July 25, 2024 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[4:56] good evening everyone and welcome to the Thursday July 25th 2024 special meeting

[5:01] of the Boulder City Council it's wonderful to have you all here I hope you enjoyed a few weeks without meetings and good to have you back and all of us together again so I will go ahead and call us to order and ask Elicia to do roll call please let me see if I remember how to do that no hello everybody and good evening and as the mayor has said welcome back we'll start tonight's roll call as usual with council member Adams present Benjamin present mayor Brockett present council member fulkers present Marquis present shuar here mayor Pro Tim spear present council member wall I am here and Wier present mayor the brand is back together and we have our quum all right back together very good well um this being a special meeting we

[6:01] will launch right into the consent agenda please Elisha yes sir the consent agenda is item number two on the agenda and it consists of items three a i 2 a through 2E great any uh questions or comments on the consent agenda or possibly motion move to approve the consent agenda second got a motion in a second and I think um can we specify Nicole that perhaps including the amendment sent on hotline this afternoon yes I will amend my motion to uh include the Amendments that were sent out on hotline this afternoon thanks so much uh so we have a motion and a second uh I think we can move straight to a vote Elicia can you do a roll call please yes sir thank you the roll call for the consent agenda items 2 a through

[7:00] 2E will'll begin tonight with councilman wallet hi Winer yes Adams yes Benjamin yes mayor Brockett yes council member ful yes Marquis yes Shu hard yes and mayor Tim spear yes the consent agenda is hereby approved unanimously good and and I'll just mention uh regarding 2D about chronic nuisances we have gotten some emails from organizations uh this afternoon and I just know that we'll be continuing the community conversation as we move towards the second reading public heing uh if we can go to the callup check-in please yes sir our callup check-ins are item number three on tonight's agenda 3A is the landmark

[8:01] alteration certificate application to construct an approximately 200 square foot third floor Edition and roof deck at 2040 14th Street this is referenced under his224 d85 in the downtown historic district pursuing to section 9-11-18 of the boulder Revised Code 1981 and under the procedures prescribed by chapter 1-3 quasi judicial hearings brc1 1981 the owner is 2040 Boulder LLC registered agent Aaron Grant applicant is excuse me niba Zoda and Andy oi design Edge architecture any questions or comments or desire to call this up I'm seeing only shaking heads so looks like not we will not call this one

[9:01] up all right we have two Matters from the city manager the first one is 5A Le if you can take us to that please thank you sir 5A is the training and pre-update overview of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan thank you e and council members it's that time again that wonderful time when we get to talk about comp plan and while we are going to talk in Earnest about our count plan soon we thought we'd take a moment and we thank you for us to have this time um to sort of talk about it uh as a primer a little bit I know not everyone has been through a comprehensive plan uh and our pnds team really thought it was important to um be able to answer any questions have some clarity so Brad with that I will send it to you thank you so very much uh n and uh welcome back council members uh it is true comprehensive planning provides a unique opportunity in a jurisdiction's

[10:00] history it's really one of the rare opportunities to step back and think about the vision that the community wants to imagine for itself in the next 15 or 20 years and interestingly while it regulates it is not regulatory its policies are aspirational and they reflect the challenges of considering and stating what must necessarily sometimes be competing values uh which is kind of what like what we um experience in life ourselves for example trails and water quality features are both important and often want to be in the same physical space and they can both be values expressed in a comprehensive plan so tonight we'll be providing an overview of what comprehensive plans are in general why they're done and what the rich history of Boulder's historic land use planning has been uh in that Spirit of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and we really look forward to sharing uh what is just the beginning of the beginning if I may call it that of a conversation

[11:01] with you in the community and is really intended to be just a foundation for a more in-depth discussion next month so with those thoughts I'm going to turn it over to Christopher Johnson the uh City's uh comprensive planning senior manager for a couple other thoughts as we go into the presentation thank you Brad and good evening Council Christopher Johnson comra as The planning manager um and and I wanted to just provide a few uh a few comments this evening before we get going knowing that we have a more in-depth study session scheduled with you in a joint session with planning board coming up on August 22nd so a short four weeks away uh you know tonight's presentation really is intended to be informational for you to provide some background on comprehensive plans in general and the history of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan we will tease just a little bit in terms of our what our process um overall kind of

[12:01] looks like and schedule for that going forward but but hopefully we can um defer any really detailed questions on the process itself until August 22nd um and certainly we are here this evening to provide any clarifying comments um and answer any questions you may have on the comprehensive plan in general um and sort of how it how it functions today some of the historical pieces to it um and and can certainly answer questions um on on if they are you know they're relatively high level related to the process itself but but hopefully we will um have the opportunity to really dive into the details of the scope and schedule in our engagement strategy coming up here in August so with that I will pass it off to my colleagues in comprehensive planning of Chris rangos and Tess Shor thank you good evening Council I'll start by introducing myself while we pull the presentation up uh my name is Chris ranglo I'm a senior planner in comprehensive planning and presenting

[13:00] with me tonight is Tess sha who is also a uh city planner with our work group as well and as KJ had mentioned um this is really an opportunity for our staff to share a bit of an overview of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan um our goal is to help develop a foundational understanding of the bbcp its intent various components as well as share a bit of its history prior to the official kickoff uh later this fall our staff will be back on on August 22nd for a joint session with you city council as well as the planning board to share out and seek feedback on the draft scope schedule and our draft Community engagement plan next slide quick rundown of the agenda um we'll talk a little bit about comprehensive plans in general um share a little bit about Boulder Valley's comprehensive plan and some of the unique traits that we find within it um and then Tess is going to give us a bit of an overview of the history of our comprehensive plan and some of the key

[14:01] Milestones that have led us to where we are today and then we'll jump into in preview um a little bit of the process that we expect to go through and what the next steps are and we'll start here um with Colorado state regulations and just want to make it known that the state of Colorado does require the adoption of a comprehensive plan for any municipality with a population over 2,000 um the state encourages that the principal purpose is to a guide for the achievement of community goals and plan elements that address Recreation and tourism including water supply and Water Conservation um as well as strategic growth are required by state statutes and we'll start by just asking the question what is a comprehensive plan and as Brad had alluded to a comprehensive plan is really a highlevel Visionary plan to help guide a city's future um these plans are based on longstanding Community Values that help

[15:00] to guide how cities will grow into the future they typically include topics such as land use and transportation in parks and open space though as you'll see in our comprehensive plan this is certainly not an exhaustive list and philosophically um why do we do comprehensive plans why do we adopt comprehensive plans and and really we do this to maintain um aspirational goals for a desired future with at least a 15-year time Horizon and they help us to weigh tradeoffs and make difficult decisions to be deliberate and intentional about how we grow and Tackle new and emerging needs in our communities they provide a unifying policy framework of which key decisions in our community can be weighed against and really at the end of the day we want our community to shape its future it's very much of a community-driven plan and it presents an opportunity to come together as one Boulder to make tough decisions important decisions um and be deliberate about our future

[16:01] and hopefully at the end of the at the end of the day achieve the intended outcomes that we as a community collectively hope to achieve a comprehensive plan is not intended to be a fine grained regulatory document as Brad Brad had also mentioned and that fine grained level uh of detailed planning and Regulatory items are achieved in small area or subc Community plans as well as through zoning and Municipal codes and with this type of plan again we really are at that 30,000 foot view a very Visionary and and aspirational document jumping into our comprehensive plan here in the Boulder Valley um or bbcp as it is often referred to as this is the jointly adopted and governing long range planning document for the Boulder Valley and that includes both the city of Boulder as well as land in unincorporated Boulder County it guides long range planning decisions on growth the built-in natural environment

[17:00] Transportation climate economy Housing and Community well-being and safety taking a look at the overall planning framework and and really where this fits in um the bbcp is aligned with and informed by our sustainability equity and resilience framework and it also informs the Citywide strategic plan it sets the broader policy goals that are then distilled into action-based regulatory documents like subc community and area plans Department plans various Citywide strategies development standards and zoning and it also influences budgeting and resourcing across the organization including within the city's annual Capital Improvement program as well as the operating budget and I'll spend a bit of time on this slide um as there's a lot to talk about as far as the relationship and the role that the county has with this as well um I will point out that the county does have their own own comprehensive plan which is very well aligned to that

[18:02] of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and again governs all unincorporated lands outside of the Boulder Valley and the city and county have a long-standing tradition of working together really since the Inception of the first Boulder Valley comprehensive plan in 1977 which was really created centered around guiding growth in the Boulder Valley in a positive way the 1977 plan is also when the city and county entered into an intergovernmental agreement which stipulated that both the city and the county would follow the plan the land use map as well as the policies regarding utility provision and new Urban Development which really was intended to only occur in areas with the full range of urban services and since then there has been a fairly consistent framework vision and values around growth management as well as urban service provision and while this framework and vision for guiding growth in the Boulder Valley has remained stable for years the plan's

