my second question is about design review and sort of what happens

[57:00] when people aren't able to meet or don't want to meet the criteria that is in the form-based code could that potentially be a design re viw Board review as opposed to a planning Board review just because if we're not looking at parking intensity those kinds of things that are typically Associated more with planning board this feels like it could be more of a design question I I mean I would I would certainly be open to exploring that as an option um I yeah I I can neither confirm nor deny tonight but yes we could certainly look into that perfect thank you all right anyone else have questions shall we move into comments who wants to kick us off with comments mark and then Tera I'm not going to take five minutes uh my comments are as follows I I really think

[58:02] the requirement for uh fit for uh combining housing with commercial facilities is awkward um it's going to create some really inappropriate um situations for uh research facilities and should be optional not mandator um if somebody wants to do it that's fine but if they don't uh and they want to spend you know put together a 50 or 60 or 70,000 uh square foot uh research facility U we need to to allow them to do that um and uh uh I I I really urge you to rethink that that's council member just for clarification when you say residential with commercial were you meaning Industrial in this context the requirement that that are building over 15,000 feet has to uh incorporate residential okay thank

[59:04] you thank you Mark I see Tara's hand up next and then Aaron I agree with Mark and I can be really quick I I we have I feel strongly that we have to protect our industrial areas uh this park in particular um and so I agree with Mark I think it's fine to allow it but I don't want to have rules like that personally I think that it yeah I'm gonna agree with Mark on that that's it nice job keeping it short all right Ain and then Matt great thanks I'll take a a little bit of a different tag well first of all I just want to say uh you all are have done amazing work here it's extremely detailed and thorough I I read all all the words and there are a lot of them and I was very impressed um and great iteration of our form based code here on iteration number three and it you know continues to evolve and grow and get

[60:00] better so I appreciate that uh very much and so I'll take a little bit of a different tack at what Tara and Mark were saying which is I I think that in those like Innovation to areas that um that moving towards a mixed use approach with housing is positive I think we do want more housing in these areas in those in those sections not places where you can do the workplace type potentially right because if if you really do want to do something all without any housing you can do the workplace type and many of those areas allow for that but what I'd say is that that maybe I know that there there property owners who I think have had plans for five years or more about what they how they might want to redevelop their properties under the kind the previous rules that we had applied and so the the TCH I I think I would look at this is that um that if people maybe look at entering into the um rezoning and the application of the

[61:00] form based code as as a potential option for folks but if they wanted to continue along um the previous regulation path regulatory path that they have with their existing zoning that that might be an option for them as well so then if if an existing property owner uh wants to I mean because we're enabling significant additional development potential here so if a property owner wanted to take advantage of all that development potential they could follow the form based code and if they were in The Innovation to or those General Building type they would need to uh add housing if they were in the workplace they wouldn't have to but if they did want to go on the separate track because of plans they already had to potentially allow them to do that so so that's my thought on on how to approach that um the requirement thing I think and having that production requirement is a really intriguing one so that we do keep some of those small business and um um industrial and and research kind of areas in this District I thought that was a creative approach as well um but again the maybe people already have

[62:00] existing plans could could opt opt into those if they wanted to and my one other uh thought there was I'm glad glad to hear that the the callup uh got expanded to two people with that recent change that we made uh but just want to wonder if we want to consider making that a majority requirement because every Council callup requires a majority vote and so maybe we look at having that majority um vote required for a call up for planning board for form by code as well and then just the last thing is that I know you are and will do this but we've gotten some really detailed comments from some people who own property in the this area um and I'm I'm sure you'll be engaging with them as you move towards the moving from the draft to the final uh but just want to encourage that continued work uh to make sure people's uh you know specific detailed comments and concerns and maybe some great ideas are taken into account that's what I got if that if that thanks for all your amazing

[63:00] work thank you Aaron next we have Matt and then Tina and then Nicole thanks L um yeah I'll start by uh one just echoing where what Aaron said about just I mean I think this is a really good step in the right direction and we fix a lot of wrongs that were kind of put in place in our first Salvo of form based code based on Lessons Learned so I appreciate that we've adapted to that um also sort of Echo what what aarin said about continued engagement I I think there's a a lot of opportunity for this next phase to really kind of break out highlighters and some red pens and really dive into the N nuts and bolts of this um and I think there's probably some really good ideas that that uh a lot of our partners will have um with regards to how we make those changes um and and against kind that balance of creativity and predictability um so so I'd hope that we can continue to do that and then along those lines of of uh I just would love to really think about what are the changes we're doing and how do they impact the cost of the project since so much of what we're focusing on is

[64:00] housing I want to make sure that what we're embarking on is also reducing the cost on the front end because then that ultimately still gets passed on to the people who are who are buying or renting those places so um you know we want to just sort of be thoughtful of that um lastly I was curious about um could we because we're embarking this is still somewhat new and covering a large area could we have like a Time slash number of project check in to sort of be like hey after 24 months or maybe after maybe three uh projects go through this that we check in and we kind of be like so what's working what's not and then maybe recalibrate um because it's going to be over a long time I'd love for us to check in at some interval to just make those fine tune changes because I think that still benefits everybody and then we can take those lessons learned from those that have sort of initially gone through this so that's what I got appreciate it thanks Matt up next we have Tina yeah just following up with a little bit with uh what Matt just said I'm

[65:00] interested in knowing how this works and um whether the timeline is 24 months or even sooner if something in this process is a red flag I think it'd be great if we could um address it quickly so that we can get on top of it um and especially as we think about legislation with the Housing Opportunity area which should be administrative review I think we'll want to get as many learnings as we can in a structured way to make sure we do that right as that comes down the pike in three years um and the other piece is I um you know especially given when we think about the congestion on a rapo in this area and that we might be adding to that um I do think having housing that is sort collocated with the work is great um but I would be open to an incentive structure rather than just code um if there's a certain outcome that we're looking for so I'm thinking about ways to help businesses make that decision but that might not be code for those businesses who aren't there yet or um had other expectations just a year

[66:01] ago that's all I've got perfect thank you Tina next up we have Nicole and then I'm gonna call on myself thank you um just want to Echo the things to staff um great work and thank you so much for all that you put into this um just one of the just comments that I had was around um The Innovation uh to areas I know we had this discussion previously when we were talking about some other changes but I just do worry about what happens if we lose some of that um space that people are using for light industrial or other types of uses like that because it doesn't seem like that space is ever going to come back and I know we already you know again we talked about it in previous discussions I just I just want to lift that up that it continues to kind of be an area of concern for me especially in this East Boulder area because there's so many cool uses of space that are um kind of later industrial or art or whatever they are over there um that I I just just want to make sure we have that so um and then the other thing was just around um

[67:01] Erin's comments around um sck allowing kind of people had things in progress to kind of continue with what they had based on the prior code um I do worry about that a little bit just because this is intended to be a holistic plan where it all fits together and every you know piece of it is sort of meant to be there and so um it just gives me a little pause thinking about you know what happens if we let folks in little kind of pockets of areas start doing things differently um it feels like that's interrupting that larger holistic piece so um not not not sure where that leaves you but I just wanted to elevate that it's a concern for me that it in it's like a network right if we pull out one piece of it does it still function as intended um I'm not sure but that is that is it thank you thanks Nicole um um let's see I probably as a surprise to No One have a number of comments which

[68:02] doesn't mean I don't really appreciate all of the great work you've put into this um but I'm going to Rattle through them fairly quickly so first um I really like Matt's continue idea about continuing to work with Architects and developers on this I appreciate the direction it's going but I think refinement um it it could use a little bit more back and forth on that um generally I find it overly prescriptive and I would challenge you to see can we have 25 to 50% fewer words I know that that is a big Target but there are so many very very nuanced things about what colors awnings can be and I just it's so in the weeds um I also would like to see s make it um make keeping existing buildings or

[69:00] portions of existing buildings easier um so I don't know that I'm I'm not really in favor of dropping that threshold down to 40% from the 60% and I'd also like to see some exemptions in the form base code for existing buildings or portions of existing structures that are maintained um I appreciated Erin suggestion of requiring a majority vote for callup um on the frontages side of things I'm a little bit concerned that our nicest frontages are typically not always but most of these plans pointed towards very vehicle Centric streets and I think that you really get the most benefit of for these kind of upgraded facades when they're on um bike and pedestrian focused streets so to me I feel like there's a little bit of realignment that could happen there I'd

[70:00] also like to see smaller Courtyard requirements um particularly for those facades that face major streets because I just don't buy that that's a great place to hang out and it does have an impact on unit counts and things like that I would love to see us pilot single point egress stair requirements in these zones I know that's probably beyond the scope of of what we could accomplish here but just in case I thought I'd ask um similarly drainage I think that there's a lot of you know we've seen some Community feedback about accomplishing the drainage on these properties I would love to see us relook at our drainage requirements in general I find it really problematic that the amount of existing impervious area is what you base you know having to meet your storm water requirements off of um most other communities we can also do things like detention B below grade and

[71:01] I would really like to see us move in that direction as well particularly in areas like this or for areas that have existing really high percentages of impervious surface um and then just continuing to listen to the community feedback higher ceiling Heights being allowed because right now we have this poo ceiling height requirement that doesn't match with first floor ceiling height allowances um I also think garage doors are fantastic everywhere they're fun on cafes not just for industrial uses so just continuing to relax and think through the details of it thank you uh next up I see Ryan thank you um thank you Brad and team I um I agree with everything that Lauren said and I agree with

[72:00] Aaron and and what Nicole said and N except Nicole had a a a point about um being um well you know what actually I'm not going to comment on that but in in general I I'll say I agree with what the three of them said Nicole had a question about something that Ain said leave you to that to to consider um in general I agree with with my colleagues said I I think that one one thing I would add is um I in general like us to try to be as deliberate as possible about um ways to encourage mixed use and and housing to be near one another um through measures that we can add um retail especially grocery so I I don't s want to suggest to add a lot more specifically just as a general Principle as there are opportunities to do that I think that's the kind of thing um we ought to be

[73:01] using this as a as a incubator for our 15minute neighborhood um outcome strategic plan so um I think that's it for me you thanks Ryan up next we have Taisha hey there um I also I will be brief tonight I also agree um with many of my my colleagues echoing um what I understood of Lauren's concerns this is not my area so I really do appreciate again I can read these documents and see things and other people can see other things and I just am grateful to have a variety of different expertise in this area so I'm really um leaning in on those that have a variety of different expertise um the one thing that I have that I haven't heard that I just wanted to lift up is um just in general we know that Wildlife corridors are significantly disrupted in our community

[74:00] we know that we have a um a u issue with insects and those kinds of things and so obviously I know we're using native grasses and all these pieces um and when I look at page what 51 um with the open space figure 1417 um with the open space components to it um I'm concerned about how many more people we are potentially bringing to spaces and we are not increasing our open space at the same so that's where that's just the heart of my concerns in general even in the 13 years that I've been living here I've noticed a significant buildup but I'm not seeing a correlating increase in open space and it's not open space so that we can go and be on our bikes and go on Hikes it's open space for our wildlife open space for our native grasses and species um and it also obviously helps with heat and and

[75:01] heat islands and so especially on the east side where I feel like there's less um you know uh I live on the west side and that's great and wonderful um but as you go further east um you know there's less and less and so that's just something that's very much on my mind and I'm hopeful that we can really innovate around biodiversity how is this how are we innovating um as it relates to more biodiversity and when I say biodiversity what that means is better air quality that's what that means I mean that's one of the ways that that translates um you know and again in the 13 years of the period I've also seen a significant decrease in air quality um and so I'm just very mindful about all of these planning developments moving forward how we are um how are we innovating how are we leading on um um continuing to ensure that it's not just planting trees everywhere either so I I guess I think that's just one of the pieces um and then I guess I did have a

[76:00] question but I don't think it's one um that is typically asked but just in general I would love to hear more about how much water is being used for these developments how much energy is being used for these developments I know that these conversations already happen with our utilities and climate team before it even gets to us and um that worked in the past that Silo worked in the past but as um the resources become more acute it's going to be more important for all of us to be more familiar and comfortable with having those kinds of conversations and even as a council yes we have senior water rights in Boulder but we are also in an a arify climate um a desertify climate um and so um we have these competing issues and I'm just eager for us to um continue to um innovate and be creative around that thank you thank you Taisha staff do you have any

[77:01] follow-up questions for any of us or does anyone else have any additional comments they would like to make I do have one quick question that I would love to get some clarity from from Council um in in particular related to the residential requirement and and some of the comments um I would um I would appreciate kind of understanding if the residential requirement concerns are um you know in general in terms of requiring residential in all locations throughout the subc community plan or the the areas of change in the form based code or is it more directly tied to some of these areas that have more traditionally been um you know very focused on the the business and and Industry side of things um I could take a stab at that to start with I think I'm open to requiring some

[78:02] residential in some areas in this plan when things are redeveloped but I do think that it is it doesn't necessarily make sense to require it for buildings and uses where we intend to see industrial which we would like to maintain for the long term in the city uh I see Ryan has his hand up as well I just I'll repeat kind of what I said before I would I would put it back to staff and say what are our outcomes that we're searching for in the um strategic plan I think 15minute neighborhoods is one of the one of the key ones that relates to this what do we need to do to advance that um I you know maybe there's some other principles people would want to suggest but I'm I'm a little bit I'm not sure how to answer this in the abstract without aims or principles and I think 15-minute neighborhood the best North I can so others have better ideas yeah and just because this triggered something I was thinking about

[79:00] earlier I also don't think that we necessarily know what our options are in terms of requiring not requiring or having thresholds or things that might trigger something um Tara well I know for me that Lauren explained it well that what I was thinking traditionally like a business park like Flat Iron's Park I would not want to have um I would not want to have those requirements what what's the word I'm looking for Laura not requirements yes but I'm open to it in other places just um I don't want to lose you know the the goal of the original which was two years ago maybe two and a half years ago I remember uh we were talking about how we don't want to lose our light industrial and so I'm worried about unintended consequences um from and I'm saying that these ideas are great and also for things like flat irons park or places like that I'm going to agree with Lauren

[80:01] that it's not something that I think that we should uh require residential I also see Aaron's hand yeah and and you know kind of reiterating a little bit what I said before which was that if there were an alternate path to to not have to build a residential in that in that flat irons Business Park and a couple other areas which is to go under the existing regulations you know that's another path so I guess you're hearing concerns from several of us that that like there are benefits to having additional residential but also that having a 100% requirement in in areas that weren't expecting it is problematic and so how to thread that needle maybe is you're getting some different feedback but um maybe keep talking to the stakeholders and maybe propose a one or one or another

[81:02] path you could always bring us back options great yes we will we will consider that yeah because we we'll go back and um uh obviously consider your feedback in and that we hear from planning board and from community over the next couple weeks and then we will consider our options and certainly bring back um a suite of choices if if that's the approach or if we feel like we got it dialed in we'll we'll come back with the recommendation so I appreciate all the feedback that's really helpful thank you very much perfect thank you so much KJ and to the whole team for all this great work we really do appreciate it thank you all have a good night you too so I don't want us to get cocky at this point but we are a little bit ahead of schedule no thanks to me who is the only person who went over the six- minute time slot but I hope to redeem Myself by the end of the meeting um so next on our agenda

[82:00] we have the community Court updat thank you so much council member and and first of all I just want to appreciate so much uh council members um flexibility this these two updates are ones that we usually bring at the top of the hour on a quarterly basis um at uh at the request of council uh some years ago we had some time in a study session and we wanted to accommodate that so so appreciate you allowing us to do that uh with that I will uh turn it over to judge Khan I believe but just to let him know that his video is not on are you sure yeah now you were on yep it maybe just a delay y okay and if we could um pull up the slides I believe someone from the city clerk's office is going to do that for us thank you so much now this does not contain notes so I'm hopeful that someone has those notes the presenter's

[83:01] portion and if not I can put them up on my [Music] screen Emily do you have this in a a presenter's ability with their with notes this would not usually have that note so uh judge if you can do that on your screen that'd be great I think I'm going to do that Dan give me a moment so I think Emily's gonna have to take hers down Emily if you could do that and then I'll share my screen give me a moment to pull it up on my screen

[84:12] it's not letting me do that that's just sharing that give me a moment let's try this again and I don't know if it's possible but it could make sense for Emily to share the slides and for you to do the presenter

[85:01] notes off of your side if I can if I'm able to do that but when I'm whenever I click between them it clicks me out of the other one so that's what I'm struggling with ah so give me let me see if I can pull up I think I like the idea but let me let me just uh stop sharing again here Matt you want to TS up with any jokes in the mean I know it's short notice no pressure H you you know I've always got one ready uh why is it called Dark uh with a K and not a c because you can't see in the dark and I think I'm ready but I I'll we can Emily if you can put up your slides for the group I've got my slides on a different screen with my

[86:00] notes perfect so I can't see what you all are seeing but hopefully you're seeing a picture of our staff if that's correct then we're all on this the right page here that's what we got okay well good evening I should introduce myself I'm Jeff KH I'm the presiding judge for the boulder Municipal Court want to thank mayor Brocket mayor protm Spear and the members of city council for letting me have the opportunity to present the IAL Court's quarterly update and if you can go to the next slide for me I do want to take a few minutes to share with you my view of the role of the Municipal Court we are a mission-driven operation we're focused on principles of equity and procedural Justice our court handles traffic cases parking Petty and misdemeanor criminal offenses animal violations and a variety of civil matters through the city's quasa judicial appeal process we interact with thousands of people each year many who who live in Boulder and many who come to Boulder for work school or as visitors our goal in these interactions is for people to feel that

[87:01] they've been treated with respect that they have had an opportunity to be heard and that they leave the court feeling that the process was fair and efficient for many people this will be their only direct interaction with their government it is also important to me that our stakeholders like the city attorney's office public defender Boulder Police Department cupd Witnesses and others have confidence in the way that we handle the cases that are filed in our court I've spent some time in the past talking about our problem solving nature and I want to make sure that people understand that this means that when we set policies and procedures we consider at the outset the community issue present and then we design our process to secure an impro improvement in the problem that the community might face this is true in every aspect of our operation we are evidence-based and we seek out the best practice for any program we create next slide please I'm going to turn things over to

[88:00] Devon kiss Kelly for just a moment or two Devon's just going to share with you a couple of changes in court personnel and our compliance with the digital accessibility statute Devon whenever you're ready hi councel this my name's Devon Cass Kelly I'm the court administrator uh back in September judge Khan talked to you about some changes in the court um with the structure and I'm happy to say that at this point we have filled all of of our positions including bringing on board Jose Lopez naara as our Deputy Court Administrator um this addition to our staff has allowed us to complete projects on time or even before time um and we're very proud of the accomplishments that we have and super excited that we're moving forward fully staffed and ready to take on the challenges judge Khan all right and Devon I'll just point point out briefly that the digital accessibility statute we are now in compliance joshh Jackson was terrific in leading us and getting to ahead of schedule on that I know

[89:00] there's been a grace period that's been offered but we're already in compliance with the statute has written next slide please I have previously discussed with the the city council our young offenders and the quality of life violations we see with those young offenders I decided to bring that issue back to come back and talk a little bit about the end of the season the Academic Year and share some data with you about the end of the Academic Year and also because we've got three new council members on board I thought it would be helpful for them to hear a little bit about that so that's where we're going to head right now into the next slide please this is a look at the noise and nuisance party violations by year as you can see there's been a marked decrease in these quality of life violations starting in 2010 data for the 2023 2024 Academic Year has not yet been added to this CU chart but their report shows that there were even less noise in nuisance party cases in the 2023 24 Academic Year than we saw in 2022 and

[90:01] 2023 and you can just see how that number of cases has decreased significantly cu's party registration began in August of 20110 students can register their party with cu's office of off-campus Housing and neighborhood relations staff at that office educate students about how to have a safe loow impact party if the police department receives a complaint about a party that is registered they call the number of the person who registered the party and let them know that they need to shut the party down before an officer is dispatched if there is no new complaint after 20 to 30 minutes the party hosts avoid a citation and police don't have to be dispatched to that party and citations don't have to be issued this proactive approach has likely played a significant role in the reduction in noise and nuisance party cases filed in our court next slide please I believe that the approach taken by the court in partnership with the city attorney's office and the University of Colorado has also played an important role in reducing the number

[91:00] of cases that we see for nuisance parties and noise violations our process for these quality of life cases is designed to get the offender into court as soon as possible in August and September we create additional dockets so that officers can site cases into court within seven to 10 days of the alleged violation this is what we call our FastTrack program we know that if we see people quickly the incident will be be fresh in their minds and they will have the opportunity to hear from a prosecutor and a judge before perhaps getting another citation most cases are resolved by plea agreement and very few go cases go to trial I will mention this again later but I please keep in mind that the city attorney's office is the key to making this process work a court can only provide the infrastructure such as the fast track program I've described it's the prosecutor's office that drives the plea Bargains presents those to the court and then the court can accept them or reject them we typically accept plea Bargains but I want to make sure that that distinction is drawn here so that people understand next slide

[92:02] please most of these quality of life violations are resolved with a deferred judgment or even a deferred prosecution when an alleged Defender successfully completes the conditions of the deferral the case is dismissed and the record is automatically sealed over 90% of these cases are ultimately dismissed due to the high compliance rate achieved in these cases the City attorney office and the court worked closely with curj program to create a process that allows young offenders the opportunity to repair the harm that they might have created through a reparative agreement that students agree to and must fulfill to earn dismissal of charges but over 90% of charges are getting dismissed ultimately next slide please I have included with the materials for this presentation a copy of the report created by cu's off-campus housing and neighborhood relations office the preventive measure measures taken by CU over the past decade have expanded and become a Cornerstone to their mission this report is a quick

[93:00] easy read and gives you a good idea of what CU is doing to improve neighborhoods surrounding campus our court was deeply involved in developing many of the programs that are now in place the university has taken full ownership of the program and we are lucky to have such a great partner we meet regularly with CU leaders to make sure that we keep this great progress moving forward and as you can see from looking at the report uh the noise and Nuance parties are at their lowest in 20 years uh there's been a record number of Party registrations in this past year and they are now are seeing a significant fraternity engagement which is a big step and the most important thing to keep in mind that is there really is higher neighborhood satisfaction if we can go to the next slide I'll talk just a little bit about that the positive impact that our community is experiencing as a result of the case reduction is clear when I met with Lori call Devin Kramer and Jeff Morris from CU and a they made clear that CU was getting far more positive comments from Neighbors and neighborhood associations and far

[94:00] less complaints than they have received in years past cu's data supports the idea that the harm is being reduced and that is something to celebrate next slide please I would like to turn now to a discussion about the work we are doing with cases that impact our public spaces I spent just a few minutes discussing with you the great success we and our partners have achieved with our young adult population to demonstrate to you how effective a problemsolving approach can be when dealing with Community issues it took a while for the approach with our young offenders to bear fruit but this evidence-based approach has been an overwhelming success in much the same way our community Court was developed to address the challenge our challenges our community faces with unlawful activity in our public spaces though I spoke about Community Court with you and September I think it is worth taking time for our new council members and for the community as a whole to hear why and how we use Community

[95:01] Court to address these issues next slide please when we discuss our Municipal Court operation it is important to understand what type of cases we handle and what type of cases we do not handle the left side of the screen details the typical criminal offenses seen in our court all of these are either Petty offenses or mis demeanor there are no felonies drug offenses or charges involving serious bodily injur injury filed in our court now these are just the criminal charges that we see in our court we also handle parking and traffic and animal violations but we're just talking about criminal violations the list on the right side of the screen details charges that get filed in the state court as you think about offenses occurring at businesses parks and other public spaces this distinction is critical when you hear about a huge drug bus like the one that was outlined by interim Chief Redfern in May understand that the individuals

[96:00] charged in connection with that case will be charged in State Court the same is true for someone who possesses or sells drugs like meth or fentanyl or heroin in a public park those charges are filed in State Court theft and I point this one out for counselor Wier but that includes is also filed in the State Court District Attorney Michael dhy and his team do a great job proing Prosecuting those cases which are presided over by county and district court judges of the 20th Judicial District next slide please the biggest issue we have as a court is finding a way to resolve the cases I just described the littering the camping those low-level misdemeanor cases in a way that gets at the root of the problem and reduces harm to the community we can't even begin to do anything about Behavior if we can't get get people into court a large pet percentage of the cases involve people who are not housed and a large percent

[97:01] percentage of our unhoused do not appear in court after receiving the ticket there are a lot of reasons for this many can't get keep track of the court date they're living on the street so they forget what's going on and what day they need to be somewhere there are many who are also afraid of losing their belongings and they can't bring those into the Justice Center as a general rule some have pets and they can't bring their pets in unless they have certain exemptions but most people can't bring their pets into the courthouse and they're un uncomfortable leaving them with other people and then this fourth one that I'm going to discuss here is trauma or fear nearly 70% of people who are in criminally Justice involved have suffered some type of trauma either a major trauma or a series of modest traumas and that results in them having significant fear and anxiety about coming into buildings especially ones with security and where courts are involved and so they won't come into the building and then are some who simply won't come because they're unwilling to be accountable and for any whatever the reason might be when a defendant on a

[98:00] criminal case does not appear in court we ultimately have no choice but to issue a warrant for that defendant's rest arrest excuse me in the not to distant past when a warrant was issued the court could anticipate that the defendant would be arrested taken to the Boulder County jail and the case could be handled while the defendant was held at the jail as I mentioned in September there exists some Fair Challen alling hurdles that prevent this process from occurring the most significant arises as a result of the bed space issues at the Boulder County Jail there are 450 beds at the Boulder County Jail they are almost always booked Beyond this capacity there are between 50 and 60 defendants who are currently awaiting competency evaluations by the state hospital not our defendants necessarily but individuals who are in custody at the Boulder County jail and there are some who've been there for almost two years years a lot of defendants come into the jail with mental health issues that prevents putting two people in a cell when one person's in a cell that

[99:01] again St stresses the ability of the jail to expand beyond the number of people it currently houses as a result of all this we have booking standards at the jail that really impact our operation the sheriff has had to limit the number of Municipal Court warrants that he can accept into the jail he will not even accept one of our defendants into until they have three outstanding warrants and I do not blame the sheriff for having that standard that's a really difficult job that he's had for many many years and there just isn't enough room and so when he's looking across the jail he says where can I cut and where can I limit the capacity it has to be on those lower level offenses and so he looks to the municipal court and he's told us you got to have three warrants and that's three warrants on separate cases so a defendant has to fail to appear three separate times and have three warrants issued by our court and then be out in the public where an officer will see them arrest that defendant and then take that defendant

[100:00] to jail they can't they can be booked in in that situation that's the first hurdle that we have to overcome but once a defendant has three warrants and is booked into the jail there are more roadblocks in place for the type of case resolution that we might expect and have grown accustomed to over the last 20 years first of all Bond reform requires that we see a defendant within 48 hours to address the defendant's case whether they're arrested in Boulder Adams County Denver Douglas County doesn't matter where that defendant is arrested we have 48 hours to call that defendant up and see that defendant provide counsel for that defendant and then conduct an arraignment session or advisement session for that defendant and that creates one burn we can deal with people who are in Boulder but it's really difficult for us to deal with people in another jurisdiction once we have them in custody and we have that 48 hour advis there's the pre-trial detention statute that places yet another hurdle and it's probably a very as as significant as that 48 hour hurdle the

[101:02] pre-trial detention statutes requires that before we can hold a defendant on a cash or shity Bond we have to have a charge that that defendant is in custody on that would be have a misdemeanor State counterpart what that means is if it's a petty offense under state law or there isn't a state law outlawing the be Behavior then we have to give that defendant what's called a PR Bond a personal recognizance Bond that's a promise by them with their own signature that they will come back to court they do not have to post any cash they do not have to have assurity authorized their release or put up a bond in their on their behalf they can simply ask for that personal recognizance Bond and if they asked for it we're required to give it to them we are also required by State Statute to tell them that they're entitled to that and their public defender has to to tell them that they're entitled to that that's part of bond reform and we live with that and I'm not criticizing that I'm just making

[102:00] it clear that for most of the charges we have in our court all of those charges that I described on the left side of that chart very few of them actually constitute uh misdemeanors under state law most of them are Petty offenses under state law which means that a defendant when they ask for the personal recognizance bond has to be granted it and it's not just the first time a defendant who gets a personal recognizance or PR bond from us no matter how many times that defendant fails to appear they are entitled to be released on their promise to come to court so I look at files and sometimes have someone has five or six or even seven sometimes 10 ftas or failures to appear and I've granted PR bonds before and I have to grant them again and and I do judge we lost this the slides it appears to the team can we get the slides back up and I see Alicia has her hand up yeah I I was going to bring that to everyone's attention and also I just needed to know which slide you were on we're on slide

[103:02] 12 all right be there with you shortly thank you Alicia appreciate it thank you how long have we been without slides that was the that was the last one yes sir okay I just need to give yeah it was just a little bit while you were talking about Bond reform yeah thank you for that so everyone can probably keep keep catch up with the slide itself but I I wanted to point all this out because it's really important as you view what we do as a community Court to understand what the tools are that are available for us to modify Behavior we are a criminal justice agency we are focused on criminal justice outcomes and in order to get criminal justice outcomes we have to get cases resolved and if we can't get them resolved for people who will not come to court we have to find another way to deal with them and so that's why we've developed the community Court as an

[104:00] alternative uh it only applies to low-level offenses we meet the defendants where they are we have a mobile operation so we go where they are are likely to be I'll talk a little bit more about that operation it does not involve serious offenses that involve violence or anything else that's other than those types of low-level offenses that I've described earlier more serious offenses are treated in the more traditional way where a defendant can meet with a prosecutor work out a plea agreement but if they fail to appear in court and we have the ability we'll issue a warrant and we can deal with them in a different way but those low-level offenses we've created Community Court and it's a very significant change in the way that we were doing things but it has been extremely successful and I will talk to you about that in a few moments but it's all about building trust and that takes time and persistence the evidence is showing that this reduces harm not only to the individual but to the community as well because it improves Public Safety and it is very humane way to do

[105:00] so and if we can go to the next slide I'd be happy to do that hang on a minute judge while we get to the right slide be slide 13 when you get there we go one more are you on Community Court change driven approach judge I sure am thank you for that great can we I'm sorry and if you don't mind can we just go to the previous slide so they can see what you were talking about you bet thank you N I think you ran through that I just wanted to put it up for a moment all right if we can go to the next slide Alicia thank you get away judge all right good thank you and I want to point out that Community Court program is a completely collaborative effort a judge cannot make plea Bargains nor do I have the authority to dismiss cases before a trial or hearing has occurred creating policies for casee resolution is the sole province of the city attorney's office our community Court

[106:00] program would not exist nor could it be successful in any way without the city attorney's office agreement Direction and commitment just like with our young adult population the city attorney's office is in charge of deciding how that office wants to address these cases the court fully supports the approach taken by the City attorney attorney's office and we have worked closely with them to create this Dynamic program but it would not be successful without the city attorney's office's commitment our public defenders are also very supportive of this program and they play a key role both at the jail and at our courthouse in assisting defendants charged with offenses in our court uh Teresa Taylor Tate who who is not with us tonight was going to speak for a moment or two but I'm just going to share with her with you all the comments that I anticipated that she would make the city attorney's office has developed a two-prong approach to prosecution of criminal cases in the municipal court for offenses involving violence threats of violence disruptive behavior and property damage the prosecutors pursue the more traditional court process and

[107:01] that's what you see on the the these left two bullets over here on your screen those are the cases that will really fall under the traditional process where a defendant is not eligible for a community Court type case unless a prosecutor decides no in this case I'm willing to do so but as a general rule those cases are not eligible for Community core for lower level offenses like camping littering smoking and the like our prosecutors purs pursue that Community Court model this is the model that has attracted so much Community attention over the past year or so in the community Court model eligible defendants can earn dismissal of charges based on engagement efforts which get to the root cause of the problems that are resulting in the change in the charge in the first place getting someone started on the path to housing is a primary objective but engagement by a defendant might result in securing identification a social security card securing access to disability income things of that nature the evidence from Community Court

[108:00] models that have been exist in existence for over two decades shows that if you can improve an individual's stability you can decrease recidivism and I'm going to talk about that in a moment you're going to see the Stark reason evidence in support of that for lower level Municipal offenses this is a proven solution that in my view makes a lot of sense next slide please the list of sanctions that you see here or conditions that we impose in community Corps cases are all designed to improve an individual's stability and often help that individual secure housing this is a collaborative effort by a vast number of individuals and entities all working hard to get people housing and the resources necessary to succeed once housed nearly 90% of the conditions or tasks that are set in connection with our community Corp pie are completed next slide please I hope you'll take just a few

[109:00] moments and we should be on slide 15 but it's really important that we have this one up there I hope you'll take a few moments to review this chart I believe that this chart and the one on the next slide are the most important of this presentation and I'm gonna pause for just a moment for everybody to look it over and as you can see if you can get defendants housed they stop getting citations while they still have problems and many need significant assistance to address their mental health addiction and other issues they are no longer committing offenses in our public spaces this is exactly what we are trying to achieve as a core when people are housed and not committing offenses in public spaces the community is safer the individual is safer and the public spaces are more accessible to everyone and as a person who's been doing this for a long time and who lives here I want those public spaces is accessible to everyone I want people's businesses to be accessible to the people who go to those businesses and the people who operate those businesses we have to have

[110:01] balance in what we do but this is a really effective tool for the court to secure that safety and improved access that everybody wants and as you can see if you look at the cases before housing and the cases for PE that are after housing the over 89% of the people who get housing remain housed even three years later people are still housed who we've helped and just helped get housed and these are the toughest folks that we have these are people with very challenging issues who are coming into the court a lot who we've been able to with working with all of our partners get housed and they stay housed the evidence shows that if people people are willing to do the work they do want to be housed and if they give the resources once they are housed they can stay housed and if you look at this next slide I'm going to talk to you a little bit about some Global aspects of that but I I think Kurt and Megan have shared with you that same percentage that

[111:00] between 85 and 90% of the people that get hous remain hous this next slide which is slide 16 is another way of looking at that this this is the number of citations housed versus unhoused from 2011 to 20123 as you can see housing is the key to reducing recidivism for this population our Navigators in concert and collaboration with case workers from a variety of agencies played an important role in getting these individuals hous the community Court program was critical to getting people who would otherwise not have been engaged with the housing process get engaged or stay engaged and for many of our most difficult defendants housing alone will simply not work effectively for these individuals we need to have accessible wraparound services like mental health and Addiction Counseling that I've mentioned to you in the past these are the most difficult of all of our unhoused population at at the evidence shows that they want to be housed they're willing