[19:00] policies and procedures have certainly evolved and it's important to note that within the bbcp there are City specific policies where it says the city shall versus the city and county shall and policies that say the city shall only apply to the city whereas those policies that mention both the city and the county apply to both and the last thing I want to point out on this slide um is that the approval of the bbcp is a for body decision meaning that the city and county will need to work together and ultimately at the end of the day approve the same plan and I'll spend a bit of time on this slide too um but I want to walk through some of the components of the bbcp and we'll start here with the service area framework or the area one two and three planning areas as it is often referred to as and again this framework is the result of the 1977 bbcp which sought to establish a new intergovernmental tool between the city and County to help guide growth in the

[20:00] Boulder Valley and essentially what this framework does is it sets a standard and expectation that Urban Development only occur in areas that are served by Urban services or within City Limits while allowing the remaining areas of the Boulder Valley to remain Rural and this was established to limit sprawl preserve the rural buffer between the city and adjacent communities to maintain a welldefined city Edge rent patterns of Leap Frog development and ultimately to m maintain the compact nature of our community and I'll walk through the colors on the map here um for a brief moment um area one or the yellow that you see here on the slide is the city limits proper which has adequate Urban facilities and services and again this is where we want to drive Urban Development to occur area two which is the gray sort of Fringe bubbles that you see around the city are areas that are now under County Juris jurisdiction where annexation into the city is in anticipated so long as that growth is

[21:00] consistent with it's important to note that area one and two together make up what we call the service area another term that you may hear referenced often then we'll jump into area three area three is going to be the majority of the green that you see here on the slide and this is the remaining area within the Boulder Valley that is generally under County jurisdiction and is intended to remain rural without Urban facilities and services in area three is divided Ed into two separate areas the first one which is the majority of the green that you see here is the area 3 Rural Preservation area and this is where the city and county intend to preserve the existing rur land uses in character and then the second part of Area 3 is a little bubble that you see just north of town um this is the area 3 planning Reserve this is where the city and county intend to maintain the option of future service area expansion and as you know City staff are currently preparing an urban Services study which is the first step

[22:01] of evaluating whether expansion into the planning Reserve is feasible and should be considered the full range of urban services and standards to serve development is defined in the bbcp as well and the city is the preferred provider of these Urban services and these standards are intended to be minimum requirements or thresholds for services that must be delivered to existing Urban Development new development and for redevelopment to be considered adequate jumping into the land use map the land use map um which is in the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan describes the future land uses in character that help to shape the development and Redevelopment by establishing aspirational and Broad future land use patterns across the Boulder Valley we currently utilize this uh under these land use designations under a couple of different categories including residential and industrial business open space and other and there

[23:02] are 26 different land use designations Within These categories and it's important to be able to distinguish between land use and Zoning um which are oftentimes confused as they may appear very similar so essentially land use again is visionary it's forward-looking and it's aspirational in nature it describes the community's vision and desired uses across the Boulder Valley it may or may not be the same use than the existing use that is there today and the land use map informs future zoning and rezoning decisions in order to bring both land use and Zoning into alignment zoning on the other hand is a legal property right and it sets more specific development related standards than land use does it includes regulations um around allowed uses building form and intensity of development and the two do need to speak to one another so if I can provide a metaphor for to hopefully break this down a little bit easier for folks I

[24:01] like to think of a birthday cake so the land use is going to describe the desired cake like a chocolate cake where zoning is the recipe or the steps that we need to follow in order to make that chocolate cake and if we don't get the recipe right or the zoning right to match the chocolate cake or the land use then we may end up with a cake that we didn't intend to make talk a little bit about subc commmunity and area planning um the city's broken down into 10 Geographic subcommunities that provide more focused areas of study and provides a framework for managing change and implementing dbcp policy at a more local level within the city and this essentially helps translate large scale planning ideas that are expressed in the bbcp to a more localized in human scale adopted sub Community plans consist of North Boulder subc Community Plan in 1995 in the most recent East Boulder subc Community Plan and an

[25:01] example of the most recently adopted area plans include the transit Village area plan for the Boulder Junction area and the Alpine balam area plan for the former bch site in future Western City Campus and I'll point out as well that all subc community and area plans are influenced by the policies that are established within the bbcp and are one of the key implementation Tools in realizing its vision and a key culture of the bbcp is that we regularly update it it's not a plan that gets written it sits on a shelf and collects dust and then completely Rewritten rbbc is a living Vision document for our city and it continues to evolve and change with the changing needs of our community and since the 1977 bbcp we've had seven major updates on an established regular schedule to ensure the vision and needs of our community continue to be met it's reviewed every 5 years for possible amendments to reflect changes and

[26:01] circumstances in community desires with major updates happening every 10 years in the most recent update major update um occurred in 2015 which tests will provide some additional information on shortly after discussing some of our key planning Milestones with that I will pass it over to Tess thank you hello everyone my name is Tess Shor and I'm going to be talking a little bit about the history pre the first bbcp so since the 1977 Boulder Valley has undoubtedly changed but two important factors that shape the urban form of Boulder are its Mountain backdrop and surrounding open space and Rural lands Boulder's distinctive sense of place and compact size did not happen by accident I will be sharing some history of what got us to comprehensive planning in Boulder Valley so when talking about Boulder

[27:00] Valley's growth over the last few centuries we must first acknowledge that we are on the ancestral homelands and unseated territory of indigenous indigenous peoples who traversed lived and stewarded lands in Boulder Valley since time IM Memorial these indigenous Nations include the Apache Arapaho Cheyenne Kam kamanche kiaa ponni Shashi Sue and ute we honor and respect the people of these nations and their ancestors the city of Boulder recognizes that those now living and working on these ancestrial lands have a responsibility to acknowledge and address the past the city refutes past justifications for colonialization of indigenous lands and acknowledges a legacy of Oppression that has caused intergenerational trauma to indigenous peoples and families and moving forward a little bit in history uh Boulder began proper as a mining town and then grew

[28:01] slowly opening the University of Colorado in 1877 and for a long time remained kind of that small college town however between 1950 and 1970 Boulder's population more than tripled growing from 20,000 to almost 67,000 because of this rapid population growth community members grew concerned about the sprawl continuing into the mountain mountains so in 1959 the blue line was added to the city Charter as a tool to limit the sprawl it restricts City Water and Sewer services on the west edge of the city on the heels of the institution of this blue line the Boulder Community sought to preserve open space lands around the city and in uh 1967 Boulder became the first city in the nation to Institute a dedicated sales tax to purchase open space lands and this appro approach to growth

[29:00] management and rural land preservation was further defined with the adoption of the service areas which Chris talked about previously um by the city and county in the 1977 Boulder comprehensive plan this has been a fund fundamental framework for focusing growth within the city limits ever since the impacts can be seen here as City o city-owned Open Space has been purchased and preserved over the last 50 years while community members during this time were concerned about growing outward there were there was also an increased concern over growing upward a few development proposals were submitted that included 100 foot tall buildings and community members were concerned about preserving views to the mountains and overall Boulders character so voters passed a change to the city's Charter to Institute a 55 foot height limit in 1971 1 and this height limit was actually

[30:00] based on the height of a mature cottonwood tree since the 70s much of the city's growth management has occurred through the bbcp however that is not the only focus in the more recent major updates and now I'm going to talk about the most recent major update which was the 2015 major update so the vision in 2015 was the Boulder Valley Community on Hors its history and Legacy of planning for a livable Community surrounded by open space and Rural lands while striving together to create and preserve a truly special place that is sustainable resilient Equitable and inclusive now and for generations to come so in this statement you can still kind of hear the um growth management that occurred back in the 70s as well the culmination of the community process during this major Update LED staff to these seven Focus areas in

[31:02] 2015 these Focus areas include housing affordability and diversity growth design quality and placemaking small local business resilience and climate commitment subcommunities and area planning and arts and culture and I just want to highlight that these Focus areas are subject to change with the community process moving forward in this next major update in the 20 2015 uh bbcp there was also po lots of policies and um they were organized into topic areas so uh how do these policies function well one really important factor is that not one single policy is currently prioritized over another all policies are weighed carefully and trade-off choices among the policies is sometimes necessary and as a reminder some of the PO policies are specific to the city and some apply to both the city and county

[32:00] and this reinforces the value of joint adoption and the for body review process and now for exciting news we're looking uh forward to the 2025 major update so what can be done during a major update and the answer is pretty much most things so all maps can be updated all criteria for urban Services um all policies any of those things can be updated during a major um update and we will be kicking off this major update later this fall and because so much can be changed and adjusted during a major update I want to reiterate that the bbcp is a reflection of our community who we are and who we want to be in the future a plan of this magnitude and importance to the community requires a lot of time with the community which we anticipate spending nearly all of 2025 doing doing we will be engaging in conversation with