[112:00] to do the work and they can stay housed it given adequate support next slide please I've given you some data but I also want to talk to you about a few few individuals and and one couple uh this case history number one on slide 17 is a person I'll call Kelly uh she's lived in on the streets for about two decades perhaps even longer but I've known her for two decades she's been living with severe alcohol addiction during that period had nearly 200 citations during that 20-year period hundreds if if not even over a thousand and perhaps more days in jail during that period there were multiple efforts by our court prior to even having this community Court to get her engaged with various programs Fort lion Harvest of Hope going to an alcohol program getting the shots that might help you that might prevent you from from drinking all types of different approaches to try to help her not end up in court with these minor violations all related to her alcohol

[113:00] issue we were never successful and then she got housed in 2022 and of those 200 citations she had up to that time she's had only three since being housed she still has great difficulties and I'm not trying to suggest that her alcohol problem is cured it is not she still needs our support but it's an example of the impact that we can reduce the impact on our community community and the impact on the individual if we stay the course by getting people housed case history number two as a married couple I'll just briefly highlight this it's an interracial couple that has been living on the streets for years often get separated at the boulder shelter or at the jail in 2022 they got housed they're still housed and I don't believe they've had any citations since being housed next slide please case history number three is one I don't like to share but I think it's important that you hear it um this is an adult male with over 100 cas cases in our court many cases involving trespasses at our local business our businesses our community Court team tried multiple times to get this

[114:01] defendant to participate in various programs including the fort lion inpatient program Boulder PD's hot team went well beyond the Call of Duty to transport him to Fort lion to housing in Denver to dentist appointments to other medical appointments and meetings our team did everything we could do to help this defendant obtain housing and that occurred but he wasn't successful he wasn't able to stay in that housing and those efforts have not yet been successful he continued to reoffend and to and then started to turn down our efforts recently to help in the summer of 2023 and into the fall of 2023 uh he received a number of new trespass violations and finally uh he came to court and there was a circumstance where the prosecutor could ask for something other than a personal recognizance Pond and because they were able to do that they convinced he and his councel that he should plead guilty to a trespass charge and serve the sentence that was going to be ordered by the court and that was a 90-day jail

[115:01] sentence he agreed to that the court ordered a 90-day jail sentence in September and then he was released and we tried to help him while he was in custody we tried to help him when he got out of custody but he reoffended and he went back to some of those same businesses and trespassed at those businesses so in March the same process occurred and because those trespasses were ones that allowed the prosecutor to ask for for something other than a personal recognizance Bond he was again in custody facing a period where he would have to face the trial of the charges decided to plead guilty and I again had to give him a long jail sentence I don't like doing that I don't relish doing it I would much rather not do it but there are times when we have to impose jail to strike that balance in the system so that people who are trying to run their businesses or trying to come in and out of their businesses have the ability to do so without someone else disrupting that business and so we will continue to work with people because that's the best tool it's the most Humane tool and we will do that with this individual as well next slide

[116:02] please I want to just briefly touch on the fact that none of this works without a ton of interdepartmental collaboration and collaboration of stakeholders we have a great number of people who help out with this with the program and I just want to point out to you uh that the hot team has been fantastic interim Chief Red furnace supported the court in the way that we're going about our business and as has the hot team you got Jenny Paddock who was a member of that for a long time probably one of the key members for so long time want to thank her for what she's done uh officer Maynard officer styman Sergeant Kessler all of those individuals have put themselves out there and they're sharing with the Department how this program is working and they're sharing it with the public as well so we really appreciate them but there are a lot of other people who do this work and I just hope you'll look at that uh the IND individuals who are there because they are outstanding and I truly appreciate the work that gets done by the Outreach group Next slide

[117:03] please want to just give you a brief update on where the court community court is today uh we have moved we have been mo mobile and as many of you know we had we were lucky to be at Grace Commons church for a number of years and then we were at Trinity Lutheran Church until just the end of May here in 2024 both of those churches has showed us the grace and a welcoming attitude to allow our program with prosecutors and Court Navigators to participate in their Outreach to individuals and our program would not have succeeded if they hadn't shown us that Grace and they leveraged their relationships with these individuals to to allow us to build relationships with them and they are great Partners to us and we truly appreciate them but we have moved and we are now at Penfield Tate on Thursdays 00 to 11 am I want to thank markk wolf and mua and the city manager's office for assisting Us in making that change uh we are really excited to have

[118:01] that Presence at Penfield Tate we've had two sessions last Thursday and this Thursday they've gone very very well a lot of people are showing up and cases are getting resolved in much the way that we would like we are leveraging our relationship now with those individuals to try to get them to access services at the day Services Center this court believes that ultimately what needs to happen is people need to go to a place not just some outdoor location but a place where they can access resources on a regular day today circumstance not once a week but every day up at the day Services Center so we are trying to encourage people who see us downtown to go to the day Services Center I put Tuesdays up on this slide it could end up being Fridays I've had some conversations with Spencer Downing at the day Services Center we're going to talk further next week and try to get a specific date ironed out so all our staff can meet the the needs of the day Services Center but this month we will have a presence up there so I'm very excited about that I want to also talk

[119:02] about a couple of other things the community Court was named a mentor Court by the center for justice Innovation the center for justice Innovation is the agency that's been designated by the Department of Justice to carry out the technical services grant that we were awarded back in 20120 and we've become not just a court that received that Grant but now a mentor to others who've received that Grant we're going to learn from them they're going to learn from us we anticipate seeing people out to see us uh in the fall who are actually going to watch our operation U and then I I also just want to point out Aurora just started a program um and you may have seen that in the press this week Mike Kaufman the mayor for Aurora and Shawn day the judge for Aurora came and watched our court about six months ago asked a ton of questions and we shared with them what we were doing here and I believe that they have confidence in in this program that we were doing and have their own program it's a different program but I'm excited to see them move forward and there are a few other courts in the state that are now following the lead that judge cook and Devon and

[120:01] others kind of took us on in the last several years and I do want to transition to just a quick reminder that judge cook was named the recipient of the American Bar association's William McMahon award about uh two or three weeks ago that award is given to a judge or an attorney who has done the most work that year in facilitating technology in a mobile or a specialized court and our court fit the bill for that and judge cook was instrumental in allowing us to have the digital capability to handle cases digitally and the technology ability to handle to go on the road and use zoom and other as aspects of our operation to to do this court so she's going to be receiving that award in uh August out in Chicago they've agreed to fly her out and put her up and they've asked me to come out and present that award to her so I'm looking forward to to doing that with judge cook next slide please this is an assessment of the community Court program it was a I view this as a midterm assessment uh it started before

[121:02] I became the interim presiding judge the the process did but as the report was released I thought it was appropriate for Council and the community as a whole to see this assessment it is not a data Rich assessment uh when this program started we started to assimilate data but Mr Hamburg who created this assessment didn't have access to to a lot of data there still isn't as much data as I would like but when our grant runs out in September sometime after that we will have more data and we can do a more data Rich evaluation of our program but this is a good read it does give you an idea yes I just wanted to jump in for a second we are sort of hitting that time frame for the presentation I don't know how much end perfect great keep going y so there it is um so it's a good read and I would encourage people to take a look at it and then I am a available for questions I want and just I want to encourage people come talk to me set up a time to speak with me if if you're interested in learning more if we want to do a lunch and learn I'm happy to do that and I

[122:01] know I probably went over I tried to be as quick as I could and I'd eliminated quite a bit but thank you for the time thank you we have questions and I see Tara's hand went right up so let's kick it off Tara so these are just questions and I want to start out by saying um judge Khan this was incredible this was really great and why it helped me even though for like two and a half years I've been studying this trying to is it really showed the difference between Community Court versus just traditional municipal court so these questions I have I'm going to start with one of your slides it said trespass not all on the list of Community Court what do you what did you mean by not all so the prosecutors have identified and this is probably a good question and I would love to have Chris Reynolds kind of jump in so go ahead Chris answer for you uh Chris Reynolds city attorney's

[123:02] office I supervise prosecution for the city of Boulder so uh some trespasses in the state law system are considered Petty offenses and some trespass trespasses have a misdemeanor equivalent and so all trespasses in the boulder Revised Code are not automatically eligible for Community Court requires a prosecutor to review them and uh typically speaking if it's a petty offense type trespass one in which a PR Bond would be mandatory if we saw that individual at the jail we're going to make that uh Community Court eligible however if it's a a trespass that does have a MISD demuner equivalent that would be if uh it's a retail establishment and that individual has a written notice from the retailer that they're no longer welcome or an order from a court that they're not allowed to be at that location that makes it a misdemeanor and uh we could hold them on a cash Bond and so cases like that we might seek something called a no

[124:00] trespass or an exclusion order so do you because trespass is one of the things that I'm most concerned about because it affects the I was thinking about the word trauma a lot of the people who work in our small businesses are actually traumatized by some of the levels of trespass and harassment by people who are you know have mental illness and so I'm not going to say it's their fault but of course it's not and also a lot of people are really struggling with fear and anxiety in those establishments how to deal with it and a lot of them are like super young people too right just working part-time so I guess my question then is is and I don't want to like talk I'm using all my time for this Lauren remember is what what is being done about the trespasses uh on this level both at the community court and also at the regular traditional Court what can be done most of the trespasses that we see in the boulder Municipal Court would be

[125:01] like sleeping on the Bandshell which has a no trespassing sign we do sometimes see trespasses in businesses but again if that individual hasn't been given a written notice by the business that they can't be there or having uh been ordered by the judge uh by a judge that they cannot be there it's a petty offense and so essentially uh the law the state law deems that uh uh only really the max penalty that somebody could receive for that is two days in jail the first time they see a judge they get out of jail on on most trespasses now if somebody goes into a business trespasses and commits more crime that can turn it into a burglary that can turn it into a higher level offense that would be prosecuted by the District Attorney's Office in State Court okay so my next question that was a good answer thanks that was good um so so are do you want us to weigh in during comments on just Community Court or Municipal Court traditional Municipal Court as well that that's actually a

[126:01] question for later when we talk when we have our comments I'm happy to hear either frankly what however you'd like to to share with us is perfectly fine okay so what you're saying though is the lack of data that was in that report that we got that we read through was because you your work working on the data and you're going to have some data for us at some point yes uh if you think about it when when that bid went out which was about it was late 2022 or early 23 when the bid went out for the consultant and then it takes a while to get the consultant on board uh he was already starting his process in the spring of 23 and we've had maybe two years worth of cases at that point but not enough data for him to really dive in and do a full-on analysis or for us to create metrics so we fully anticipate it may be nine months from now or 12 months from now when we can come back with some good data and for us to look and try to develop some metrics so that

[127:00] we can get better because without looking at data you can't really see what's working and not working and so I fully anticipate that we'll do that but I I and I recognized when I read I read that report multiple times I said it doesn't have the substance that we want from a full-on report but that wasn't what he was commissioned to do okay my my last question believe it or not this is the last one um if you could not I know that we can't put people in jail right now because most offenses are not jailable and the court and the jails are overcrowded but if you could put people in jail what type of offenses would you put in jail I guess that is my question well then maybe we maybe this is you get two answers maybe we can start with the prosecutor and he ask he can talk to you about what he views as the type of behavior that he would seek a jail sentence for and then can give you a little bit about my sentencing philosophy thanks judge Khan so uh essentially in two different circumstances we would uh seek seek a

[128:02] jail sentence the first being if somebody uh committed a crime against another person a crime of violence threat of violence um and they don't show up to court then uh that basically ties our hands and we would seek a jail sentence and that traditionally is what we do and we will continue to do in that circumstance you know the the example of Richard that judge Khan highlighted in his presentation you know he's not the only person that we've sought a 90day jail sentence against so um this right now the Stars basically have to align with those three warrants and bond reform and things like that to to get a circumstance where we can even seek a lengthy jail sentence and so crimes involving violence or threats against people would be the first second would be if uh somebody never comes to court isn't interested in uh participating in uh Community Court uh despite our our best efforts um sometimes that is the that is the the what what we will seek

[129:00] but again 95% of the cases that we have in the boulder Municipal Court the crimes are mandatory BR Bond crimes and so we do not have a lot of third deegree assaults we do not have a lot of threatening bodily injury uh the the vast majority of crimes that we have in the boulder Municipal Court are those low-level quality of life mandatory per are Bond type cases and so um those would be the two uh circumstances in which we would seek a jail sentence thank you and I I think I can jump in and say that uh you know I was a prosecutor for some period of time and so I have that background and perhaps when I was growing up to be a prosecutor we had a different philosophy I look back and think of some of the things that I did and I wish I hadn't done them and I wish I hadn't used jail as often as I did because one of the things that I have learned over time is jail number one doesn't often change behavior for people who are at this lowest level of maso's

[130:00] hierarchy so I'm pretty sparing about using it but just like the prosecutor said when somebody has committed a violent act against another person or repeats Behavior Uh that is impacting our community in a very negative way and they're not willing to engage with us we don't have anything else that we can do and we have to strike that balance for the community so there are times even though I know that may not change that person's Behavior it will take them out of commission for a while and give that business a little bit of a break for a while if nothing else so those are the circumstances that I would and have impose the jail SS that it Tara perfect next Ryan thanks JC um I have one to two-ish questions about traffic infractions I didn't see too much on traffic so can you just say a little bit about what what share of cases you're seeing are traffic related what does that look like and are there any Trends to

[131:00] speak so I had some slides about our traffic and about everything else but I just didn't have time tonight so maybe we'll come back to you with with some of that but I can tell you that our traffic dockets all of our dockets decreased over a period of time over about a 10year period traffic kind of went down a little bit and then has plateaued over the last year or two as the police department's gotten the backup speed with hiring um we see about I would say the 50 to 100 tickets a week that get issued probably more like 50 that get issued a week in the traffic scenario and a lot of those cases are are allowed where people can pay and close if you're speeding a fourpoint speeding ticket the officer can Mark a box and they don't even have to see me um so that's how a lot of those get resolved but I have a traffic docket six of them a month and there's usually about 50 people starting out on that dock docket and then once they pay and close it ends up being about 30 people that I see uh of of on each of those six or seven dockets that I hold so our traffic docket is steady

[132:02] um and we don't have any issues with it it it doesn't create a lot of public interest because they're going smoothly but uh they do take up a good portion of our time okay thanks and I I just have a followup then and I I'll try to be brief but what I'm trying to draw out is that in my mind there's at least a couple of competing policy objectives we might have traffic infractions so on the one hand dangerous and negligent driving is a serious threat to public safety especially to people outside Vehicles which creates additional problems for us uh my understanding is that at least nationally there's evidence this is getting worse um and one of our tools not the best tool but one of our tools is enforcement so that's on the one end and on the other hand um I do worry that an overly punitive approach in a you know society that really makes primary way people have to get around um I worry that preventative sorry punitive measures dis could disproportionately hurt groups who have been uh

[133:01] historically and continued to be you know suffered the most harm so I'm just wondering if how can you talk about that do you think about that tradeoff and um how to how to sort of I don't know manage that um Chris this would be a great one for you because you and I have had conversations about disproportional impact on people of color and things of that nature so if you want to a shot that one absolutely thank you and thank you for the uh question council member shuart so uh one one thing I do want to highlight is uh the the the current efforts to expand the city's photo enforcement program I'm really excited about that because the the data shows that intersections in which there is uh like Photo red light cameras reduces uh incidents of really terrible um accidents and photo enforcement also removed mes having to have a police officer with a firearm pull somebody over and give them a ticket for going you know 15 miles over the speed limit and so uh the photo um speed camera is

[134:03] about to get turned on and issuing citations at Broadway and uh and Pine and um we heavily involved the city attorney's office is heavily involved in the photo uh enforcement expansion and then once that actually comes to fruition the Court's going to be very involved because we also see photo enforcement cases uh at the court and so the vast majority of uh traffic cases that we see are are lower level so like in the zero to fourpoint range so like somebody who's going 15 miles an hour of the speed limit they're going to get a fourpoint speeding ticket and obviously uh we try to be as consistent as possible but we give people the opportunity and I've said it countless times to people like hey like if your financial situation is really strange right now like tell us about that and we can come up with Creative Solutions like writing an essay on safe driving behavior or waving a fine so that they can spend their money on going to driving school and so we we we try to be

[135:02] as consistent as possible while also taking into account individual circumstances and that's something I'm really really proud of both at the municipal court and my team's efforts to to to meet people with empathy but also trying to do everything that we can to make our roads as safe as possible and I'll just Echo that from a judge's perspective again just like everything else it's the plea Bargains that the prosecutors decide to offer the drives the process I do have the authority to impose fines um but ultimately The Plea offers that they make and I was a prosecutor for a number of years and I've been a a judge in a number of other courts I've never experienced a prosecutor's office that is as thoughtful as this one when it comes to resolving cases in a fair way for people they do an outstanding job and I see time and again them asking me to wave the court costs or the fines for someone who's strugging struggling financially we do not need to recover money from people who have an