[33:00] our community to answer many key cut questions and decide together what our vision for the next 20 years is we hope to proceed with a draft plan and hold public hearings for the adoption in mid to late 2026 but speaking of Engagement um we will be sharing our overall engagement strategy with you in August and we plan to engage the community in a variety of ways to today we just want to highlight our plans to stand up a community assembly which is both our greatest engagement innovation in this process and also our deepest level of Engagement there is two main components to assembly the random selection process and the in-depth deliberation for the group to arrive at judgments that balance competing values such as freedom of choice and fairness to different social groups we have engaged a consultant to support us throughout the design and implementation and in August we will share many more details about this process we will ensure the community

[34:02] assembly complements all other engagement strategies we employ the bbcp is a Citywide effort which policies and land use decisions affect many other departments thus we will also work internally to ensure all necessary departments are provided input and assist um in assisting the creation of the major update so next step steps we will be back in front of you August 22nd with a draft scope schedule and engagement strategy um which will really get into the meat of this next major update and then we plan to have the CommunityWide kickoff of the update on October 19th thank you all so much for listening to this presentation and now we'd like to open the floor for questions thank you

[35:00] right thanks so much for that very informative presentation and the overview of our Rich history of planning here in the city of Boulder uh do we have questions for City staff on the update to the bbcp I've got Taisha yes thank you so much and um really exciting to be a part of this process again just you know um reminding folks that planning um can be a very wonderful thing if you're planned for and it could be a very hard thing if you're used for planning and so I'm excited to be both at the table and still on the menu um as an African-American person here and multiple other identities and so um I'm I'm excited about this uh more participatory thing but I had a question about our Consultants um and curious if we're hiring local experts I'm also curious about the racial e socio economic uh representation of the leadership on

[36:00] these um things I've noticed some of our Consulting groups um are not always reflective of our fullest community and and the communities that we serve as and it's not always um connected with our commitment to um ensuring that we are partnering with our local experts similar in the way that we do when we're talking about economic policy or and we partner with the you right and we do all of these things so I'm I'm hopeful that in this community engagement where we have tons of local experts um so I'm curious about that team in particular um and if local experts are being engaged and then I'd raised this issue around the 40 participants or the number and I'm just curious if there had been any more um conversation around how those folks would be identified um and again this is a lot of effort for not that many people um and so although I appreciate right always a more participatory opportunity and a more in-depth and meaningful experience I'm also curious what I I am eager right when on the 20th to see the whole

[37:00] portfolio of efforts so thank you so much and that's just my one question at the time I can chime in here to start um and then certainly look to Brad and KJ to provide some additional thoughts TOA or council member Adams um we haven't quite figured out what the consultant needs are going to be on this project yet we are continuing to develop the scope and and the expected misunderstood then I heard you had identified a consultant for this work and I was like oh not quite we're not quite there yet but we will have information on what we anticipate some of those consultant needs to be here uh when we're back with you guys here on August 22nd okay awesome and you'll also receive some additional information at that point as well on the community assembly and the makeup of that group um but I do do just want to remind um Council that this is one of the methods that we intend to deploy um it's a very Broad Outreach process that we will go through and we

[38:00] will utilize many many methods that we have at our disposal to ensure that we are going out and um reflecting the voices of everybody in our community and I'll also just point out here as well that we do um recognize that there has been historically underrepresented members of our community and planning processes such as this um and a major focus of this update will be to ensure that we um do bring those historically underrepresented members of our community to the table um and that we can't necessarily expect them to come to us right and so we'll we'll be looking for ways for us to go to them and we are already working on several approaches that we will um bring forward to you here in in August um but I will also say that I think we are much better situated as an organization now than we ever have been to tackle some of these important issues uh we have a lot of tools at our disposal that we didn't have at the last major update to the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan including the racial Equity instrument um the equity wasn't

[39:01] even a term in our sustainability equity and resilience framework at that point and now it is um and so the racial Equity instrument and and of itself will be utilized at at really every phase within this project and then we also do have a really robust network of community connectors that we absolutely intend to um utilize in in helping us to connect with some of those historically underrepresented members of our community right thank you so much I really appre appreciate that and eager to find out more um when that information becomes available the other question I had and and it was about just more so the overview and again I'm just I'm I'm wondering you know what were the treaties that were broken right around our indigenous and and I'm hopeful when we have the update with the planning board and we're providing that more in-depth history we're more explicit um and reminding everybody not just about those historical wrongs that we still have to atone for which is a part of our racial healing framework but also so please I

[40:00] appreciate the equity tool but if we don't have accountability Frameworks and healing Frameworks around those then that's um a tool that was always going to be insufficient by itself to do that work um but I am curious and I'm hopeful that um you know we are able to be more explicit and so that my question is what are the treaties um that were broken um that established these lands in 1851 um and what are any other planning decisions that were made that were exclusionary and resulted in the disproportionalities that we see now as a as a cautionary tale history repeats itself because we don't know it so my question is can we tell the Fuller story of our planning um the things that we did well the Blue Line la la la and all the things you just shared as well as the thing and be more explicit around that so that is both a question and a comment thank you yeah again thank you for the the question and the comment council member Adams um our staff is continuing to understand this um we're beginning work here shortly on our existing conditions

[41:01] and we anticipate that understanding that story um will be a part of that work and so I think as we come back to you all here in August um hopefully we can share a little bit more about our understanding um of that and it will be something that I think we continue to to work on and continue to understand ourselves and that will continue throughout the entire update process um but we can certainly uh come back with some additional information if it would help for you all to understand some of those um key moments in our history as well here a little bit later in August and then my last question is how we're engaging the and I look forward to um I didn't hear anything on the planning about whether indigenous communities have ever been engaged in any way meaningfully and of course we have have our tribal consultation so that's off that's not a part of this question but um more so the indigenous um component and the ways that if in at all they were engaged um in previous planning um and um yeah I just didn't hear anything

[42:00] about that and and I didn't read anything about it yeah and again I think that's one of those um more underrepresented members of our community that have traditionally been excluded from some of our planning processes and so we'll be looking for ways um to engage these communities and I think when we come back here in August again we can provide a little bit additional information on how we intend to to Target those groups specifically awesome thank you so much Chris thank you thanks you got Mark then Tina then Lauren then Ryan yeah I only have one question and and and bear with me it's a little a little far field then I'm but I'm doing this without agenda I'm just curious what's the relative size of area two versus area three do we have any sense of that I'm not sure that I have the answer to that question I don't know if anybody else on the call May um we may be able to do some quick analysis um on that to get you an answer this evening mark But off the top of my head

[43:01] I'm not sure what the differential is between the two you would follow up with me and my my next question is is it easier to Annex area two than area three I guess I'm I'm I I know we're moving forward on the planning Reserve um but when I saw the the large Parcels of area 2 that were available to us it just struck me what is there a reason we're not kind of addressing those first is Area 3 easier to do or would area 2 be easier to do because there's a lot of area 2 sitting out there I'm to jump in on that one just a little bit just because of the the connection I think with the with the planning Reserve so um you know to clarify so area area two are locations within the Boulder Valley that have already been identified as being eligible for annexation so they they are certainly much easier um just from a

[44:01] procedural standpoint of um you know an annexation application could come in an agreement could be developed and those areas could be annexed into the city um one thing I will mention that you know potentially complicates that a little bit is that there are um there are a lot of existing properties that that are within uh within areas area two generally whereas area the planning Reserve is is primarily open land so there's there's not a lot of um development there and and area 2 has some has some Nuance in terms of some of those locations actually may already um receive either water or sewer service from the city so that you know there's just there's a few complications there but just you know from a um a sort of basic um framework area to is eligible to be annexed you know tomorrow whereas the planning Reserve uh still requires a you know know a sequence of events and a number of steps before that would ultimately

[45:00] become eligible uh and change to area two so it could be eligible for anation and you can come back to me later with information on the relative sizes you know it just looked to me like you know the question that triggered to me is are we ignoring lwh hanging fruit uh in order to do something that's going to be much more complicated and and difficult and I said I have no agenda on it I'm just curious so the information you can provide me will be uh gratefully received and that's my only question very good we got Tina then Lauren then Ryan then Nicole yeah thank you so much for providing the historic context of the planning uh process and I have a few questions um the first question I have is do the other municipalities in the Boulder County have the same relationship with the county when they're doing their comprehensive plans and that they're they're part of the approval and development