[136:01] $850 disability income that they're trying to survive on we can find other ways to change behavior and if someone has got their first ticket and they're they're will they came to court and they asked for some help and they were willing to go to a class or willing to write an essay then that's what we're looking for we're looking to change behavior and you can do that without being overly punitive everything we do can be done with an educational component as part of it some people need punishment but most people respond to education okay thank you so I think what I heard is there's an interest you you both have an interest in um great the more automated enforcement that's a tool that's not causing you heartburn with respect to equity and Justice issues Le at this point I guess what I'm I I I hadn't given it that that much that I certainly know that that's a c a way you can look at it I think it's up to the prosecutor's office to embrace that type of what approach they want and I think it's important for the court to make sure that we aren't uh administering penalties that are disproportionate B

[137:02] based on someone's financial situation or whether they're in a marginalized group any of those types of things we have to be fair and consistent and then also take into people into account people's financial situation when imposing penalties um and I I would imagine that the photo enforcement because there's not an officer that actually issues the ticket could eliminate some of that Equity related challenge that we would face okay okay thank you both and thanks Lauren for the time thank you Ryan uh next Tina and then Nicole yeah thank you um so much for all the information this was great um and it's great to get to know more um and thank you for being thoughtful that there are three council members so this was helpful um my first question is we have a new alternative um sentencing facility coming on how will that help or change your work or impact it if at all a good question and um Chris and Chris actually had the conversation with the sheriff separate than mine I had a

[138:01] conversation with him uh previous but Chris why don't you take it because you had the in-depth conversation with Curtis Johnson so if you can share that out to to councelor Mark I did um and so uh the alternative sentencing facility it's not exactly the same thing as a jail expansion because it's only for people who have actually been sentenced and so while I believe it's going to add something like 200 beds to the to the jail facility those beds are only going to be reserved for people who are post conviction uh right now I think 80 to 90% of the people at the Boulder County Jail uh are being held on a pre-trial basis which is historically way way way high historically that number is about 50 and so they're trying to get that number down so that they can actually populate populate the alternative sentencing facility once it's once it's created and and and then that'll that will free up some bed space at the at the jail for pre-trial um detention and we do hope that um maybe that'll be kind

[139:01] of a middle ground for one um recommending a sentence that the hope is uh when we do have jail and people get sentenced that they can go to a place where they can actually get assistance because right now the majority of the time what happens when somebody goes to jail is they get a cell and nothing else and they're there and then they get released and the clothes that they came to jail on they don't get help with addiction they don't get help with mental Hill uh mental illness you know the Boulder County Jail is the largest mental health facility in in Boulder County which is not unusual for our country um and so I'm hopeful that alternative seny facility will be able to work with people and kind of a more controlled environment and then release them uh to a more stable situation uh but it's still a far way out and I'm not um putting all my eggs in that basket hoping that that means that the booking standards are going to be adjusted because um I don't I don't think that'll happen I think the bling standards are kind of going to be here for a while okay um thank you uh the other

[140:02] question is we um that really helpful the way the different um what the different courts handle the community Court versus the state court and the different activities and behaviors that are each addressed do are you seeing overlap in the individuals who visit each of those two systems is there cross over from the people who go from the community Court to the state court or vice versa Chris why don't you take that first and then I'll comment as well sure uh yes there is there is overlap um because there uh some some of our codes also have state law violations and then also sometimes people who get lots of camping tickets and things like that they might also have drug charges and the Municipal Court doesn't doesn't handle you know possession of meth or heroin or Fenty or anything like that so there there is a lot of a decent amount of overlap and so one of the things that we do at Community Court is we try to help remind people when their next court

[141:00] date is because they might think that they've come and they've seen judge Conan and they because they've seen somebody in a robe on a who's a judge that they've taken care of all their criminal cases and and they can't quite hold in their mind that judge Khan has no authority over their state court cases and so we'll write down hey 30 you're in courtroom F and you have County Court and sometimes our Navigators will actually go to County Court um with them to help them appear because just like how in municipal court jail doesn't address the underlying uh uh uh behavior that causes them to come into contact in State Court they have that same problem of people cycling in over and over and over and we also collaborate with the District Attorney's office and our County Partners in the high utilizer initiative and the reason is because there's so much there is there is a decent amount of crossover between the two court systems and I I that's one thing that I'm actually been very excited to see is the prosecutors in our court working with the prosecutors down the hall so that they can have a concerted approach to a

[142:00] specific individual and that's that's a change over the last couple of years that's been a really good change and so it's really important that that that work continue and our Navigators will do whatever they can they'll take the people to their courtroom they'll sit with them to get those cases resolved because if they don't have to be arrested on a warrant for failing to appear they're not not taking taking the up jail bed space and they can get into mental health counseling or Addiction Counseling much in a much more effective way if they're not in custody so it's to everyone's benefit for our staff to get them down the hall for those court dates on those more serious charges well and then I'll just do one more um when we think about the data that we might see in 9 to 12 months uh can you give us a sneak peek into what might be a metric or measurable outcome that your hope for so you know I put up on the screen the what I think is the number one metric is how many cases people are

[143:00] getting after they've gotten housed uh it's so that's an important metric and I don't know that I'll think of one that's even that's more important to to that because that's a if you look at that that's the one that's causing the least that's where the harm reduction is most obvious but there are a lot of metrics that we can look at we can look at the types of the sanctions that are imposed and whether those sanctions themselves or the conditions are leading to anything uh substantive sometimes when I'm looking at a case well we've had someone uh they they gave us a copy of their ID or a social security card and that of course is helping them to get document ready is it furthering the engagement we might be able to devise some metrics to determine whether the engagement is furthered by some of these conditions or sanctions that get applied and prosecutors are going to have to play a key role in that because they the ones that suggest those conditions and our Navigators give them some ideas because they're the ones that are connected to the housing folks and and so it's a complicated approach um

[144:00] we're going to be looking to the Center for justice Innovation for guidance on that there are courts out there that have been doing this for much longer than us and we want to ask them what they're looking at as metrics and I think among the groups that are involved then we can create some but it's really hard for me to to think of anything that's going to be more significant than how many cases someone gets after being I have to ask follow question okay yeah go ahead what percentage of the people that you that float through your system that are not housed are offered housing how many can we offer housing to today wow I wish I had a navigator here to give me that answer because I don't know uh I I would imagine Chris maybe you have a better beat on it because you're out there you want to take a shot at this one the people that we help to get actual housing are the people who get many citations about 75% of the people that we see are able to resolve all of their cases with us in 90 days people are not going to get housed in 90 days it's the

[145:01] people the 25% who aren't able to resolve all all of their cases within 90 days uh who keep getting citations are the ones who actually that we're end up able to get housed because we help them get their ID their bir certificate we do a VI spat we uh do voucher um applications actually help them fill out uh applications for housing so the people that we can help walk that path the people who call Boulder home and our Boulder Community members those are the people that were focused on on getting housed not just people who are passing through because the the unhoused community is is very transitory um and also most people who are homeless are only homeless for a very short amount of time we're really focused on the chronically homeless individuals who call Boulder Home those are the people that we want to help to get housed and so that's while it seems like the numbers overall are are low I think we helped to House 31 people last year those 31 uh people have called Boulder Home on average for something like eight or nine years and so they're they're

[146:00] members of the community and and we've helped them get stability and and I'm right with judge cook or sorry I'm right with judge Khan with measure measures of success more people getting hous and I'd like to see more people going through the community Court uh system than the jail system uh we saw 173 cases in Community Court this year we've seen 306 cases at the jail so the jail still outstrips Community Court in terms of the workload okay I think I'm past my limit sorry Lauren it's all good I will just note that you know each of our first three stats of question have taken more than six minutes which is more than our total double the total allocation that we had for questions and comments but it's all good it's our meeting um next we have Nicole and Taisha thanks Lauren I appreciate all you're doing to keep us on track tonight um I just want to say thank you judge um thank you to the city attorney's office I really just appreciate all that you're

[147:00] doing um to carry forward the judge Cod started and um really maintain this commitment to a problem solving approach um I think it is your your data is showing it is incredibly effective you know we house like 40 people um through Bluebird and like to see 30 coming from like we're just we're chipping away at at um all these different places and really helping to um get folks who've been chronically homeless into housing um I had U just one one question that's kind of coming out from um I got accosted at a community event last night and was being asked about you know there's so many drug users on the um Creek path and and the police are saying that there's nothing they can do about it um and I just wanted to clarify my understanding and for the community as well when folks are using drugs in public and they get a ticket to that effect that doesn't come to our community court right if we're talking about using meth or heroin or something

[148:00] like that and you know can you speak to a little bit about why you know folks in the community have this sense that um it's you know council's fault like we're not doing what we should but to me when I look at this it's it's really that this these tickets are not they're not City tickets right there's there's nothing we can kind of do within that within Municipal Court but I just wonder if you could clarify that I I'll take a shot and Chris feel free to jump in when I'm done you're you're exactly right mayor po spear the the the cases that come to us are are the ones that that involve marijuana is the only one and it's it's a small it can't be somebody selling marijuana it has to be the use of marijuana and less than you know 28 grams probably is probably the limit of what someone could even have on their possession and end up in our court and if it's anything over you know a quarter or an ounce something like that they're charging them in a with the felony up in the district court and no felonies

[149:02] involving heroin meth fentel those charges are not charges that come to us and and maybe the the interim Chief can respond to some of these conver questions surrounding the drug use I I it's I don't like to comment because it's it's perhaps it's not fair but it it seems to be that the issue gets conflated because some of them are are the same defendants and so if you see someone and you're walking from your your house and you see an individual and you see them camping and you're like well there's a person camping and I can see them you know a needle nearby or they're doing something that I can pretty much tell is a drug rated it's natural to wonder why isn't the court doing something about it and because we are have been so out front with this community Court it gets a lot of notoriety within the community one way or the other I think people canate it and think oh that's the court that's supposed to be responsible for it and they're turning their back to it a minute of course it puts you all in a difficult position and that's why I'm taking so much time to try to describe it um and this I'm not this is not a

[150:01] district court that they're missing the boat this is just this is a really challenging intractable problem that's not easy to get at thank you appreciate that was was that it Nicole perfect Taisha awesome thank you so much um I will say um I continue to be to desire and request financial information about the programs that we're talking about um you know we had a very important conversation a few weeks back about our finances and you know again I think one of the ways that we can support that is by making sure that we are talking about how much things cost um in addition to the impacts that they're making this isn't specific to you this is just a general note um and that's just something that I'm hopeful that we can

[151:01] get more information on especially since there seems to be to Mark wallik and I'm so sorry that he's not able to join us and I'm grateful that he did provide that hotline that talked about some of are you there he is my bad I I didn't see you so I wasn't sure but I just wanted to lift up what you wrote in that hotline because it really speaks to convers an ongoing conversation that we've had on Council since I've been here and that's just been seven months around um the roles and responsibilities who's doing what where so you mentioned some of the services you offer well several of those Services sound similar to the services that um helping human uh the human services department also does in the home homeless solution session that we had and so you know again I'm just eager to get some more synergies across um just busting silos across the work that we're doing because as you mentioned these are the same people in the same community and yet we've got

[152:01] this program over here this program over here this program over here and um I am still very eager and I I I don't I don't think it's necessary to wait nine months for some specific data points around performance um so that's let me can I stop can I give you a quick response on that I mean you could but I just want to I I ask you to take a a pause for a moment just because um because I just have a lot of things there and I think it's more of a of of just a global comment I'm also just very mindful of time and I've got a lot of things so I'm really just going to kind of tee up some things and know we're scheduled actually to meet for lunch next week or later this week so um I can certainly follow up at that time with some of these other pieces but I just want to get out some of these Global pieces for my colleagues and staff to hear um so I just wanted to lift up the money piece I wanted to lift up the roles and responsibilities so I know that we've got the Homeless Solutions report coming up and I'm hopeful that it's also inclusive of any services that the court is doing that is

[153:00] impacting or connected with our homeless community in that report so that is is is a question that um that I'm interested in um you know there was something that you shared at the beginning of the of your talk and you said that you know housing and you talked about housing res revisi ISM and we looked at that slide but then towards the end of your talk you said housing Alone um will not work effectively without mental health and addiction and that presentation had a lot on housing and and I would I look forward to having more information on um on the treatment and addiction work um because again I'm going to just keep coming back to housing first is a is a strategy that is three-pronged Accord ording to the researchers that designed it and study it the prongs are housing mental and physical um health and Workforce Development and so again um

[154:00] you know we heard from Michael Dar um about the lack of mental health support that we have here just in the state of Colorado generally um and so the more that we can be explicit around that um mental health support and then of course addiction and treatment so um just would love to hear and you're welcome to to um respond to to that one um when when I'm finished but I just wanted to again just lift up that when we're talking about housing first I'm just hopeful that we are using the entire strategy and approach and not favoring one piece over another there is no data that implies that one piece trumps or is over any of the other pieces it's it is my understanding that each of these pieces are critical for being successful um another question is around just how what what we are calling success for still housed is that two years is that three years again and I'd also love some evidence or data points around like how long should we be following up with folks to ensure that

[155:01] they are still being housed just from an evaluation perspective there are some money components to that as well so I'm I'm just very very mindful of of that so I'll take a pause and and hear any responses that you have to the specific questions that I ask and then I just have a few more to wrap up and I I I didn't ask questions on that first one so I just I only have only used three minutes of my time go and I'll try to be brief but thank you those are really excellent questions and points um I want to point out for the group that the the judge cook and Devon kissak Kelly went out and got a $400,000 Grant from the federal government so we we have not spent any money on our program City money so I want to make that point clear the and I want there's a second component to this which is the uh we had 22 full-time employees just a short time ago a few years ago we now have 17.75 uh we have not added employees in order to to do the program we have converted some of our positions this was

[156:01] going to be part of the presentation we just had to cut it out but we have converted some of our some of our positions from probation or from other online positions to navigation related positions so I want to just make that point we are trying to do this and be really good stewards of the resources that city council gives to us and the third point I think is an important one to to keep in mind that and I I completely agree with you that housing is just the first step and that you have to have those other prongs I I I don't deny that you said it but we are trying not to be a social service agency itself I do draw the line we are we are a criminal justice agency uh we are looking for criminal justice outcomes and so I've been sharing with our team and Devon and I have had a lot of discussions when we start to delve over when we're starting to say we need to have mental health counselors working for the court no no we don't those people work in the community they should be tapped by the community Navigators is a different re deal because they have we have the unique ability to connect with

[157:03] people who may not otherwise walk over to the human HHS and walk into the office and or go to be there so our Navigators play a key role in connecting those people to resources but we're really really Bare Bones about it and the way that we go about that and so from a R's perspective we are trying to stay in our lane and deal with criminal justice outcomes um but I'm I'm really looking forward to conversation because you have some really good questions and they will spur us to look for more data that we can create and educate ourselves and the rest of theity so those are my show I appreciate that and again I just need to see how is that $400,000 you know broken out how has that changed over time um and again you know that is still that um we just need to keep our our eye on that but it is helpful to know it again it would have been helpful to know that oh this is this work is Grant funded right and so that just kind of lets us know um also feel free many others um staff provide a

[158:02] presentation and then also have like a larger longer memo um and I actually you know like that balance of just having that so you know don't feel constrained by I got to add in the presentation I had to take it out like put all the stuff in there and then we'll you know lift up the things that we need so I just wanted to lift that up and then lastly I had a chance to look at the report um that was provided the community uh Court assessment and there were a couple of challenges that I had in it one it was not clear to me what the criteria was for the evaluation towards the end on page 23 I saw what the benefits were and I was like oh that looks like criteria it would have been nice to see what were the outcomes for each of these things around the benefits but you know I noticed that the recommendations and they range from Community strategic uh communication plans to help our community better understand um creating a task force for Community leaders um doing trainings for staff um supporting staff in workload and all of that is wonderful but what I

[159:00] didn't hear was the role of people with lived experience I didn't see anything with lived experience in any of that and one of my challenges is the idea that this court is going to partner with a church that uh which is great um but then displaces another program that is actually led by somebody with lived experience right so you know what I mean I'm just looking for more cooperation and less competition and just in general we know going back to the evidence that those with lived and learn experience tend to have better outcomes when it comes to supporting programs again remember I'm an adult child of that so I take addiction and treatment very seriously I've seen it front row um and so you know I understand that it is it that there are relapses and so that's why I was asking that question about housing right if you're only looking two years you know you know I didn't have a relapse until 25 years right and then our family had to deal with that so I just want to know you know and I our

[160:01] family had a relapse in our family and so we had to deal with that my larger point is is when we're talking about our evaluation for this particular population we also need to be thinking about how long right um do we need to be doing the follow-ups for and we know that there are going to be some fiscal constraints around that and of course with this population people are going to be moving as well so I just want to just lift up that you know that that evaluation or assessment um I'm eager to have some more there there um and and um but but again it it was very helpful to have that and then just lastly I would love us as a council to revisit whatever we are doing on a quarterly basis on a I just I just am I am thirsty to take a look at the 2025 calendar although I appreciate CAC is looking at a three month but then I hear oh we do this quarterly oh this is coming this time of year oh this is coming that time of year so just having I would just love for us we have identified new strategic priorities the city has a new Citywide