[46:03] process think I'll look to KJ there's there's something called a super IGA um but I will look to KJ to provide a little bit of additional context around that yeah thank thanks Chris um yes there's a very very long uh titled intergovernmental agreement which I'm not going to remember so it's it's also known as the super AA which is is essentially was a intergovernmental agreement between the county and all of the different mun municipalities um within and generally it it serves the same purpose in terms of um an agreement between the parties to you know observe and and um follow what has been established in their own individual uh Municipal comprehensive plans and also the Boulder County comprehensive plan which covers all the unincorporated lands across the entire County um I do I do not think at least that I I am not

[47:00] aware of a um a similar situation within Boulder County between the other municip municipalities where there is actually a jointly adopted plan where the adoption and the approval of that plan goes through the four body review I believe Boulder is unique um in that in that term can I can shiman we're definitely unique there there's not another city that has that same setup sorry go ahead team so and so that's something we chose to do not that was mandated by the state that is correct yes okay um and then my other question is it says that each area has to have a comprehensive plan with the population over 2,000 is that plan or who collects that plan at the state level and reviews it I don't believe there's any state mandated review of those um it is it is certainly a requirement believe if you are applying for certain types of funding um you know related to certain

[48:02] topics they're you know they would essentially check to make sure that there is a relevant element that's described included in that Town's comprehensive plan um but I don't believe there is a a clearing house or you know there's certainly not a requirement that I'm aware of that we would need to submit that information to the state um you know for compliance of anything and then On a related topic um given the new housing um intensity from the land use bill and the identification of the Housing Opportunity growth area is I could imagine that there might be some land use implications as well as zoning implications would this be the time in the vehicle that we would begin that conversation and that identification yes I do I do think that um part of conversation that we will have um during the update process will be to consider and reflect upon those changes that occurred at the at the legislature this year um also there

[49:02] is now now a requirement um there was a separate a separate legislative bill that was adopted um in this last session that requires us now to consider the Regional Housing needs assessment so some of the work that Dr CG is doing around that um and some of the work that you know were involved in with our surrounding towns in Boulder County um those those kinds of information will now need to be considered and and incorporated into the comprehensive plan okay and then um another and I mentioned this on my one one Nua is um in addition to the the great um draft demographic information that U mayor proam spear provided on her hotline I also appreciated the demographic presentation given by the C Regents from their demographer which was more Boulder specific and also looked at the really unique p ation trends of students versus non students in Boulder I'm wondering if

[50:01] we could have a similar type of grounding so that we can look at that as well as trying to do an overlay with um some pretty good data that the school district has on housing yield for students um also by geography within the city they have pretty good demographics on all of that is that a possibility or something we're considering with both the district and the regions I I'll certainly defer to staff to answer that but I'll anticipate that we have been thinking about that we have been thinking about partnering with the demographer and others on this and um KJ or Brad if you want to talk about more about those but we definitely know that demographic and stats are critical to this plan and I think that's an excellent addition but don't know if the team has anything more to add on that yeah I'll just add that we certainly are thinking about that and and part of the existing conditions research that was that was mentioned that were you know just beginning to um Embark upon uh will include a lot of

[51:00] that Trends analysis both the sort of economic and market trends of the city but also our demographic Trends and and certainly we anticipate hosting a study session with Council as that information is starting to be gathered and and I could um absolutely see an opportunity to invite in a special guest or two um if that would be possible to you know present that information to all of you and so everybody has a a good foundation information before we before we really get into questions around Vision policy okay and then my final question so apologies for taking up so much time um is there an opportunity in this process to take the key indicators and sort of outcomes that were created in 2015 and look at them at how successful the plan was in getting us closer to those outcomes so that we can sort of think about moving forward where have we been working a ly where not or what are unrealistic outcomes or visions based on

[52:01] sort of where we are today that's a great question um yes absolutely I think that you will see that as part of our existing conditions um as we bring that forward we will be taking a look at some of the successes of the previous comprehensive plan and some of where we fell short in the previous comprehensive plan so as we bring that existing conditions forward I think that's something that you will see awesome all right thank you so much much this was incredibly helpful for me great we've got Lauren Ryan Nicole Matt and ta again thank you um one of my first questions so we have a 4body review do and we're supposed to be in line with the boulder with the boulder County's comprehensive plan do we get any say in their comprehensive plan uh we do we do not but it's partly because it it only refers to and and

[53:01] governs the unincorporated lands in the county that are outside the Boulder Valley so um as part of the Core Body review and as part of this relationship with city and county as we develop the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan we you know we influence the decision making and the policies around corporated lands and vice versa they provide input and comments to um you know policies really into the city um because there's that inter relation between the two particularly around the edges um and and just to note as well the you know the 4body review and the the collaboration between city and county is as part of the update itself and the adoption of you know the new plan and then if there are development review um uh projects that come forward that are in area two or in the unincorporated areas but within the valley we we share and there's an opportunity for both you know

[54:00] staff from both sides to be able to provide input but certainly any decision making uh in the future that's related just to the city only you know only comes through planning board and city council there's not a a County uh component to those decisions yeah thank you um for the I remember the 2015 bbcp process took a I mean first of all it took longer than we intended it to take right it stretched on for many years um and I guess I'm sort of I don't know if there was an analysis done on how much staff time and cost that was or and how we're planning to maybe keep this process more in line I know that we have staff for this project and that it's not above and beyond um sort of our int ipated what we need to do as a city but

[55:00] I also still want to be sensitive to the fact that we do have a lot of um a variety of staffing needs and so making sure that we are still while going deeply into a lot of these really important things are also still trying to find ways to make this process efficient council member I I can speak to that I and I appreciate kind of the uh sensitivity about realistic amounts of resources staff resources time Etc um Chris ringos can probably speak to this a bit uh in specifics if useful but uh I understand from the last update there were like a hundred popup kind of meetings and I think you know what may maybe just speculating on that a little bit was an effort to try to do an Outreach that was really meaningful uh by just doing more and we've kind of stepped back and said how do we how we how do we do good meaningful engagement but not not just

[56:01] quantity but quality uh and that's not a criticism in the past I I've certainly been subject to that throughout my career too but I think there is a a a balance to be held um we'll present that full uh gent chart as part of the August uh presentation but I think you'll see that we've worked real hard to find a balance between those touch points and the amount of uh resource that it takes uh we want to make sure we're walking and chewing gum right we've got other planning things that staff needs to be working on so so we're going to be careful about that thank you I appreciate that um I was wondering if you and maybe it's as simple as just saying we'll find out more about this later but um what can we expect from the existing conditions analysis or is that something you'll be giving us more information on in our future meeting the short answer is that's information to come still um we're very early on in that process of of really

[57:01] developing what that existing conditions look like so again we can provide some more information and in-depth conversation around what we anticipate that to look like here in August I'd like to put a little plug for um you know I've seen some analysis around sort of looking at costs and revenue on lot based um across the city so that you get kind of also an idea of where infrastructure is really expensive to provide versus um you know where we're not seeing as much cost in terms of where we get more um Revenue um within the city and I think that that would be an interesting piece of information to have as we move forward with this um one of the things I noticed um is that our bbcp land use map pretty

[58:02] closely matches our zoning map it's basically equally granular and in your presentation we it sort of talked about how the land use is intended to be at a higher level and so I'm wondering if what we see in Boulder currently with our Boulder Valley comprehensive plan is considered in best practice and how we might move towards um potentially aligning with best practices uh council member I'm happy to speak to that uh you've um somewhat buried or you somewhat disclosed the lead actually of what we're goingon to probably be previewing with you in August uh we have at the staff level um through uh a couple of uh Happy coincidences I say I would I would characterize come to a similar question of whether uh the fine grain nature of the comprehensive plan which uh

[59:00] certainly has had its purpose over the years and and evolved over the years it's may be time to kind of blow that back into a little bit more of a macro and and more the chocolate cake as as Chris spoke to it so uh that may be one of the big Ideas we um you know preliminarily propose with Council I think that would be really exciting so thank you um that's it for my questions all right it's a good question Lauren Brad I'm very intrigued with where you're going to go with that uh recommendation I'll be waiting with baited breath for the August meeting we've got uh Ryan Nicole mat TAA thank you Tess Brad KJ and team I have a few questions first can you talk a little more about how the sequence of negotiations and approvals will work in the context of a 4body process so I can understand our body coming to agreement on something how do we can you just say more about how we work with the other bodies and ultimately get to the

[60:02] end yeah that's that's a really good question and um to be fair I have not actually gone through this process with the four bodies before and so we we're going to be learning from folks like Chris meschuk and others that have been around um through the these kinds of processes and sort of Lessons Learned of how we how we've done that in the past um you know certainly one the one of the things that I think we will explore is the opportunity for any kind of joint meetings um that you know could either be between city council and planning board or even City elected officials and County uh County Commissioners or County Planning Commission so that we can have joint conversations um around these policies and and attempt to reconcile any major differences kind of through those through those mechanisms before we get too far down the road we certainly uh want to avoid a sequence of back and forth um you know between one body and

[61:00] the other because ultimately all four will need to approve the same document um you know one one other thing I'll just mention that I think we are working towards and again we will share in more detail uh in a couple of weeks is just what we are anticipating trying to set expectations for what the final adoption uh will be in terms of content um so really we are we are mov moving towards and thinking about the adoption of all of the narrative text and any accompanying Graphics that are really required as part of that adoption but the actual final sort of packaging and communication of this information either as a booklet or a website or ultimately whatever the format it is will likely happen after the adoption process itself so that would really just be the the packaging of the information that we would do um later and that's that's partly in response to council member folker's comments of trying not to let

[62:00] this process extend on for for a really long time if I can jump in and add a little bit too uh council member every point in history no doubt is going to have kind of a different need for what that uh communication and uh collaboration between County and and uh City are going to be um but I do want to invite uh Deputy city manager Chris M Chuck to maybe speak to what history has shown you know recognizing that there are going to be many ways to go about it appreciate that Brad good evening Council and Ryan it's a great question and and as Brad just described um it changes a little bit with every update um but kind of mechanically there are times where the city and county staff will essentially um give updates or presentations to each of the four bodies in their respective meetings and then there's typically other times where um Council and the planning board may have

[63:00] some joint meetings um where you're getting updates or you might hold joint public hearings and then go deliberate on your own um and then there are times where the council and the county or I mean yeah and the County Board of County Commissioners will hold joint meetings where you're talking kind of highlevel uh direction as well and then the county will do the same thing they'll hold joint sessions with their Planning Commission as well so mechanically it kind of happens in several different ways the final decision making is as as um KJ described there'll be essentially a Word document of the the final version of the plan or the the draft Maps um that will come forward and typically we hold those as uh as a joint public hearing with the city and then the county holds a joint public hearing and then you each deliberate separately in your in your four bodies um and then if there is anything that's different there's a little bit of of um back and forth that usually does happen the city always goes first and the county goes

[64:00] second typically because the majority of the plan applies to inside the city limit so does that Ryan help answer your question a little bit you yeah you you um you kind of preambles to do something a reform on parking maybe we want to eliminate parking minimums I don't know just as an example we want to do a major reform the county doesn't want to do it we what then what I I would uh I would forecast that that likely is probably a city policy so it would be a policy written that says the city will you know revise parking minimums City policies are only changed and approved by the the planning board and the city council so the the county wouldn't have a say in in a policy such as parking uh inside the city so City only policies only the city changes land map changes inside the city are only done by the city the only things that the County votes on are are

[65:02] policies that are joint City County policies uh or land use map or uh or area one two3 map changes that are outside uh area one or inside the city limits okay then but thank you for that so following that example or maybe flipping it if the county wanted to do something that was more stringent or whatever new versus what the what this is the city is is is uh comfortable with that would apply to just the county part of the bbcp and not the city part correct if there's a policy that is just specific to the rural uh preservation area of the comprehensive plan then it would be a county only policy uh um there aren't a ton of those but there are a few if I remember right sorry go ahead and then and then is is part of what you're asking just a little bit of what happens if if the city and the county don't agree how does that I heard you answer half of that I heard you answer if the city wants to do

[66:00] something that the county doesn't want to do the city is welcome to do it within our jurisdiction so I think the second half of that is if the county wants to do something that the city doesn't want to do does that does the county have jurisdiction over just the whole County inclusive of the city or is it or is it the areas outside of the city maybe this is a little abstract act ask on its own but I do think we're going to come up into you know pretty um serious policy discussions sure yeah if it's if if it's a an item that is really just applying to the unincorporated County of the Boulder Valley um then it it but there there typically aren't a lot of those um but if there is an area of the plan and we've had this happen in the past where the the city and the county don't agree uh on the initial round of votes um then there typically is um some back and forth that happens um there are even times where then the city council and the County Commissioners get together uh and have a bit of a joint meeting where you talk about those policy issues and and try and understand is there some some equal uh Middle

[67:02] Ground uh on that as well um and uh I'm trying to think of a specific example off the top of my head and one's not popping up but uh Aaron may remember one off the top of his head maybe Gun Barrel Community Center plan is that one's a little dated but well we we disagreed over whether to change uh the planning Reserve adoption from four bodies to three bodies IES yes we had a bit of a scoff on that for a few months and then agreed to stick with the four bodies that's actually a great example and and where then we kind of we finally came to an agreement uh and and actually that's a great example of there were some changes proposed to the planning Reserve in 2010 that didn't make it through the process and then in 2015 we were able to revise it jointly with the county and and got to ultimately an agreement so um Happy to kind of share more examples in the future if that's helpful thanks Chris I I can tell that there's that

[68:00] there's a little bit of art art to this um I so I'll leave it to that for now thank you but maybe one thing just to finally explore some perimeters um just just as the thought experiment if if we just didn't agree at all and the plan and it was hard maybe that's not the right example but if we if we didn't come together just theoretically does the current bbcp sunset or does it continue until we replace it with something else the option yeah so the the plan itself uh has a has a a 25y year time Horizon um or or 20-y year time Horizon and then accompanying the plan is an intergovernmental agreement an IG between the city and the county and that IGA has an expiration date on it and then we have renewed that typically there was a a big conversation about renewal in the 2015 update and it was um ultimately that IGA was renewed um so

[69:01] there there's kind of this commitment between the city and the county to do Cooperative planning and that does have an expiration date of that IGA and is a part of each update we typically then as we do that update we'll extend it for another five years when is it sunset that IG when does it end oh great question off the top of my head I don't remember but I bet we can get that for you okay fine thank you my final question then I'll then I'll I'll stop um shifting gears I I'm very interested in how we will ultimately give weight to different bodies uh and if there is a hierarchy of of Weights that different bodies get and who the bodies are for example beyond the four bodies in in the process I think of a few institutions in in the valley as extremely important one of those is bbsd it's not the only one but one of those is bbsd there are other organizations I think are important but I would I would really say look bbsd is in a a class of its it isn't a a high class of of of the weight that we need

[70:00] to give and so I'm just curious um are we going to have a discussion do are we intending or could we have a discussion at the with Council about this question of what what are the the weights that we're how we're thinking about giving different weights to different bodies and if there are bodies that are you know especially important is that a natural thing that we can and and we'll do together yeah uh counc member I'm happy to kind of speak to that um I think you're also speaking to some other art of of the process which is really identifying uh Key Community Partners uh we've got a long working list already uh and it will be very important to to engage with um those who who contribute in in specific ways in the community uh and certainly uh bbsd is is one of those thanks Brad okay so I I I kind of I kind of heard an answer but I guess my question will still maybe hang and we can come back to it later which is with respect to the weight that we

[71:01] are giving the opinions and and um you know uh desires for these different organizations sure yeah maybe just one more turn of the crank on that so when I when I speak to the art of it uh you know there's going to be a little bit of give and take uh we we know that there are uh natural um groups that that that are CommunityWide uh a large uh representation or large impact on the community and others that are smaller and part part of what we want to do is make sure that we're balancing that to hear the voices that may not be otherwise heard but also recognize some of those uh entities such as the school district that do have have U Citywide impacts so uh yeah we appreciate the question and and we will hope to Define that more and there's always opportunities to adjust as we go too as we recognize a need okay thanks Brad I understand you're on the case that's all

[72:00] thank you mayor great now let's go to Nicole Matt Taisha Tara thank you um and this was I think everybody's asked some great questions and I feel like I've gotten most of my questions answered um so this was just more a reflection um on something that I think is working well tonight um you came to us with a a broader timeline of when we're going to be having some of these next few discussions so you told us you know tonight's training ask your questions about you know the plan and how these things work and how they intersect with State and County and all that um and then you told us that next time uh we talk about this in August we're going to be talking about engagement and um Community Partnership and and what that timeline and and process will look like and I think that the more you can do that since this is a work plan priority and we're trying to move through it faster than we might otherwise um the more it'll help us uh keep our discussions nice and focused and um tight and give you the information that you are needing at each step so just wanted to say thank you for

[73:02] um doing that tonight and giving us that information um I at least found it really helpful and just watching our discussion it seems like um others have too but I appreciate that longer picture as we're doing the one-on-one um meeting work and discussion so thank you okay thanks we got Matt Taisha Terra uh thank you I I I wanted to actually sort of dig a little deeper into Ryan's line of inquiry about bbsd I I beyond just being a partner I'm just curious about how in previous comp planning processes when we've maybe gone through a large a a large bump in potential development um you know obviously the planning Reserve is kind of the key example but looking back in the past ones one if we kind of had a big new neighborhood go under Redevelopment um kind of in Rapid succession and then what did that do in terms of its linkage and impact with bbsd was it a hey we're