[161:00] plan and again I would just love us to really be more strategic about how we use the topics that we're going to be talking about and it also is a continuation of our conversation last week on how we use study study sessions and whether or not we need to have them so those are all of the things that I had thank you so much for the time thank you for this critical conversation and the work that you do um to to eliminate um more people in jail which we know thank you for that thank you let me just say one thing about the lived experience I couldn't agree more um and so if there is a sense from anyone in our community who has lived experienced that we are as a court do not want them as part of our program as a partner that shouldn't be something that comes from me because that's not how I view it and number two um the homeless advisory there is a homeless Advisory board that was that is in place and that meets regularly and Megan Newton is part of that and I believe net and car Carlos were part are part of it yet no longer but Carlos are part of it so there is a group that

[162:01] actually meets and secures uh some information Chris you may even sit on that but that's important that's an important aspect I want I want to make sure that's clear from from everybody well and again I don't want those roles to just be helping fold the chairs like there there are there should also be leadership opportunities because we have Leaders with lived and learned experience who are trying to actually run programs and I'm just I'm not clear why we're not supporting them and why we're adding on and doing all these supplemental programs so that's where I'm on The Struggle Bus and I'm just hopeful that we can find again those cooperations instead of the competitions yeah it's not coming from us that's what I just want to say we are not trying to compete with anybody we're trying to to just to reach out to people and some people don't want our involvement and if that's the case that's a little bit different judge I bringing this up because there have I'm bringing this up because there have been community members with who have been experiencing homelessness who have talked to who have had who have had

[163:00] issues so I'm speaking specifically to you and your court about concerns that have been raised that there are not enough people with lived experience in leadership roles um you know administering the programs that are that are of direct service so again happy to looking forward to continuing to talk with you but just in general we talked about this at the St Retreat as well regardless of what the topic is we need to lift up people with lived and learned experiences um and not just those with learned experience and a good heart I have a good heart and learned experience but I don't have lived experience at all these areas and we really need to be same with me same with me I appreciate that you got and we can have more in depth when we get when we meet thank you Taisha um next we have Mark and I would just say that at this point let's switch to questions and comments and for those of you who have still would like to make some comments please raise your hands I will not that we are overtime but you know it's a good

[164:00] discussion um Mark you're up okay uh TAA obviously my my presence here is a Christmas miracle I hope it is well appreciated um a couple things I I I share tesa's um concern about data and and trying to develop more data um the report that we looked at this week I thought was um a little bit short in in in a number of issu number of points and I would have liked to have seen more of that and I hope that U uh that can be remedied at some point in time I I appreciate the report but um I I I found it a little shy on on that level um uh I made another a number of other points in my hotline I'm not going to go through them all now um they're there if if at any point you want to respond to

[165:00] them uh offline online doesn't matter to me um I do have one question however which is um you know a few years ago we we conditioned uh the provision of services on uh the amount of time somebody had spent in Boulder uh 60 days or 90 days or six months I forget the exact requirement um and then of course we we Dro that and as you described it we are prioritizing um uh housing for those who have that sort of connection or longtime Boulder residents um and I think that's great I'm just wondering is there no uh is there no problem with doing so in other words taking uh somebody who has been here for five years or 10 years and saying uh you know you jump the line for housing I I I I approve I don't want to

[166:00] be misunderstood um but I I'm just wondering if there's any issue the index and that drives the housing decisions that get made down the line away from us and Curt and Megan can probably talk in depth about that with you when they when they come before you but our purpose is to Simply identify the individuals who might be able to work with a a an agency to secure housing we can't make those decisions our prosecutors can't our Navigators can't uh it has to be done by the people who have the vouchers who can then give a voucher to an individual so we don't make the decision on who skips or jumps the line so I just and Chris if you want to jump in if there's anything else you want to add to that no I agree with that it's not it's not a policy Choice that's that's why it just it just because the people who have lots and lots of citations have been here for a long time those are the people that we end up helping to house um it's and because our touch point with somebody who has one or two citations is pretty

[167:02] brief we're not going to be able to be in a position to help them get house we're not going to establish the trust there's lots and lots of steps that goes into getting somebody from an unsheltered situation into an apartment and using one or two camping tickets to do that is just not going to happen um and so that's why we help people who um are here for a long time that just just that's just how it happens to work it's not a policy choice that we've made understood okay um thank you and and again I want to emphasize more data would be very useful um costs and data I agree with that is on both of those thank you thank you m thank you for your thank you for your email I appreciate that you spent the time and you identified those issues for us really appreciate it and next up we have Tara oh wow again too um so I guess my I have a lot of questions and as much as I

[168:01] loved your presentation is as much as I didn't love the document that we originally read for many reasons so my first question is is I know you didn't write the document so do you want me to go into all the aggravating things about it should we have a private separate meeting about it or do you think it's not relevant right now well I it's a fair question um and I tried to to be delicate about this I was not involved in in the process that ultimately led us to having this particular consultant um and and it wasn't fair to the consultant for us to expect him to do a data data dive uh or to do those types of things when when the idea was a midterm assessment uh and yet looking back on it now and we have it out and I I thought I paused when I thought well I look at this I'm like well it's something that we have let's share it it it it should be in the in the for the world to see it doesn't mean that I agree with every piece of information in that I shared a little

[169:01] bit of this with Devon's like this is a report that comes out and looks oh it's so favorable to the just just one side of the equation it's not as balanced as I might want but that wasn't what was really asked so uh it has some relevance it's it's not something that we're going to tie our hands to or that I'm waving around saying look how great we are uh it was designed to give you all a little bit of an understanding of what where we were at the time and what are what the issues were and how we can go forward but there is a lot of learning for us to do not just from an assessment that's one piece of of a very large puzzle and I do anticipate that we're going to have a much more indepth analysis of the data that we are able to secure at the end of the grant which ends in September and we'll have a lot more data and a lot more understanding of how much we spent on which thing that we got we spent it on and that's I think it's fair for the community and for you all to expect that we'll come back and talk to you about that so a lot of the things I'm going to

[170:02] say in the next few minutes and I promise it'll be less than five minutes Lauren um are Community questions as well so like they would write to me I'm representing them I'm going to ask them to you so um my first question is is we are working on a high utilizer program which is what like five or 10 years out let's just say so we have if we're lucky well it's Government after all so what are we going to do in the meantime with the repeat offenders and the high utilizers while we wait for this because you and I know we all know I don't know about anyone else but I know that you're correct 100% about the housing but we don't have that housing so what are we going to do meanwhile while waiting do we just let people my thing is it just doesn't seem that entire report was devoid of the words take responsibility consequences for your actions you know things like that and so what are we going to do with

[171:01] consequences for actions as even in the Municipal Court levels harassment uh trespass so that we don't get people with 60 tickets and I know your hands are tied so this is me just you know speaking the words that either I'm frustrated about our community members are and so that's my first question for you to weigh in on so again if if you Circle back to the idea of what constitutes an eligible offense for the the community Court program or a traditional Court response you said harassment trespass if you're thinking about trespass at a business that's open and someone trespasses that and we can have something other than a PR Bond or harassment which does have a state misdemeanor counterpart those come under a different approach from the prosecutor's office and Chris can talk about about that but those those types of violations if the community and if you you can be a spokesperson for us tell the community make sure they understand the difference it's it's it's challenging because this is not this is

[172:00] not intuitive what we're what we're facing here it's really illogical the challenges that we have and so it doesn't mean people aren't smart it means it's really awkward to think about it in the sense that you don't have the tool that you need to have to change Behavior to have consequences for for actions it's struggling to get that tool and so I I empathize with people because I know it's hey we want to change this Behavior how come we can't change the behavior so all I can tell you is we're doing what we can with the tools that we have and that is using the jail when it's an OP when it's the right tool to to change Behavior or to give the community a break from an individual's Behavior it's a right tool and for those other low-level offenses where we don't have another tool we have to use the community Court model so how do we deal with this well I hope it's not five years um I go to those how utilizer meetings and I they're important to me they're important to a lot of people who are going to those meetings working on funding my hope is that we're going to

[173:00] get this done a lot sooner than people think where we have some of these uh resources that are available that's number one number two the part of the reason I'm such so excited about this community Corp model is we haven't even tapped what it can do for people who are not housed but have significant mental health needs and we have been able to get them housed and so if we can access some of that mental health component and make that part of what we do there is another bit of loow hanging fruit for us to pursue but it's a resourc driven problem uh and you know councelor Adams touched on it we have to have the resources and how much resources can you put towards one specific issue um but that would be my view is is if there are people out there who are committing problems crimes and offenses against people the DA's office and the district court are doing what they can do uh if there's a place for us to help and engage with people or leverage our relationships with people to get them more engaged with some of those uh programs that are available through the state and let's do it and that's why the

[174:01] what what's encouraging to me is the relationship that's developing between the prosecutor's office from the DA's position and the municipal court because if those folks can start to really collaborate and the judges can start talking about what kind of things can we do jointly there is some additional ground that can be gained I don't know how much right now because these are just right now at the beginning of us discussing but I do think that this can be something that we get out we got to turn the spigot off uh and I think mayor protm Spear and I had that conversation we're bailing out the bathtub we also need to turn off the spigot of having people become unhoused and so there's a lot of challenges there there is and I think one of the challenges is although I think council member Adams did bring up one of my concerns which was how many people are getting everybody paperwork um and whether you know multiple you know parts of our organization are and you said well this has to do specifically with criminal justice and that's that's true is we

[175:01] don't even have anything to do with people we don't have anything for people uh like if you take some of the people that might have success stories and who even knows where they are today and if they are successful it's not like you can push somebody to to go into a drug addiction program you can't make them go in and I think Chris Reynolds do you remember when you were there with me um roxan Peterson took us and a bunch of us to this um to this uh program in Denver The Other Side Academy yeah what did you I always call it up the other side The Other Side Academy Other Side Academy but you have to be you had to be in jail to access it because once somebody was in jail then the person I guess the prosecutor would say or I'm not sure would say you can stay in jail which is terrible or you can go to this program so you can try to get uh like your try to get uh you know work on your drug addiction and you know learn also work you know like Excel and

[176:01] all other things to be able to have be great you know have a good life and you know be a member of society that you know does positive things I wish that we could still have that but are you do you think that because of the whole situation with the pr bonds that would be an unintended consequences that we can't push people to have uh to be in these types of programs and we can't force them and I'm going to encourage shorter answers considering we are already 30 minutes over on this topic I'm almost done too so good you don't believe me I know anyway any thoughts Chris or did you not want to talk you want to talk about I didn't know that was directed at me uh well you we referred people to other side Academy without um them being in jail so uh we just have to figure out a different way to do it um I don't I don't I think that that in the past using the coercive aspect of the criminal justice system is one way but

[177:00] we just have to get creative and figure out a different way okay that's great news um I'm glad to hear that because that was a great that was a great program is a great program so now I'm going to just mention the community members what type of data they would like to see I just have a list I'm going to quickly go through it number of cases by crime type number of convictions number of dismissals number of repeat offenders number of tickets issues number of ticket tickets issues to the same individual number of failures to appear and that would be both for mun regular traditional municipal court and also Community Court these are the kind of things people have been emailing me that they would like to hear so I don't know if you agree that they should hear it and you're I'm happy to be pushed back at at not that that's a phrase that that's not what we really want but I was just throwing out what some community members have written to me about why don't you if you don't mind sending me an email of those list of questions or and Chris and I can share them with the

[178:00] prosecutors and we could try to get responses to you at some whether it's in in writing or whether we do it in the next session some of it I'm going to circle back and say if we continue to feed this I this conflate this idea of what's important you may have more community members who continue with the same Viewpoint and what I'm trying to do is get them to understand that some of those metrics that they're concerned about aren't metrics that are really going to evaluate what's going on here in our court well that's why I think you're the greatest ever just let me say and I think I'm pretty much done with what I was going to say but I do want to end with how great a job I think your guys are already doing and Community Court has is great and also I appreciate the opportunity to hear from you guys and from you that's not even a phrase I should use from you all what you think could be better like we have our you have your hands tied but I feel like if we just did this it would make a big

[179:01] impact the community might feel you know so is there anything and this is not for tonight when you come back to us in nine months that you got that you as a um you and your uh departments and everybody involved can come back and say we think that this will do better let's be creative how about this idea for getting people's behaviors changed or modified even though it's out you know even stuff that is outside of um the traditional way or something Innovative even right Lauren I was talking to you about that so um that's really what I'm looking forward to as well and I know that um I've heard such great things from you when we talk oneon-one so I'm actually confident you're going to come up with some things and thank you for that yeah thank you yeah all right I think on that topic it looks like our questions and comments have all gone out and thank you guys so

[180:00] much for joining us I think it sounds like there's a lot of great followup conversations to be had um and I think we need to transition into the next topic I'm gonna just say sorry to inter Chief Redford sorry we took so long but I'm GNA stay and watch his pres presentation thank thank you so much and we'll can go straight to interim Chief all right um good evening Council and uh thanks for having us back so I'm going to go through this fairly quickly since we had so much time with you last month this is going to look like our traditional um quarterly update just going to give you a glimpse of uh some current state of affairs and some updates on a couple things um and not a huge Deep dive uh like last month so here with me tonight again is Dr Reinhardt and you'll be hearing from the two of us so if we can get the presentation up we'll dive into it next slide

[181:01] please so four quick things going to talk about our focused efforts a couple significant incidents a little on community engagement and then take questions so uh that's what we're looking uh at here in the next little while uh next slide please so I just want to remind you that uh when we're talking about our crime picture and how we are uh looking at not only our prevention but response to Crime we're still using our stratified policing model uh it's evidence-based and it's how we look at proactive crime but also heavy on the prevention side and I'm not going to get into it um more I'm happy to have conversations with any new council members that aren't incredibly familiar with stratified policing but it focuses on a couple things problem locations problem areas problem crimes and significant incidents which we'll talk a little bit about next slide please so uh our first problem area under stratified policing is University Hill and it might be a little difficult to see on the map but in that red box

[182:01] there um this is the problem area that we've identified um this was done based on calls for service this was done based on crime and it allows our officers to focus uh their proactive time in these areas where we have seen an inordinate amount of calls for service what I'm happy to report in this problem area tonight is we've made some great progress um we uh noticed we had one uh bar one business that was causing uh quite a bit of problems on the hill um actively interfering with investigations and things and I believe council's aware of what went on there and that the business Taco junkie was closed um we've had a lot of cooperation with other businesses in the area that have been on board with our efforts to try to reduce calls there and so we're very happy with that uh it's an ongoing issue in the neighborhood but uh we're pretty pretty pretty happy with some of the successes there so we um are also partnering continuing to partner uh with code and other entities with our license enforcement and then we've had a lot of meetings with uh property managers

[183:00] Property Owners um on what we call the hill to um continue to reduce calls um Hill revitalization working group efforts the judge alluded to this but CU has done a great deal to better their party registration our neighborhood impact team that works the hill has Direct contacts with all the frats uh not only on an education front but when things happen we get almost immediate compliance in most cases and I think that's why you've seen a lot of the summonses and things like that go down a lot of great coordination and cooperation there um you know it's a true holistic approach and we're having great success next slide please so as you can see here from January of this year compared to last we have an 18% reduction in calls for Police Service uh in this problem area an almost a 30% reduction in crime which we're very happy about um the same amount of proactive activities which is interesting it means that maybe we're you know in our efforts with stratified policing just being a little bit more focused on the longer term Solutions um

[184:02] one thing we noticed here um we were a little bit worried about is when we focused on problem locations that things would just kind of move around the block and so far that hasn't happened uh next slide please oh and before we go to uh you can leave this slide but uh before I leave the topic of University Hill um because of the efforts our team has made and all of our partners um we are actually removing University Hill as a problem area under stratified policing um and based upon some uh data we're in the initial scanning phase of the Sarah model now we are moving uh one of our two problem locations from the hill to North Boulder based on a drastic increase we've seen with some issues there and so more to come on that um we're still figuring out the parameters there but our two problem areas going forward uh are now going to be the downtown problem area and North Boulder our teams will still be monitoring the ones that are assigned to the hill um all of the issues there to make sure they don't return so moving on to uh

[185:01] downtown that's our second problem area um it's a little uh uh different when you look on the map but that uh Red Line indicates where we are focusing our efforts on our second problem area um under stratified policing we have a commander assigned to each area and in this case a sergeant assigned to different areas so we have a sergeant assigned to the library to work on issues and a sergeant assigned to RTD um we have upped our staffing on the mall to six and we've had a great success as I talked about last month with our proactive policing some pretty major cases um our ebikes are continuing to pay off dividends and last week we had about 20 of our officers go through to get certified on bike Patrol and those are traditional bicycles not all ebikes I wish we could have 20 ebikes but uh you're going to see a lot more officers on foot on bikes and ebikes downtown uh it's just really working well for us not only on enforcement but Community engagement as well um one thing that's important in this problem area is we look to to do things through stratified

[186:01] policing that aren't the traditional mechanisms of arresting people things like that although that has a place is working with our partners so commander Heath is engaged with the team that's working on the redesign for Civic Park and Central Park and as we're in those uh efforts we're looking to see how we can make those things uh less conducive to Crime um while we have the opportunity to work with that team um and then we've continued to work on the drug distribution downtown and had good successes like I shared next slide so um downtown does not have the same uh success story yet that we've had on the hill we are still seeing an increase in calls in some areas and some types so downtown is staying as one of our problem areas where we are uh focusing our work um continuing uh as we added officers to our homeless Outreach team and our homeless response team and the mall um seeing additional cleanups and things that we're able to do in this area one thing I just want to point to uh so far this year compared to last we've seen