[74:02] about to develop a few thousand units largely family housing hey bbsd you likely need a new school or like H H what is the what is the Cadence there because I could see the conversation certainly with the planning Reserve really having impacts if we're really going to do affordable housing and missing middle necessitating perhaps whether it's a new school or reinvigoration or um remodeling be it crestw Elementary or Centennial Middle or others in the vicinity like it seems like we would want bbsd to be a part of that so that they can do their financial planning to meet the needs of that housing that we um are in that so I I just want to know if it's like hey we work hand inand and we're good and and we're we're tight on that then that's all I need to know but if there's some linkages that aren't normally there I'd like to know that we can sort of close those gaps um ahead of these big conversations um yeah here again I'd like to invite

[75:00] Chris Muk to maybe speak to that and uh I I will say we we do have a close working relationship with the school district and one that I uh want to really Foster and and uh build further especially as it regards uh planning processes but Chris maybe you can add something to the Past efforts sure happy too and um Matt it's a great question and bbsd typically has been pretty intimately involved in our comp plan updates like their their planner is like part of our project team um it usually starts with as we are doing the projections analysis and demographic analysis we're working with them they typically will provide some of their school data as well to help us understand the characteristics of neighborhoods and then as land use map changes are being proposed and and some updates have little changes and some updates have lots of changes but uh you know if we rewind to think North Boulder pre- North Boulder subcommunity plan where it was very rural that that was a

[76:02] big part of the conversation was you know what does School enrollment look like in those various neighborhoods that sort of thing so um depending on what the land use map changes look like that would be a key part is understanding what would that mean for for enrollment based on their models of of kind of population to Children um and where they are in that Arc of of Elementary Middle to high school um so um it's been a really great working relationship in the past wonderful that that's great to hear um I know that we've inquired about a joint meeting between uh count our our legislative body and that of the school board and and maybe if this happens in in a reasonable time I know everyone's busy maybe this is a subject of conversation at a high level that we could um instigate so all of us elected officials could kind of get on the same page um because it's more than just area three right there's the schools that are facing immense enrollment pressure on the western side of the school that may may necessitate some rethinking about

[77:00] our land use in some form to maybe give them some extra love to shore up those schools so anyway I just all things in there but it's great to see that there's a great close working relationship that makes me feel pretty good about it and just let us know how we can support those efforts I I'll just add that they are very amenable to that we have been working on trying to figure out scheduling they've been super busy lately but know that it is on the schedule agenda and we are both um really hopeful we can get that uh scheduled at some point soon thanks all right hulks we got a few more hands I'll just note we're nearing the end of our scheduled time for this item but let's keep moving get through the questions we got Taisha Tara Lauren on that note I'm in I'm in a double dip so I'm going to defer to Tara and then I'll come back after very generous of you thanks TAA Tara yes I just want to say that I absolutely enjoyed this presentation and I also got a lot out of my Council colleagues questions and comments so Aon is it okay if I take pretty much less than a minute to uh

[78:01] second some of the comments instead of being with okay first I want to agree with uh mark on area two lwh hanging fruit and I'm also curious about that because if I remember correctly we had a recent an annexation which was the first time and who knows when if ever that were able to get middle-income housing I think that was South Boulder Road so I'm also really interested in area too second thing is I agreee with Lauren on the land use and Zoning comment both do seem like recipes not chocolate cake so I'm looking for forward to hearing about that Lauren I didn't understand I think I either got distracted for change or didn't understand your Revenue statement if you want to explain it again or maybe tell me at a different time since we're running out of time also I appreciated taish two comments from Taisha first of all about the Consultants uh I agreee with her that having local cons lately and I'm not going to say I'm

[79:01] not going to generalize but there have been a few times where I've said it would have been better if the Consultants either were more local or understood local uh local the local Situation's a little bit better and the other thing is is I do a second on including our Native American Community um without a doubt um let me think if I have anything else that is it and again I want to thank my Council colleagues for really interesting questions and comments and they're really great presentation very good all right so uh back to Taisha and then Lauren awesome thank you I can't see myself so hopefully you all see me somewhere in in one of these boxes so mine are are two one is to Echo Tina's comments about um accountability systems not only with the county but also with our other cities I don't know if you actually use the term accountability systems but I just felt like it's it's not just they you know

[80:00] there's some kind of policy but like that our plans speak to each other that our timelines speak to each other those staff I see them all working together anyway but because we did not align at this level they are always tripping over all of these limitations and bureaucratic barriers because we didn't align during the planning process so I'm really excited and hopeful for those opportunities to align um not only our values but our accountability our respective accountability Frameworks our timelines I'm also hopeful in all of this I didn't hear anything about um monitoring reporting um and jointly and so again you know we struggle to get joint meetings and all of these things and I'm just hopeful that you know to me um this this is the area where planning goes to die no one thinks about how are we going to do the ongoing monitoring ongoing reporting and that kind of thing so I'm hopeful in the process update that we get um later in August that that'll be inclusive of our thoughts on how we're

[81:01] going to stay connected over the next 20 years thank you oh yeah and then two sorry was Lauren and the land use conversation about the county and our envolvement there and I just wanted to remind everyone that a lot of our a land is in County property and so PES pesticides don't know our County and city lines and so is absolutely critical not that we necessarily have the authority to make a decision but that we are in conversation just like we are now and I think just in general the climate is asking us to think very differently about how and encouraging us to think very differently about how we're weaving and planning together um because our Wildlife doesn't know our little boundaries our waterways right don't know our boundaries and don't respect them and so I'm hopeful again that we can um use this as an opportunity to model a more collaborative intergovernmental interde departmental um process um that is more inclusive and

[82:00] participatory thank you thanks Lauren this whole conversation has sort of sparked for me um thinking a little bit I get how we get to the the relationship we have with the county through this process but I sort of wonder if it might make sense to try and also have the school district um or see involved with this because sort of similarly to our reasoning behind why we have the county involved being that they have the ability to have substantial impact on the city those other you know bbsd and even more so maybe CU equally has that ability and it's interesting that we I maybe we have and I'm just not aware of it but I don't like we have the same kind of IgA or attempted relationship to provide kind of predictability or a framework around

[83:02] how we work together in a similar way there and I could see that being something that might be interesting to both parties but also could be very difficult so just throwing it out there as a thought but um would be interested to hear maybe more as you guys come back in August if you have thoughts on that thanks that laen I'll just chime in here and note that there is a quarterly leadership meeting between um the city the county CU and bbsd and really appreciating everybody bring up bringing up the importance of these relationships and I'm sure that'll be an important topic for those quarterly meetings as we move through the comprehensive plan process to keep those Partners engaged and involved okay uh great questions great comments um phenomenal presentation I for what I'm getting very excited about things to come and appreciate this uh kickoff happening in in 2024 to keep us

[84:02] on schedule so lots of good work to come uh staff any uh final words before we move on from this item oh thank you or no we don't thank you very much okay thanks for all the Fantastic work and I guess we'll see you in about a month thanks all right so with that we'll move on to matters item 5B L Elisha yes sir thank you 5B is the boulder Municipal Airport Community conversation financial analysis thanks so much and I'll uh kick it off uh briefly but appreciate that our next item has certainly been a topic of a lot of community conversation um and before I kick it over to C staff I just wanted to remind us of where we were a year ago Brank to remind myself I'll say I just recently went back and watched that meeting to make sure we were being responsive to that request back then and I put all of

[85:02] that whenever I go back and watch a meeting under the category of time I will never get back but time well spent um you'll hear more detail of some of that work that's been done and brought forth to you today but I'll say that last August when we met with you staff had been thinking about the improvements that were needed at the airport and we're cognizant at that time that leaning on federal grants could extend our contractual obligations with our Partners at the FAA in ways we were uncertain of at the time giving and merging conversations about the future use of the airport site at the time staff decided not to pursue any further grants as we engaged community in conversations and sought to get some more insight from Council on where it was leading regarding the future land use of the airport site once once what we understood to be our contractual obligations at the airport terminated while there was a lot of Rich discussion including a desire by a few members to perhaps pursue a additional Community engagement or even pursue a housing study at the site ultimately Council asked staff to bring back very

[86:01] some very specific information additional information regarding the financial impact of potentially decommissioning the airport in the future uh additional information about the faa's perspective about this conversation to determine whether repurposing the airport was even a viability and some additional perspective about the potential Andor impact for litigation in this matter Beyond and perhaps given what we have heard from the FAA while the last has been supplied to council confidentially the memo and presentation before you today responds to the first two items requested we want to recognize too that we're in a different place now than we were a year ago we have new council members we have new interest in community especially as a ballot initiative has been Gathering signatures and there is now a certified petition coming before Council soon and the FAA has given us additional information that you'll also be hearing about throughout this presentation as a result we know that there are more questions new information

[87:01] that has been requested and is and a desire to have an even greater level of financial detail Beyond simply the potential for decommissioning such as the cost of potential land remediation if used differently and potential infrastructure cost depending on the type of use the site could potentially be envisioned for we've appreciated your questions as they show just how complex this matter is and we hope to get some of those additional questions at least at a high level answered through the presentation knowing that at the moment some of those are of these additional costs are truly hard to ascertain given the many variables that are at play with that I'll turn it over to Allison to kick the presentation off and thank all of transportation and Mobility the city attorney's office and the finance staff who have worked really hard throughout this entire process to not only engage with Community but to delve into the many intricacies of Technical and financial Nuance that is frankly really hard to fully lay out in a memo form without more questions

[88:01] popping up and we have certainly seen that so with that Allison perhaps I'll send that over to you but before you do that and thanks for all that n if I could call on Lauren please I think has something relevant to share with us yeah I just wanted to make sure it was on the record that I will be recusing myself from this item thank you thanks Lauren we'll see you later Allison over to you thank you good evening Council thank you for having us this evening to share an update on the boulder airport as noria mention I'm Allison Mor farell senior Transportation planner with the city as you may recall I led the community conversation project last year and was last year presenting the initial draft scenarios with you in August 2023 I have the pleasure I have the sorry I skipped ahead once apologies I have the pleasure of presenting the information tonight alongside my colleagues John Kenny and

[89:01] Karen Steiner we'll also be joined here this evening by members of the project team from aeroplex and Kaplan kersch and Rockwell the purpose of tonight's presentation is to update City Council on the additional information that was requested at your August 2023 meeting when we presented the initial findings from the community conversation process we'll provide a brief overview of that project process for everyone to get their bearings and then dive into the technical analysis that you requested to help inform next steps as you may recall language from the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan drove the need for the community conversation that began in late 2022 in 2015 this language was incorporated into the Boulder Valley comp plan to commit the community to reassess the potential for other community- serving uses such as housing in on the airport site at the time of the next airport master plan as shared this process stemmed from

[90:02] recommendations in the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan increased tensions between the airport user community and the broader Boulder Community the need to improve airport facilities and preparation for a potential future Master Plan update the city conducted conversations with stakeholders and developed four community-informed potential long-term scenarios for the future of the airport site this engagement process and resulting highlevel scenario comparison was intended to provide a better understanding of the community's desired future of the airport site for City leadership and city council we held two widely attended open houses developed and led a community working group with a wide range of stakeholders who are impacted by the airport held bilingual Community meetings at mobile home communities that are adjacent to the airport hosted two online questionnaires and conducted in-depth interviews with community members we aimed to share

[91:01] information about the airport gather lived experiences and ideas among community members and share input that had been received from these efforts we learned about key issues and outcomes that neighbors tenants pilots and community members have this helped provide Baseline information and shape future engagement needs and helped Identify some information gaps s we learned that there was a lack of general knowledge around the boulder municipal airport we learned that folks were interested and or concerned about noise leted fuel rules and regulation economic impact environmental impact and community relations the community working group and bilingual Community meetings were especially effective as we reached a deeper level of Engagement and collaboration with those groups as we moved further through the process and developed long-term scenarios from Community member ideas as well as short-term action items we learned what folks liked and disliked

[92:00] about each scenario that was developed what opportunities and constraints they identified and areas where they would like more information this information was shared with City Council in August 2023 and February 2024 and we're happy to answer any additional questions regarding that engagement when staff shared the outcomes of the community conversation with City Council in August 2023 city council requested three items to better understand the potential random ramifications of decisions involving the potential repurposing of this site first additional legal analysis which is ongoing and that we won't be discussing this evening second Council requested to better understand the faa's position regarding the future use of the airport site to that end in January 2024 nura sent a letter to the FAA asking for their response to three questions

[93:00] related to our obligations the faia issued a response in March 2024 and in it they were clear in their response that our federal obligations remain in effect in perpetuity and that it is highly unlikely they would support closure additionally in conversation between City and FAA staff the FAA has asserted that if the City continues to explore a path to closure the fa will exact fines if they find us in non-compliance of our current assurances now we'll move into the main portion of the presentation this evening regarding the requested financial analysis and I will hand it over to John to introduce the CIP development for each Financial scenario Allison thank you good evening mayor Brockett members of the city council my name is John Kenny Airport Manager here in Boulder Colorado I'll now share a bit about the two Financial scenarios and assumptions

[94:00] for each Capital Plan before I Define the two scenarios it's important to note that Boulder airport is unique and the unique qualities of our airport also limit our ability for Revenue generation so as we begin this work to gather additional information regarding the cost to continue to operate the airport without grants staff determined key drivers for Revenue considerations first Boulder is primarily a recreational facility aviation fuel sales are low in comparison to surrounding airports further restricting Revenue generation potential and exacerbated by the permanent facility constraints we do not have a Precision GPS approach making Boulder airport really a blue skies airport or a fair weather facility which diminishes the likelihood of oper ations during unpredictable weather Additionally the runway is too short to accommodate Jets or larger

[95:00] aircraft on a regular basis and even then only medium to small size aircraft additionally facility constraints such as existing ramp geometry discourage larger aircraft small aircraft parking is already constrained and so we would need to make changes for jets over our existing core tenant base we would not we would not pursue that therefore jet traffic under either scenario would likely not noticeably increase Boulder airport development foot putut is relatively small approximately 20 acres and that is the scope of the ability to generate additional revenues to cover our Capital project needs due to Decades of deferred maintenance Capital pavement needs or financially have become burdensome requiring the city to utilize ize The Limited Revenue generating strategies available now I'll

[96:00] describe excuse me the two Financial scenarios while these two Financial scenarios contain some elements of the four Community informed scenarios from the earlier Community conversation process the two final scenarios we are presenting tonight are distinct from that process and responsive to the city council's specific request from the August 23rd meeting we recognize the assumptions were made in both Financial scenarios and there can be variations Within These recognizing this it's important to understand that the general deferring direction of the two scenarios would remain Financial scenario one would continue to use the existing site primarily for Aviation use for the foreseeable future and assume the resumption of pursuing and accepting fa grants scenario 1's Capital Improvement plan is an approximate projection of the

[97:00] Capital Improvements that were identified in the most recent airport master plan and reflect Optimum scope and timing for the 18-year planning Horizon the costs are associated with maintaining existing facilities as well as investing in development of the boulder airport while you'll see the cost are high in the 18-year period cost for this scenario could likely be balanced through prioritization and timing of capital projects as well as securing additional FAA State discretionary grants excuse me Financial scenario 2 assumes the existing site will be repurposed in the future thereby continuing to operate and maintain Boulder airport without rants until lawful closure is feasible scenario 2 is an estimate of the capital Improvement cost associated with maintaining existing facilities for FAA

[98:01] Grant obligations capital projects would focus primarily on the priorities affordability and developing Boulder airport with limited term leases the last Grant received by the FAA was in 2021 given the 20-year obligation to maintain and operate the airport from the last Grant received 2041 which is 18 years in the future would be used as the feasible closure year although this continues to be contested by the FAA as highlighted in the beginning of the presentation Switching gears to the assumptions applicable to both scenarios to conduct the financial analysis and better understand how much more it would cost the city to continue Opera in the airport without GR GRS staff developed assumptions for each scenario it goes without saying that under both scenarios the city would

[99:00] remain compliant with FAA Grant obligations as for Revenue strategy assump assumptions under each scenario we assume updating rents and charges including fees like Landing fees for the recovery of costs for provided service levels new leases for existing and future tenants with options for long-term lease in exchange for incurring ongoing operating maintenance and capital costs these new lease terms would remove operating and maintenance cost from the airport's annual budget and finally new hanger developments as well as new aeronautical developments under both scenarios it is important to note that the city would not invest in development of these Parcels under either scenario it's also important to highlight here that allowing new developments on existing vacant airport land is not only

[100:01] a revenue strategy but is also required for our FAA Grant obligations and consistent with the most recent airport master plan adopted in 2007 which is includ which includes an airport development plan and while it is while development is required per the FAA it is also scalable through future refinements to the master plan this assumption identifies public private partnership as a way to achieve long-term developments which removes upfront capital and long-term onm cost from the city financial obligations while Hangar development is needed under either scenario to achieve the financial sustainability and to be consistent with the 2007 airport master plan hanger devel Vel Ms does not necessarily mean more Jets or proportion increase in traffic examples of commercial hanger