[187:00] 117% increase in officer pedestrian contacts that's on bikes on foot officers just out and about talking to people um and and being out there very visible and that's we know that helps uh deter crime um even though we're still seeing some rise in some categories we've seen 18% reduction in calls for service uh in downtown Dr Reinhardt who I'm actually about to turn it over to will give you a better picture of crime um I know we're moving quick but I'm G to turn it over to Dr Reinhardt to go through some real quick data and give you a picture on a couple of our problem crimes Daniel yeah um go ah and go to the next slide good evening Council my name is Dr Reinhard and I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the data so first I wanted to start talking about overdose because it's a it's a serious issue of a lot of concern uh we can't hear you if you're

[188:00] maybe M turn your video off we tested this right before and it worked great I think he's going to transition into the other room where we know it works as our c as our city clerk says it's a gremlin day tonight I thought those were only brought on by the full moon but maybe it's the full schedule for cic also could be brings out the Gremlins in the in the interest of time I've got Daniel's do I'm familiar with this slide until I see him pop back up we'll just continue with uh with this um no that's not him so when we're we're talking about overdoses it's obviously

[189:00] incredibly important for us we continue to use Naran on a regular basis but we have seen a decline which is which is hopeful um we are responding to about two overdoses per week in the city um sadly in the last two weeks we've had a couple of fatalities and we're continuing to figure out ways to reduce that with our partners Daniel's estimates and Daniel just po back up so I'm going to let him take over but Daniel if you want to hit a lot those last couple points and we'll move to the next one yeah absolutely sorry about that Chief um so yeah more than half of the overdoses that BPD has responded to so this year are believed to involve fenel um and officers continue to use Nock Zone when community members are experiencing opiate overdoses and we've we've seen success and we know that it it saves lives in those situations next slide so here uh we wanted to talk a little bit about motor vehicle theft and burglary um those are crimes that BPD has especially focused on since starting stratified policing uh so analyzing data

[190:03] in this kind of format in a monthly format against data from last year and from a three-year average it allows us to get a better sense of any kind of seasonal component um it also allows us to get a better sense of whether or not the initiatives that we're trying are having some kind kind of noticeable uh short and medium-term uh impact on the things that we're doing and looking at next slide please so you know we're happy that we've seen some modest decreases from last year to this year for motor vehicle theft and another way that we consider these kinds of circumstances is with a more tactical analysis and so uh looking at you know very specific patterns for where these things are occurring and the kinds of vehic that are impacted by this kind of crime looking at it this way it helps us to investigate crimes prevent future crimes and really to to leverage this information to inform the community about situations that they should be

[191:00] aware of that could help um folks understand ways that they can prevent different kinds of situations to their vehicle or in their neighborhood next slide please so considering uh burglary next there are a lot of offense circumstances like suspect patterns and building vulnerabilities um one of the things that's helpful to point out is that like we know in Boulder a lot of burglaries might involve uh theft of bicycles Electronics tools other kinds of things from garages or unattached structures um and so it it's helpful to be mindful about that about how um property is stored um but it's also a good time for us to point out that this Saturday there will be a bicycle theft awareness expo at Community Cycles um so there'll be security-minded individuals talking about crime prevention and things that you can do um

[192:00] to dissuade and diffuse those kinds of situations before they occur next slide please so one of the last slides that we wanted to talk about is sort of thinking about crime Citywide more of a global manner um one of the things to point out is that the Boulder Police Department learns about circumstances that happened weeks months or years ago and so it's helpful to point out like the the kind of crime reporting that's happening in addition to the kind of crime that's happening in this moment incident-based um date ranges so year to date on the right side of the slide you'll see that you know there's an appreciable decrease in aggravated assault and and theft for Motor Vehicles but there are increases in other kinds of crime and so I wanted to highlight two of those um tonight the first one I wanted to highlight is increases in reported robbery so robbery includes shoplifting

[193:00] that involves force and much of the increases in robbery that we've seen this year are due to confrontations between shoplifters and store employees and so we wanted to remind property and business managers to have really clear protocols right for the kinds of um times that employees should or should not engage with people shoplifting in their business the second thing I really wanted to highlight are arson um so BPD is arrested multiple adult suspects in connection with these crimes so far this year but we've also completed multiple juvenile referrals for teenage suspects in connection with these crimes most of the arson so far this year um have involved lighting trash or debris on fire in dumpsters or rather contained settings and we really want to remind the community that if you see something concerning to you to please call 911 or call our non-emergency phone line at 303 441 3333 um I'll I'll hold the rest of it for any questions during the Q&A um but with that please go to the next slide

[194:01] and I'll hand it back to Chief Redfern to discuss significant incidents thanks Daniel um we can go to the next slide I'm just going to hit on a couple significant incidents and this slide is kind of a late ad because this problem popped up again fairly recently and we have officers actually out there right now in these Parks dealing with some Thursday night events that have popped up in the last month um I just want to mention it because it's actually turned into a fairly significant resource drain for us but we've seen uh the Thursday night it used to be called the Thursday night Riders um come back now predominantly though they're in vehicles and they will be driving from Evan G Fine Scott Carpenter and North Boulder Park the first week was fairly out of control uh we had a lot of intoxicated juveniles some of which were so intoxicated we had to call ambulances um we had fights and so U we did a a decent amount of public messaging specifically trying to get parents to make sure they knew what was going on um but also enforcement and we've had um about eight

[195:00] to 10 officers committed every Thursday night um anytime there's a large crowd like this there's a potential that things uh go sideways and a couple years year or two ago or more we had some large Gatherings that turned pretty bad in North Boulder so we're trying to avoid that in the last 3 weeks we've written 20 minor in possession tickets nine traffic tickets two tickets for brawling and then we've had the multiple medical calls so happy to say last week uh it was quite better and we're hoping that our presence as well as some of the education is um going to continue to be um more tame we want people to have fun but we we can't have them gathering in mass and causing some of the issues we've seen next slide please this one uh a couple weeks ago I want to just highlight some really good work we got a 911 call of a woman uh that was pulled into a vehicle the caller actually had it on video it was a very frightening video and um this person was clearly taken against her will into a car um we worked with Patrol and detectives uh to figure out where

[196:00] this car was when they located the vehicle they immediately got the female to safety the male suspect ran on foot uh our officers chased him and he was in possession of a stolen handgun as well uh he was a prior felon um lot of serious charges there um we don't have a lot of this type of crime regularly in Boulder and um I'm just glad that this one ended the way it did just wanted to highlight some good work there as well next slide please so this I didn't have a chance to talk about this last month we were talking about the drug case but just I wanted to mention as we're talking about burglary being one of our problem crimes this case uh we tied over 20 burglaries to a group of repeat burglars uh we executed multiple search warrants at storage units recovered Stolen Bikes firearms and other things um and we made multiple rests from this cas case this was a long-term case uh involving a lot of different locations being burglarized in the city uh just a shout out to our partners with the Boulder County drug task force we were able to determine that this suspect group was fencing

[197:00] stolen things like bikes uh and trading them for drugs so kind of a complex organization we've disrupted that and we've started to see a difference in burglaries of this type next slide uh just I wanted to highlight just kind of a an interesting call and give you just another glimpse of the variety of the work that our officers do on a a regular basis on graduation day we got a call that uh there was a man on the roof of a home in North Boulder um he was actually damaging and pulling things off the roof uh we learned quickly that he was a Spanish speaker we had we had our not only our crisis uh intervention Response Team uh but a Spanish speaking detective there we were able to negotiate him off the roof and he was charged with some felonies trespass um criminal mischief and things like that next slide I think it's the last one can you go forward one for me please there we go um as always we just talk a

[198:00] little bit about Community engagement I'm going to go quick through here but uh very happy to say we had a safe Boulder Creek Fest uh we had a bike safety Expo recruiting Booth a lot of great interaction out there Boulder Boulder went off um very very well with 47,000 people as you can see in the picture our officers truly love working that event and we just had a ton of great interaction there had several coffees with the cop the last one was this Tuesday at the AG well Center great opportunity to get out in the community I'm very excited you may see I'm wearing one tonight um this is the first time we've ever uh put a pride badge out uh for officers and staff to purchase for pride month uh it's been very well received in the community the intent is to show support for our lgbtq plus community and then also show support for our employees and and I have to tell you when I started in this profession quite some time ago I never thought I would see the day where we'd be able to um so openly support um folks like myself so it's been great uh last weekend several of us traveled to Grand Junction and

[199:01] attended the special Olympic summer games where we handed out medals to athletes judge competitions um had just a great time that picture there uh we had our recent awards ceremony which was phenomenal thanks to those of you who made that and supported um and then our o ceremony welcoming new officers and some promotees um and then as you know uh our our yoab group ended this uh this session ended with an open house had a lot of Youth in in the building to talk about policing and give feedback and the survey we received after that was overwhelmingly positive on those interactions next slide so that is all um as usual we put uh the QR code here for our crime dashboards if people want to know more about crime in specific areas um as well as our new newsletter that comes out once a month highlighting some of the work that we do um and other uh interesting things that are going on uh as well as a calendar of events so uh a lot fairly quickly but uh I think we're ready for questions thank you for that

[200:00] presentation and for our I'm gonna since we're a little behind on time encourage people to do questions and comments together ideally in two minutes which is the same as open comment so let's start with you Tara Wier have two questions which I can do in two minutes timey go um uh Steve um I'm sorry I should be calling you um wait what is your title again sorry interm Chief I already lost 30 seconds with that question Lauren um I have two questions first of all we discussed how North Boulder's crime was up 40% at one meeting do you remember that you were there and I was there I do do you know if um that was 40% higher than the rest of Boulder 40% than it's ever been and is crime in North Boulder now just like everywhere else is it higher than everywhere else do you happen to know those metrics uh you know I thought it might come up I

[201:00] asked Dr Reinhardt to have that uh information if he's got it handy now I'll have him go over that yeah so um council member it we were looking at it in a couple different ways so that 40% number I think that was in relation to the same geographic area in the the previous year so the same time period in the same geography the previous year but one of the things that kind of concerned us as a department was that it looked like that area was beginning to account for more crime Citywide than it had historically um and that wasn't 40% um but for the land mass for the amount of activity happening there was was enough to be concerning so is it now now North Boulder is what compared to the rest of Boulder they're all equal or it's higher um it's it's kind of a complicated question to answer um I I can get you um a more definitive answer

[202:00] to that like based on the land mass or based on the number of homes or something like that but it is increasing concern yeah okay and then my last question and then I actually have no comments Lauren is my last question is is what should community members do about shoplifting it's a huge huge problem it's a huge burden on businesses right now I get a lot of PE I'm worried for the businesses because how much can they really take between all the problems you know that we've talked about plus also shoplifting so do the businesses know what to do I noticed that you were trying to help I think it depends council member so what we do see a lot of theft at the larger retailers Target Home Depot and they have some fairly formalized ways that they address it with security technology they're they're very good partners for us and they have great video what we see is more problematic is the more the smaller um small businesses that don't have the resources that the Box bigger box stores do um one thing we can commit to is uh we will actually come out to a business

[203:01] if they're experiencing problems and give them advice on ways they may be able to kind of for lack of a better term Target Harden their businesses a little more um so you know things like you know if you're in a convenience store don't keep your single cans of beer right inside the front door um we did this with the circle K on Canyon putting them behind the cooler and after a certain time of night the clerk has to unlock it to give someone a single can of beer we're happy to do those our community resource officer does a uh an assessment at places um but we we do Network fairly frequently with businesses on that topic uh as well as education like you know encouraging them not to necessarily get physical with the shoplifter and potentially get hurt over um an item and and and those are ongoing conversations but anyone can reach out to us and we can help that out and so I had asked judge Khan months ago what do we do about CH lifting and he said it wasn't a municipal court thing that it was so um is there any hope for consequences for shoplifters or is that

[204:00] like not happening you know I don't I don't honestly know specifically what happens on on the DA's level with shoplifters I know it's more at the lower end of the the seriousness of cases that they see that's easily something that we can get more from the DA's office on how that plays out once we write that ticket and it goes to District Court thanks Tara next up I see Aaron and then Tina hey um thanks very much interm Chief Redfern and uh Dr Reinhardt etc for for the presentation really appreciate it so just a couple comments one was I was really thrilled to see the reduction in incidents on the hill and so thanks for all of your hard work and collaborating with the neighbors and the university and congrats to everybody council members who got involved great to see that taken off the problem list uh so congrats and thanks on that and then also um appreciate you looking at the data and taking the situation North

[205:01] Boulder seriously um I've I've certainly have heard as have you about residents in the area who are concerned so uh really glad to hear you'll be taking a close look at that making sure that doesn't get into a worse space instead gets better so just wanted to offer those two two thank yous and and then while I got the floor since I didn't pop up on the last one I think Chris Reynolds and judge Connor still here thank you both for your extraordinary work in Partnership on the community Court I was really impressed by the presentations and all that you're doing for the community so thanks it's all I again than thanks Aaron Tina you're up next and then yep I'm going to chime in again on a recognition and thank you for um looking at North ER and helping just to understand what the trends are there and hopefully being proactive in that area appreciate it um then my second question was um concerning the overdoses that you're seeing are we also um seeing a decrease in overdose deaths or is it

[206:02] just an overdose Daniel I think you have the DAT on that I don't believe we've had as many this year as last so far yeah it it's a good problem to have council member that there's few enough of them that it's it's uh it's not a huge difference um like in terms of a large percentage difference but um it's a concerning problem and we're actually working with the Corner's office to understand not not just overdose deaths but situations where we you know we see decedents in the community that may have drugs in their system um and so it's it's still a concerning problem that we're looking into and council member marus if I can just point out one thing that I learned the other day that's incredibly concerning is um the use of of Nar by not only our officers but the community is making a big difference in that but we have one guy um in the park downtown typically we have used at least seven uh narcans to bring him back from overdoses and so um without that

[207:00] resource I think that number would be a lot different and so it's it's kind of become a thing where I think people know we're going to be there with it um and so it it becomes um some sometimes a concerning thing because we're not always going to be there and then we just it it's uh it's constant ly something that we're looking at figuring out how we can uh do better to prevent it okay and thank you for sharing that that's a really good point um and then lastly just commenting on the um North Boulder Thursday night uh and a school year um biker rallies um you know at some point I hope that um you know we connect with some of the kids that are actually there not necessarily ones that were ticketed but um just kind of understanding what team are looking for uh you know obviously someone like me can't ideate that or but uh people that are really looking for different opportunities in the community and seeing how maybe some of our other um parts of the city services could meet

[208:01] those needs because this has been a recurring problem for a few years now so and it doesn't I I know you can't stop all this but it might be that there's some creative ways to engage youth that aren't um that that are alternatives to what the what's happening now so we would love to not to have enforcement be the way to fix it thank you Tina Matt I see you're up next and then Nicole and then Mark thanks Lauren I'm gonna maybe follow the track that Aaron was on I I didn't say any words on the previous piece but um I just wanted to express some gratitude towards uh judge KH and Chris Reynolds uh in particular because you know when judge cook left she was kind of an institution here for a long time and did some amazing work and to see how well judge Khan has grabbed the reins and really sort of uh made that that that Court his own and really done some tremendous leadership I just want to express a lot of gratitude in such a

[209:01] short time you you've you've put your a really good stamp uh on the court and with staff in the work so thank you um and then similarly with with with with Chief Redfern you know I appreciate how the Strat of side policing is paying off and and we can remove the hill as a problem area I can't say that's ever been the case and I was a student on the hill I wouldn't say responsible for any Mayhem but nonetheless it's amazing to see that that work is paying off and we're able to move resources to places that need that and be adaptable to the situation so so I appreciate that continued commitment to that work um because we can sort of see it paying off and we can then move resources and and take care of the issues that are problems so so thank you for all of that that's all I got thank you thanks Matt Nicole and then Mark thanks so much for the presentation um I just wanted to follow on the same question uh that I was asking in the previous um uh presentation just around you know thinking about the public drug use specifically meth use um that we've

[210:01] got on our Creek paths and other areas uh where is the backlog because I mean I get the sense right we're giving people tickets um there you know presumably something is happening with that and and yet you know what what I'm hearing is that you know you all are um are are feeling like there's nothing that you can do about it right and so just just sort of wondering is it that we just don't have enough treatment facilities like what's the what is leading to you know this this perception that there's nothing that we can do about it um and mostly I'm just curious because like everybody looks to council like you guys suck you can't take care of this problem right and it in my mind it's that this this problem is not it's not just the city that's involved right it's bigger than that and anyway just any levers like a poll that may may help with the situation thank you I'm glad you asked because when I heard it in the previous presentation I wanted to I wanted to hit on that real quick um I I hope that if

[211:02] we are giving the the anyone in the community the impression that we can't do conduct enforcement on people using narcotics in public um that's just not true and we have to we have to end that and if I need to have better communication internally to make sure that's not the narrative I'll definitely do it um I know that there is frustration though amongst our Patrol officers because um fully acknowledging that arresting someone repeatedly that is addicted to drugs is likely not going to be the solution to helping them um it used to be a mechanism we had prior to Law changes around 2019 to disrupt behavior and we have people tell us regularly I'll just sit here in the middle of the park and smoke meth at fentel because I know I'm just going to get a ticket and so it does manifest to frustration for the officers um and frankly you know it's understandable that people think that it's not going to be like it used to where um right wrong or indifferent uh they would go to jail um charged with a felony now they get a

[212:01] ticket it's still a felony but lower level and I'm not weighing in on the on whether I think that's the right decision that was made in in Denver in 2019 uh it's really just uh we are sometimes very frustrated with the lack of ability that we have to to change that behavior and so um that's I think where that comes from uh I think it would be an easy ask to get with the county court to kind of find out what happens with the majority of those tickets I don't have that information I know Daniel it's not something we regularly keep um because as the judge mentioned those tickets go into to County court and again with County Court dealing with everything up to including homicide those are on the lower end of what they deal with and so I suspect um you know it it will take someone several of those tickets to get a warrant where they they may spend some time in in jail all of this goes to our bigger issue that we've talked about repeatedly that we talk about in the high utilizers is better treatment options uh you know at the state County local level all the things in that much larger conversation those come to a head down on the

[213:00] day-to-day level when we're interacting in public places and so um I think that's where a lot of that comes from council member is is just uh everyone including our staff uh somewhat frustrated and hoping that we can come to some better Solutions yeah no I I thank you I I appreciate that I um I appreciate that it is a frustrating situation all around for everyone involved so I I appreciate what you're doing and I'm just sorry that you know you all are having to be the sort of addiction resources and and right the the folks who are responding to what is not fundamentally kind of a criminal justice problem more um just a behavioral health problem that we don't have the resources for so anyway thank you for appreciate you're welcome and one one more small thing is people still need to call us when they're seeing that behavior it's still illegal we will still respond um and it helps us track all of the data thank you Nicole up next we have

[214:02] Mark and then I have some questions and comments I'm gonna throw my two cents in as well with respect to the hill uh congratulations on on your great success and and in dealing with those those issues and those problems I only have one question um uh with climate change we've all become a little more sensitive to things like um uh fire danger and we have July 4th coming up and I'm wondering is there anything that you have in mind or or do does your Force deal with that at all in terms of fireworks and the possibility that that um you know fireworks can lead to something um much more unpleasant and more dangerous great question sir U even though I know you don't like when I call you sir I apologize um fireworks

[215:00] fireworks are illegal in the city we do enforce firework uh ordinances um people call us uh without hesitation when fireworks are going off um we will be doing uh the same as we do every year but a big public education campaign reminding everybody as it gets closer here in a couple weeks to the fourth that they are illegal um it's a huge concern and and you know hopefully people remember recent events um we we will definitely be rolling that out here in the next week or two thank you that's all I got thanks Mark up next Taisha and then I'll go much I actually will be brief because this is a continuation of the previous session in and it was just helpful to get um some of that additional numbers I will say I am concerned it's wonderful to see the property um incidents go down but the personal um go up is is concerning and and it was also interesting between the simple assault

[216:00] and the aggressive I just thought that was also an interesting um relationship and I'm curious to hear more about that but not at this moment um one I did also want to Echo um Tina Tina's um compliment about the um neighborhood specific it's just really powerful um to be able to see at that grain size and again you know that type of data would have helped us months ago when we were talking with our North Boulder Community right and so again you know making sure that we have that in the data when we need it it's I think one of the challenges that we're going to have but to know that it exists in the rigor that it's in um and the grain size that it in is in is very exciting and and again um very useful as we're thinking about how to make sure that everybody is safe uh regardless of socio economic race gender class Etc um I also wanted to just um say um congratulations on all the new sta the new officers um you know I've been taking it upon myself to introduce myself to any armed per uh any uniformed

[217:01] officers that I find in our community throughout our community especially during Boulder Boulder and some of our larger events where more outof town community members are coming um I don't tell them who I am I Just sh my hand and um to see how they receive me and it's just all it it has been consistently um you know that that level one of oh hello you know it just it was really nice and there was only one who tried to give me like a little fist bump and I was like we're not I'm not a child um but but you know we Chuck hands and it was it was just fine but my larger point is is you know as we have some of these newer folks um um coming on how do we build relationship with our community members in meaningful ways and so I also wanted to lift up the work that you all were doing with the youth advisory Council um and and I'm hopeful even within that work that there's um we continue to expand that effort so that we're also meeting with youth who are um having to deal with the police I think that is is something going back to the Liv and learn conversation from

[218:01] before is also applicable here how do we actually work with those who have um been in the system and and and working with them to to S excuse me identify issues um so I don't have any specific questions at this time but more so just some appreciations around what I'm seeing um also um again just just thank you um you know we have a lot of um juneth activities coming up this up this week we know we have seen an increased incidences of hate crimes um across obviously it's pride month as well and so again how do we show up to make sure everybody's safe without making folks feel like they're over policed and I think that's the line um and so I'm also wondering if there's opportunity for more plain closed officers or or you know what I'm saying I just you know it was it was hard to see the SWAT Presence at the Boulder Boulder um I almost was like are they even a part of be you know our Boulder Police Department because it was a different outfit huge machines I don't even want to talk about how much they cost um but again just being

[219:01] mindful of how we show up how your officers show up and the different ways that they can show up to make sure um that you know all the community members visitors Etc um feel good and most importantly from somebody who has overp policed all time um that um those who have a history of chronic overp policing when they come here don't experience that that's that is success for me so thank you so much all very good points thank you for all that council member I'm glad to hear that your experiences were what they were the one thing I will say for everybody um we are starting up you asked about engagement with newer officers we're starting up it used to be called a Citizens Academy we're going to call it the Community Academy uh sometime in the fall um where people will be able to come in here and and kind of go through Academy like we had before the pandemic so more to come on that but that's going to be another way we can do that thank you Pisha um I was gonna give my questions and comments real quick and then I'll go to you Ryan so I wanted to

[220:02] start off with appreciating um moving officers onto bikes and out of cars I think that you know having that allows people to see you know one-on-one and interaction is human to human um without having the metal and glass bubble of a car um I did want to I had a similar note from the Boulder Boulder it seemed like I hadn't noticed SWAT Presence at the Boulder Boulder before was that unique to this year is that something we're planning in the future was it just more in my face this year could you touch on that a a little bit so we've the best of my knowledge we've had a SWAT component there for a long time I can definitely tell you in light of the Boston bombing and all those things we've always had them there um there's a little bit of discussion and we we do this on every event do we want people to see them

[221:01] there so if they are thinking about harming our community they might think twice or do we have them um you know hidden out of sight and so that's a philosophical decision we have to make at every event um but by I will not it run a major event with having H without having an immediate response component there of people that are highly trained with um all of the threats that have happened around the the country and so totally understand the Optics um but we also don't want it to be a secret that we have um that we are prepared to deal with anything that that might come up there and so always a balance happy to you know have additional conversations on what that looks like um for next year but it is consistent with what um um any jurisdiction that I'm aware of is doing for for major events like that so um happy to provide more on that and and tell you a little bit more about what goes into that but that's a general snapshot of why we have that there thank you um my other question is about

[222:01] overdose prevention you mentioned kind of wanting to get you know arms around that a little better I know that um Boulder County Public Health has also been looking for thing like they would really like to have an overdose Pro vention vending machine in our downtown area um they previously had a Sharps container um but were sort of pressured to remove it and I wonder if there might be like are you having conversations um with Boulder County Public Health around locating these things are there ways that we can sort of combine Force because I understand why that's a politically difficult thing but I also think that it's a life-saving and important thing and so how can we maybe have a collaboration between public health and the police to maybe help find ways to make things like that more supportable um what I can tell you is we our chief of staff McNiven meets monthly

[223:00] with the Boulder County Public Health Group that talks about all of these issues I don't know if that's been a specific discussion they've had on placing those downtown obviously that's not something that you know we would make on our own we would Loop in the city manager attorney's office all of those things um but I can definitely if that conversation has not been had I can make sure we're engaging in that conversation okay that would be great thank you and yeah thank you for the presentation Ryan you're up next excuse me uh thanks I actually didn't have anything original but I just wanted to um endorse tesa's comments about looking at all of our audiences when we show up in large groups and making a principled approach to how we decide to show up and I know and I appreciate interm chief that you said that something some extent that goes into thinking already and so I would just like to say thanks to the extent that's happening and and support T's

[224:01] comments that this is this is really important for us thank you thanks thank you guys for keeping that fairly concise um are I unless there any other questions comments concerns I think it's time for us to move on to our next very very exciting topic Council rules of procedure and rules of decorum discussion exciting and for that I think uh we've got our Deputy City attorney Aron Poe who's going to walk us through some very brief slides on it right yes thank you good evening mayor and members of council Aaron po Deputy City attorney tonight is a follow-up conversation from the procedure discussion at the council Retreat and was continued from the consent agenda on June 6th and and Emily or Alicia I believe there are two slides to put up all right thank you and you can go on to the next

[225:00] one all right in the revised draft rules that were sent out on hotline there are changes that seem non-controversial and those changes are highlighted in yellow in the revised draft those proposed Chang are adding sexual orientation to the list of examples of language that is disruptive allowing a speaker to bring a companion for physical linguistic or moral support to the podium allowing people to set down signs in front of their chair so they do not have to hold them throughout the meeting replacing gendered language with they them in section 16 B12 a typo has been corrected and the list of disruptive noises devices has been expanded to include the phrase and the like also in section 16 B12 an example of when clapping is allowed for special events has been added the language being such as a retirement and last

[226:01] slide this slide shows the issues that seem to Merit Council discussion tonight based on the feedback provided uh for item number one signs and flags we heard concerns about the size of signs allowed in the first draft CFT revision and a desire to allow signs larger than what had been proposed so that signs are easily readable from the podium but not so big that it would block others view or intrude into the physical space of adjacent attendees for 1B we heard concerns about waving of flags and signs and how that can be disruptive when trying to focus and that the motion can trigger migraines one B lists three options about waving prohibiting making no change or having a provision for the chair to direct the waving to stop if there's a medical need or other concern one note here is that Council would have to be very cautious and making sure that enforcement was consistent about waving not some signs and not others for item

[227:00] onec we heard feedback suggesting a restriction of signs at the podium and for item number two speaker identification currently the rules require that a speaker give their address unless they have a safety concern other has received as feedback included specifying whether a speaker lives within or outside the city Andor the speaker's connection to Boulder such as employment schools or business ownership uh that concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer questions if there are changes to language on slide one we will make those and bring them forward when this comes back to a future consent agenda all right who wants to start us off thank you Nicole thanks so much for the presentation um and I really appreciate that that you included some of us because I was not expecting the gendered language to show up so soon so thank you um I would just had one question around

[228:02] the the kind of the waving right because some of this some of the things that were already um in the rules were things that were there but just they're they're challenging to enforce and specifically around the waving things I mean you know the the time that I've facilitated meeting right you're not always able to look in every corner as the meeting facilitator and so you know what are your thoughts on that because it to me it feels like an area that's sort of if we can't easily notice things to enforce them um is that is that helpful or that does that just leave us in a place where we're potentially treading people unfairly I my concern would be that it is enforced in some circumstances and not others so if it is a a special concern like there's a medical issue and that is triggering or worsening a migraine I think it would be important to put that on the record um you know if

[229:01] it is a blanket proh prohibition against waving then I think it has to be carefully enforced every single meeting so it doesn't look like it is being enforced selectively okay thank you um and then yeah that's that's all my questions for now thanks given the time and trying to get out a re you know soonish do you want to include comments um and so everyone can do questions and comments at the same time that was an option for you Nicole sure yeah I think you know I have um maybe just a similar question around the uh the the sign sizes um if you know you if you like a certain size would be um easier or harder to uh enforce but um like that you know the paper size or like Lauren's half a poster board comment or something like that it's kind of an easy visual visual which is why I thought about that um but anyway it just would um that that

[230:01] is one thing that I just wonder about is the kind of enforcement capacity um and then uh the other one and I'm sorry I'm trying to bring up the slides so I can U look at them because my last one related to one of the other oh yeah it was about um the um that those are my comments on sizes um waving we talked about and then um oh speaker identification was the other one I really would love it if it were just the speaker um asking the speaker to identify their connection to the city of Boulder because I think that for people who live outside the city but you know maybe work in the city they may spend just as much time here as people who live in the city and work outside the city so I think it really is important for us just to to to think about it doesn't it doesn't sort of give you special status if you're living in the city just tell us what your connection is to the city um you know to give your address just what what is your connection to Boulder so I would advocate for making that that change thank

[231:03] you all right next up we have thank you Nicole next up we have Aaron and then Tina uh so just from a process perspective I I think we have three items up for specific discussion Lauren I just wonder if we might do them one two three maybe with a straw poll to see judge the will of counsel on those rather than scattershot comments but I leave it up to your discretion I appreciate that I was thinking about that after I made my last comment um let's if anyone has any questions let's do those first and then I'll straw poll um those three items Lauren can I just say one thing uh calquing real quick I promise sure I I just wanted to say before we straw poll can I I spent a lot of time cutting out sizes so people can see and since I was the one that brought up the waving I just wouldn't mind like I'm you know I'm totally into the

[232:01] majority rules so but I just wanted to give an example of exactly what bothers me and why so that people understand where I'm coming from and then whatever it is it is if that's okay I did spend a lot of time trying to cut corrugated plastic and that is not easy all right so I Tina would you do you have any comments or questions you would like to share before I straw pole I do so fortunately I raised my hand when I think we were still on questions so that worked out great um so my first question is when we talk about the sence sizes is there still an overarching idea that people shouldn't hold signs in a way that blocks the view or hits the people to the left and right of them and behind them is that something that sort of stands alone regardless of how big this sign is that's correct in in the first draft that came

[233:03] on the consent agenda there is language uh requiring people to hold it below the level of their forehead okay so that's already something we can enforce well if it's adopted at um it is in there currently right as a revision okay so I mean because some size signs it would be hard to hold below your forehead well seated so I just want to keep that in mind as we think about poster sizes or half poster sizes but um so that's one question and the other is when we talk about what people say when they introduce themselves as a podium in terms of whether they live in the city of Boulder um and for those of you who don't know this council members receive a list of the people who signed up to speak those who were chosen by the library Lottery and where they live although not everyone fills out the field would Council people still have access to that

[234:00] Excel sheet that indicates where people live or would we would we stop asking for that information alog together under this one proposal I think that would would be a decision that the city clerk's office would make my understanding or I guess my assumption would be that the field would still be filled out but maybe it's a different dropdown so instead of writing in an address you could choose from inside city outside City or maybe a field to fill in what's your connection to Boulder depending on what all of you decide you would like to have okay and is that aell sheet a public sheet or no is the is the is the speaker sheet with their addresses or like what's made public in these cases I don't know that we make it public but my assumption would be that if a request was made it would be public it is a corable document it is not a public document we just use

[235:01] it to make sure we know who's who's on first if you will perfect okay administrative document okay and then do I make comments now or no Lauren we're doing comments later after this we're going to STW hold so if you want to make a comment to sway people in the straw pole go for it okay it's for after if it's for the end then save it for the end yeah my only comment is um when I'm making about decisions particularly those that relate to geographies in the city for me it's helpful to know um where people live and also and as you know I also supported during the retreat a priority for people who live in the city to speak General but that um did not pass at our Retreat so and I'm didn't asked to relitigate that during this um meeting but I would like to know where people live um if possible and it would just help me with my decision- making and I even would

[236:00] like people I would encourage people to identify that when they email I don't view public comment and email very differently in terms of how I make decisions so I take an email just as seriously as I take a public comment understanding how extraordinarily difficult it is to get yourself down to Chambers on a six o'clock on a Thursday particularly if you're a parent um or if you have a different kind of work schedule so I for me I I sort of view them equally um and I do think it's important to know where people live part of it also has to do with the way elections works and the people who um who elected me so I do serve a broader Community than the city of Boulder um and I I understand that but I also am very um careful with the people who pay taxes in the city so that's my thought so I would like to know where people uh live and it can be as simple as I live in the city and I live outside of the city and if people want to um describe their connection that would be fantastic I do not need to know the street address uh but I also

[237:00] know that in some of our community surveys we've asked people do you live near Iris do you live in North Boulder you know some of these geography things to understand how it impacts people in different parts of the city and I think that's important when you're making decision that's as impactful as something like Iris so thanks thank you Tina uh up next we have Matt and then Aaron thanks Lauren um my question is pretty brief it really kind of comes up to the holding of a sign or flag um I know as um Aaron pointed out that it's like the forehead to me that it's such an ambiguous line I I I would keep it much simpler and just say like it above the face I mean because again I mean for I just uh some of us have bigger foreheads than others right so um I just think that I think it's kind of these aam Razer things the simplest Solutions is often the best just make it the face and call it um rather than now so I know

[238:00] we're nitpicking a little but I think let's just try to keep those a little simple U my comment is I think we're on the right track in general we we should know generally that what they're what people's attachment to this city is I don't need a street address or number specifically um but I agree I want know if they live or work here it just contextualizes the feedback in a way it doesn't make me discount it one way or another it just helps me have a better understanding of what's maybe rooting that comment um and maybe and and and sink into their uh feedback to us a little bit deeper than I otherwise would if I had no none of that context so um I think we're in a in a good path here so I appreciate all the hard work and back and forth to get where we are thanks Matt Aon you're up next and then Tara and then T thanks so uh just a quick question to Aaron poe just so I'm I'm sensitive to the concern around waving and that being distracting and even causing physical problems but eron my question to you would be waving I worry about it being a subjective

[239:00] standard like do you could you maybe describe for me how I or Nicole or another presiding officer could distinguish between slight movement of a sign and something that qu qualifies as waving I'll try I guess my thought would be waving is an intentional movement so not a not a sway or a lean or a tilt but movement with muscle you're getting your heart rate up so that that kind of envisions how how I might could you know have a Criterion for that so that that actually that makes sense so that helps I appreciate that and then just my my one thing the my very quick comment on asking people about their um connections to Boulder I'm kind of kind of agnostic about which approach we take I just would ask that that not be something that we enforce like if somebody comes up and says hey I'm I'm Joe scho but then doesn't tell us what we're requesting people to tell us that that I or somebody else doesn't have to say hey you you have to stop

[240:00] until you give us the required information so that that would just be my that it be a request rather than a requirement um and with that I'm agnostic is what approach we take thanks thanks Tara um okay so back in this is this is going to be fun this is my old campaign F from years ago this is 18 by 24 who doesn't say it you all see it so when it goes like this intentionally I can honestly my head starts spinning and so it didn't happen that much but a few times like mostly with flags where people are like waving their flag and or moving the sign intentionally like this which probably happened like probably I don't know five or 10 times uh that was really hard for me this is like a a regular sign that would be like 12 x 18 11 by 17 or whatever really hard to cut this out but when you go like this and you have to keep it lower it is

[241:00] definitely not as bad but you know if you're going like this and you're in the front row and I'm trying to like my head is spinning that so I'm just leaving it up to you guys all um um just to know where I was coming from and however you decide is fine um but that that that's what was happening to me thanks Tara Taisha uh excuse me um so I just wanted to lift up that anybody who steps foot on to into the City and pays or buys anything is paying taxes too they're just not paying property taxes so I want to honor that there are people that come in and spend money lots of it um and some even more so than some people pay on property tax in Real Deal Holyfield so there's that so I say that to say I I would be interested to know um where the if you know what the relationship is

[242:00] whether they live work play study here um and I'm also just mindful of any requirements that we make here to Tina's early AP part point which I also wholeheartedly agree with which is I take public comment as seriously as emails and so if we're making requirements on where you from and all that stuff then it also needs to be in the email and I just you know again I I feel like um you know whatever people want to give information they want to provide for us to us um to impact the decisions that we want to make is the information that they want to provide to us and you know we can take it with whatever grain of salt like people know Tina that you want to know that information so if they're trying to get somethingone across you they better bring that information um versus some of you know others may not you know feel as um you know about where people live so that's how I feel about that as far as the sign situation one I just love the whole whatever sign signs is I just want it to be a standard sign size so it's you know 9 by 11 whatever it is just make it easy don't

[243:01] make it something hard um and then as far as the size I agree with Matt as far as like this whole thing I don't even want to play this game like below your chest and more importantly in your area my biggest concern is when it blocks other people's View and ability to see what is going on that is what is my biggest issue I'm fine with you having sign I even I didn't even mind people in the back that put their stuff in the back because again not blocking anybody's view but you still have your voice heard and ironically Tara I almost agree with you on this piece just because it is distracting but I don't want to make another rule like about it right it's not so egregious that we got to make a sign about it but I do hear you on that so that's those are my thoughts on it thank you thank you Taisha I had a quick question around um let's see whose role is it to enforce these rules it would be whoever is presiding at the meeting generally the mayor mayor

[244:02] proem or or or who else would be substituting in that role thank you um mayor do you feel like you can consistently enforce signage signs um and where people are holding them and whether or not people move them around to the extent that we would be required to do so is to not face legal challenge around unequal enforcement um thanks for that question Lauren I appreciate it um because meeting management can be a real challenge sometimes um I feel like generally it would be possible um I mean I can't measure signs so you know if somebody if we decide 11 by 17 and it's 12 x19 we're not going to have any idea um but it it it would be pretty clear if

[245:01] somebody had some enormous sign I I feel like if one person is waving a sign in front that's manageable if 14 people are waving things all across the room that's going to be very stuff so I think size yeah Aaron po do you want to jump in sure I don't think we would leave you entirely alone in enforcement efforts and in my mind with signs is people are coming in and taking their seats if staff sees someone with a large sign or flag we could approach them before the meeting starts and let them know this is the council rule your sign doesn't seem to fit it would you like to set it somewhere else so you can stay for the meeting um so I think we could do some proactive work to try and set it up for success but you know ultimately it is to the presiding officer to actually enforce okay thank

[246:01] you um I think Tara's got something Tara along those lines what happens if somebody refuses to do something about their sign like what happens I'm just curious if the you know uh let's say an officer of the court goes up that sign is too big and they say well too bad I'm going to have it anyway yeah well I I just T I can answer that I mean gen generally when people have not been complying with the rules and procedures I've given them multiple warnings and then if if they have still not um been complying then I've called a recess Nicole has done this as well called a recess and and we leave for a while and if we come back and and they're still doing it then we might leave again and the next step after that would be to um ask for Chambers to be cleared if people are still not

[247:03] complying which I I know Nicole did at one point right so I think those are our tools generally thanks for that Ain um so I'll kind of wrap up my comments by saying that I I do have concerns about this being my dog also has concerns um we have concerns about this being equally enforced and I guess I I'm concerned that it isn't going to lead to fewer disruptions in the meeting that we're going to have to have more disruptions to have things about moving signs around and I ultimately don't think that that's going to help us get this business of the city done um thank you Tina I see that you have your hand up also yeah I and I just on the signs my goal would be that people can see the meeting and that they're not and that the signs don't

[248:00] disrupt so for me it's not so much the sign or regulating the size because you can't have a sign that's a certain size and blocks someone's view so for me it would rather be any sign you bring and the you know cannot be distracting to the people around you or interrupt their ability to view the meeting and I'm not sure I would even go after the sign necessarily so it's just a different wave I think that's how I'm looking at it thank you for that that is making me a little bit question how we do our straw pole after this but I will keep thinking about it as Nicole gives her comment yeah I had a a similar question um after that but then also had a question for um Aon pop and it's just around that because I'm trying to think about like how do I enforce as a meeting facilitator someone who has a sign that may be in somebody else's space like

[249:01] that that just especially in a packed room um that seems nearly impossible to kind of put myself in the place of all the different people and think you know is that being is that blocking me all of that so I'm just I'm curious about just from an enforcement perspective is that anything that we would have um the ability to do or would that be something that staff were on the look out for like how how would we do something like that it would don't it would not be staff during the meeting like we might be able to catch some people on their way in and I see Nua has her hand up I do and I I just want to say there's I mean I understand right that the issue of enforcement is a difficult one and I would say it troubles me and concerns me a little bit to put staff in that position as well because staff is not positioned all the time to see what angles there are I think we have mechanisms and I think mayor you were speaking to them there are ways in which to take and and we have talked about it to take a recess to ask for better

[250:00] Behavior to take another recess to clear Chambers if we need to right there are ways in which we are not escalating a situation thankfully in our community we have not seen a lot of this but in other communities there are folks who who if they want to disrupt a meeting they will disrupt a meeting and are looking for some interaction and some escalation um I would say that we would not want to give them that benefit of that kind of disruption and we have other tools at our disposal and that is why perhaps taking recesses and doing things appropriate I would say too that there are signs and there are signs right and think that we see when there are signs that are in the aisles when there are signs that are in front and blocking views there there's a difference when we see them and I think it is um I I I think that there are some things that you know it when you see it and it is really hard to be um concise

[251:02] unless you're trying to get to a very you know a 8 by10 or 11 by 17 or or be very directive about it but I I think people know when a disruption is happening more or less thank you Nia does anyone else have any comments my idea for the straw polling is that we'll go through the three things um or I guess four items that were in our presentation and then if anyone has any other items that they would like to propose um we can stop hole those as well does that sound good nods of approval yes great um so our first one will be for the size of signs and flags um do we want to restrict the size to I

[252:02] guess I'll break this into two to 11 by 17 everyone in favor of the 11 by 17 option please raise your hand one two three four five six seven count seven um I got eight but oh you got eight maybe you I think did you raise your hand Aaron I did it was kind of hard to see okay it yeah um okay I'm going to not pull the next size then because that seems like it would have a majority unless anyone objects waving do we want to prohibit the waving of signs or

[253:03] Flags I see one two okay two so that does not seem like it meets the uh majority requirement to move forward um and then speaker identification um so I can see it it seemed like from comments the main interest was in um making a recommendation for sort of generally locating people people and their relation to Boulder um but not requiring that and not requiring an address Mark do you have a question yeah just um just to go back to the signs um I had thought that the whole point of restricting size of signs

[254:03] was to prevent their use in a manner that interferes with the sight lines and ability of others to see um I don't have a view one way or the other with respect to waving but are we are we not going to I will also ask about the above the if we want to restrict them to being below the chin I would use just some more descriptive in a manner that that is you know that interferes with other people's ability uh to see the proceedings I don't know that I want to be measuring somebody's forehead call on a minute just for clarity if if if if it's here and can't when higher this is the jiggle this is the wave it's not this right so it's not blocking people if it's still like in this Zone and they can they could do origami for all I care it's it's but this is the this is the this is this is the zone right to Strike Zone yeah I mean I don't have a problem

[255:02] if somebody wants to wave their sign as long as it's not up here and blocking everybody behind them if they if they think they're communicating better uh by jiggling a sign jiggle away um but don't don't block other people's view point okay I'm not planning on repoing that because we only got two okay yes Aron yeah and I don't want to repo that just to to Mark's comment I just want to hearken back to what Nicole said about his facilitator I would really strongly prefer something that's Rel relating how the sign is to your um body rather than whether it's blocking other people because it's near impossible to tell everybody's field of view from the dis so Mark with you know if we could just have somebody like you can't hold it higher than the top of your head or something like that that that's that'll work thank you and what I

[256:03] kind of heard from our discussion was an interest in keeping it below your chin have signs must be below the face um so let's PLL that who is in favor of that option 1 2 3 4 five six seven okay that has a majority to move forward uh the speaker identification would we like to I think I was starting to say this already ask but not require people to give a their relation to Boulder or the area in which they may live but not require an address point of clarification yes um we

[257:01] still receive the information of who's speaking and or we can just those fields so that could be required information but not necessarily something that's made public I mean unless cored yes which is how it currently is but we could also make it so that the field is recommended I don't know Elicia is it currently a field that's recommended or required sorry address the address address is yeah yes it's required okay I just wanted to CL I just want I was trying to remember remind do we have that information um thank you but we could change that right so that it wouldn't be required on the form sorry yes ma'am we can change that and we can also change the fields of the

[258:01] information that you're requesting okay I see Matt and Tina have their hands up think if we could try to find a middle ground here I there's sometimes I think help when we get the print out and you see someone's address because it there's some I think that's that's actually it's it's semi-private right it's not just out in ether they have to core it I don't know if any when the last time someone CED the the speaker list right that's probably a fair question to ask I I I probably never so um so I think we're pretty safe there on that one but I think in terms of what they say at the you know in Chambers I think that's maybe different I don't think we need to have the same feels I'd keep it consistent for Alicia if they put their address there that's helpful I can use a specific example for myself where that was helpful um someone gave testimony and talked about very you know acute things with regard to airport airport noise and um and so I was just curious and I looked at their address and I realized that that person lived

[259:00] nowhere near the airport and I was like okay well now I can contextualize their their their feedback right so that sometimes is sometimes helpful um but I would but but it terms of that the chambers I just say what your relationship to the city and keep it simple but that personal that information is helpful maybe in the uh spreadsheet okay I can pull them separately uh Tina do you have a question or comment yeah I just had a question the address field is not always filled out on the sheet we get is so if it's is it kind of required but you can choose not to do it and your sign up still goes through is that accurate yes but that the only thing that I had a question with and I'll have to check with my it people it is supposed to be a field that you can't proceed if you don't fill it out so I did notice that lately but in the past and it might have been just a setting that I need to check

[260:00] but yeah it is supposed to be a required field that you can't proceed unless it's filled out okay all right thanks you can often fill Fields like that out with not the you know sufficient information to actually provide something though so it's hard to yeah and I you know for me it's just helpful to make decisions to know where people are coming from so I have context so that's up to the speaker at the end of the day and you know that that part of the whole thing okay I would really like to get towards polling this Matt I still see that you have a hand up I don't know if that's okay that's an old hand Tara we on mute the only thing I want to say is I would like whatever we decide whether not doesn't matter to me if we just as long as we say how we're related to Boulder that it' be required so that when you sign up we see why because what

[261:02] I'm trying to know is if somebody is from completely another state and don't live or work or play in Boulder that I would like to know because sometimes outside influence I want to know I I'm not saying they shouldn't speak but I just want to know if that's the case and do you feel that way about inperson comment because we had a you know request from our mayor to not um require that which I would like I would like to be required I believe it was Nicole's request for how you are related to Boulder I would like that to be required just because our elections are coming up we have a lot of outside influences anybody can speak from anywhere especially remotely and so I'm not really comfortable with somebody from some other country is whatever that is just giving their opinion and then we weigh it Without Really knowing some background okay I'm going to PLL now

[262:01] first I am going to PLL for at in-person comment recommending that people give where we are located you know their relation to Boulder where they're located who would like to vote for that option is that a vote Nicole or a hand those are two separate things for me so that's I I just I just got lost on what it is we're doing I'm sorry is that the in-person comment yep a recommendation that people give their relation to Boulder potentially the area of Boulder but again all of this is just a recommendation yep okay got it one two three four five six seven

[263:07] okay since that passed with a majority I'm not going to pull other options for iners I'm going to move on for remote and pull the same question for you know when we get the the list for this I guess that would be speaker comment Aaron yeah not not remote but when people sign up for comment thank you for that clarification so asking people they're recommending in the people give their relation to Boulder potentially the portion of Boulder that they're from when they sign up for public comment so not requiring but recommending yes I will pull requiring next if this does not

[264:02] pass or does not receive majority support recommending this again is the seat that we get the information that we get that could be cour just want clear okay good thank you okay I got three for recommending let's try requiring we're requiring the relationship to Boulder not necessarily the address or those kinds of things correct yes yes one 2 three four five six seven okay great I think that covers everything that staff asked Aon yes what would you like a clarification well what about you we didn't do uh like remote oh wait that is only forget it

[265:01] forget it I I think I think that was what I was looking to clarify the second to last straw po straw vote said in-person comment but by that you just mean speaker comment whether they are sorry via Zoom or standing in Chambers correct yeah we had gone 30 minutes faster on the earlier portion I would be that much more awake right now is yes Nia just a point of clarification I believe the last vote was requiring um what type of connection you have in Boulder does that mean Council would like us to also remove the address form or in addition to the connection have the address blank if people choose to fill that out yes Nicole I was just gonna advocate for one of those options um which is to remove

[266:01] the address form but uh since it's required to State what your relationship is that's fine I think we could still recommend you know it is sometimes helpful to know where in Boulder you are you know coming from so you could give like a neighborhood or something but my preference would be to remove it um and that's particularly because I personally don't feel comfortable that um public comment speakers um addresses are made public I don't or could be made public right under a COR request um I think the climate that we're in right now um I don't think is always a safe one and I don't love the idea of um addresses people's addresses who are speaking at public comment being publicly available even if it's through a coral request I'd like to make a recommendation that it could be a box that says you know if you would like to tell us what part of town you have a connection with or your address you are welcome to but doesn't sort of

[267:01] specify what people have to do there and that it's optional can I speak back to that yeah I would just still like to not have addresses at all in here I think having like what area you're from we've got like the 10 you know neighborhood areas or whatever could just be a drop down menu something like that fine but I just um I'm not sure that some folks understand the the risk that can come from having your address be made publicly available and I would hate for somebody to put their address there and then for them just to to be getting any kind of negative experience from whatever their feedback was uh because someone was able to get a hold of their address so I would prefer to just be done with addresses okay what Taisha has had her hand up and then it's on this too so I'm good um so I actually would like city and state or you know I think that could be a nice compromise because I do and I also love the drop down um but to the earlier

[268:00] comments of like I do think it's important but I just don't think it's mandatory so but if you know there's a strong preference then you know I would I would prefer to just have the city and I think that that exacerbates the other pieces we're not enforcing it when they put their address down they could put any address yeah so um I think that's the other thing that I'm just very mindful of but to your point Nicole I I just am not comfortable with the possibility of getting that that information at the same time I am kind of thinking like we do need to know who these people are like what if something goes down or something happens you're starting you're on mute Maybe can't hear the last little bit you said okay okay I still can't hear you um but you're making gestures like it's okay to move on so I will move to aarin who has her hand up thank you it strikes me that this

[269:00] last part about what goes in the drop down fields and how we do that would not be something we address through Council rules but would be something that we could handle operationally um is is that okay that sounds fantastic and I'm lots of thumbs TW it as needed also okay great does anyone else have anything they would like to pull on related to this and Aon do you have any other questions for us before we wrap up this item no this is wonderful we'll take it back and do another revision and bring it forward to a consent agenda thank you for that Aaron I just wanted to say from one Aaron to another I thought that hotline that you put out was exceptionally clear and extremely helpful leading up to this discussion so thanks very much for that thank you agreed thank you all so much for making

[270:03] it through this very long agenda that was jam-packed with important things and thoughtful conversation um thanks for bearing with and I would like to call an adjournment to this meeting at 10:25 great job Lauren have a good night you guys