[101:00] development include but is not limited to specialty services such as aircraft maintenance aircraft manufacturing interior modification Services paint or holstery shops as well as aircraft storage or Aviation and support of scientific research and the list continues in addition to the assumptions applicable to both scenarios scenario one and two also have unique assumptions as I said under scenario one the city would keep the airport open for the foreseeable future which would allow the City correction which would allow for the CIP to be implemented over time with more flexibility than scenario 2 this is an important note that we can come back to and Karen our next speaker will will further explain in the financial analysis section for the council the city would apply for and accept federal and state grants as

[102:01] deemed necessary under scenario one which would provide more financial flexibility all available undeveloped airport property would continue to be made available to third party interest for hanger development thereby increasing leasable land and Airport revenues from today and Airport facilities would be maintained at a higher degree of permanency given the expectation that the airport would remain open now for scenario two as I said the city would pursue a course of action to lawfully close Boulder airport in 2041 the date staff estimates the city obligations would be fulfilled and in doing so the city would continue to not pursue or accept any additional federal or state grants some undeveloped airport property would be made available to third party interest for hanger developments thereby

[103:00] increasing the total leasable land and Airport revenues from today but less than in scenario one to attract development for the short 18-year duration remaining for Boulder airport some level of lease lease relief would be identified to attract short-term development for a portion of the unamortized capital investment these specific lease relief amounts have not been determined or fully analyzed moving on to the capital plan the capital Improvement plan for each scenario was developed as a high level planning tool for both scenarios it takes into account the existing conditions of airport Capital infrastructure and needs for Capital maintenance based on the current state of repair the capital improvment plan also estimates the capital cost for maintaining existing infrastructure and proposed future developments on

[104:00] undeveloped airport land in scenario one the capital Improvement plan is consistent with the most recent 2007 airport master plan and in scenario two it assumes a minimum yet responsive level of investment to meet our FAA Grant obligations the development potential excuse me as part of an orientation if you look to the left of this map you'll see a blue area that's Hayden Lake that's to the West the alignment of the map is uh the top is north at the top running from left to right is a highlighted shaded area that is the main Runway Runway 8 the clear Silhouettes rectangles and squares that you see sprinkled amongst that are are existing buildings those areas that are highlighted in black and yellow Dash lines or purple squares that is the actual currently

[105:02] vacant undeveloped land at the airport that is available so this map shows where the existing airport sites are located there's undeveloped land of potential for development by third part parties we also see that it's numbered a through J so that is also the estimation in which the market would respond in sequence as to what developments would go first A and B would go first and subsequently in sequence all the way through J it is important to note that under neither scenario would the city invest in developing of these Parcels again future development of these Parcels is an important Revenue strategy for either scenario this is where the P3 concept is critical and that private development would take on the initial capital investment ongoing onm expenses in exchange for airport land lease and in

[106:01] turn would lower our ongoing City fund expenditures you'll see here shortly in the slides that Karen will walk you through that in scenario one the revenue potential is greater because Parcels a through J have the potential for thirdparty investment whereas in scenario 2 only a through D have potential for third party investment due to the constrained time Horizon and potential for lawful closure I will now hand it over to Karen to introduce herself as well as to walk you through the financial analysis good evening city council as John said I'm Karen Steiner senior budget Analyst at the city I will jump into the findings from the analysis given the conditions noted and the proposed capital Improvement plans the project team developed a financial analysis for each scenario and on the following slides I will present the high

[107:00] level results the financial analysis estimates the annual revenue and expens expenses each year over the 18-year time Horizon and compares the 18-year totals in future dollars this first slide shows the total revenues by type in future dollars for each scenario scenario one is shown in blue and scenario two is shown in yellow in scenario one the model predicts higher lease and fee Revenue because with the expectation that the airport will continue to operate there will be more interest in long-term leases and development scenario one also assumes 8.7 million in Grant Revenue as the city would resume pursuing and accepting federal and state grants as seen in the far our right column in total the model predict scenario one would result in 14.8 million more Revenue over the time

[108:00] Horizon than scenario 2 next we will look at the 18-year expense comparison for each scenario the total anticipated existing and new expenses are identified on this slide again in future dollars the first set of bars on the left of this slide show the model of assumes operating expenses are the same under both scenarios the second set of bars show the city's share of the total CIP expense under both scenarios as John noted the difference in the capital Improvement plans under the two scenarios is the key difference scenario one is at 30.1 million and scenario two at 13.2 million for the capital Improvement plans in scenario one the C p is consistent with the most recent 2007 airport master plan and in scenario 2 it assumes a minimum responsive level of

[109:01] investment to meet Grant obligations CIP costs are approximately 17 million higher in scenario one than in scenario two next we'll look at the full scope of the proposed CP and how that relates to the proposed public private Partnerships this table shows the full proposed CIP under each scenario and as and the assumed party responsible for funding it also shows the use of funds and the estimated costs assuming 100% P3 or 100% public private partnership these amounts are shown in 2024 100% P3 in the model means we are maximizing private investment m in hanger aprons hanger maintenance and development of new hangers the first row on this chart is

[110:02] the public or the city's portion of the P3 partnership it's to maintain the airide and landside Pavements and Facilities the 19.5 million you see in scenario one on this slide for airside landside Pavements and Facilities when adjusted for inflation equals the 30 1 million CIP expenses in future dollars shown on the previous slide this again shows greater investment by the city in scenario one where the CIP is consistent with the most recent 2007 airport master plan and scenario two is the investment level to meet our current Grant obligations the next portion of the graph is where we see the private portion of the P3 first in exchange for longer term leases the maintenance for hanger aprons hanger buildings would shift um from the city to the Lei and

[111:02] that total amount for those two line items is 12.8 million the next line is the development and it is assumed developers would be responsible for the new Hangar development this shows greater investment by private developers in new hangers under scenario one with the expectation that the airport would remain open indefinitely next we will focus on why the public private partnership is critical this chart shows the total City funded amounts for each scenario with varying degrees of participation in the public private partnership 100% 50% and 0% one note the financial analysis from aeroplex assume assumes 100% P3 the city funding amounts at 100% for each scenario shown here correlate with

[112:01] the cost to the city over 18 years as described in the aeroplex narrative under scenario one at 100% P3 the potential city funding is 11.8 million in scenario one the city would resume pursuing state and federal grants and the city could achieve affordability through discretionary grants gr and prioritizing and elongating timelines in the proposed CIP thus the use of potential in the title in scenario two the required city funding is 9.9 million in this scenario the city is not accepting grants so the full cost of the CIP to ensure a safe FAA compliant airport is the responsibility of the city so what do we mean by a certain percentage of P3 the 100% P3 in scenario one means that in the model we maximize private

[113:01] investment in Hangar aprons hanger maintenance and the development of new hangers specifically that 12.8 million that I pointed out on the table on the previous slide for hanger aprons and hanger maintenance would shift from the city to the Lei in both scenario one and scenario two in terms of hanger development for 100% P3 in scenario one on the map that John showed earlier Parcels a through J would be developed by private investors and in scenario two Parcels a through D would be developed by private investors 50% P3 in scenario means that 6.4 million for hanger aprons and hanger maintenance which is 50% % of the full $12.8 million cost that 6.4 million would shift from the city to the Lei and in scenario one

[114:02] only Parcels a b c f and g would be developed by private investors again the shift of 6.4 million from the city to the lei for the hanger aprons and hanger maintenance is the same in scenario 2 for 50% P3 and in scenario two only partials a b and c would be developed the main driver for the difference we see in the city funding at 50% P3 is that while the ongoing maintenance costs are the same in both the expanded development in scenario one there is higher new lease Revenue to help offset the cost of that ongoing maintenance at Z % P3 the city is funding the full cost of the 12.8 million for existing hanger aprons and hanger maintenance and there is no

[115:01] additional revenue from new developments these graphs purposefully show the importance of 100% P3 we do not propose 50% or 3% P3 we would be striving for as close to 100% P3 as the market allows again it's important to note that in both scenarios the new develop new development would be Market driven this last graphic on the financial analysis is structured like the previous slide but shows the average annual City cost over 18 years whereas the previous slide had the total cost over 18 years the amounts at 100% P3 correlate to the average annual amounts in the aeroplex narrative rounded for sub licity on this Slide the average annual potential city funding in scenario one ranges from 655,000 to 2.5

[116:02] million in scenario one we would resume pursuing state and federal grants and could achieve affordability through seeking discretionary grants and prioritizing and elongating timelines in the proposed CIP in scenario two the annual average required city funding ranges from 51,000 to 2.3 million this analysis attempts to address the financial impact of potentially decommissioning the airport there are many outstanding questions that were outside the scope of this analysis that require further research while the analysis identified the potential for significant Revenue generation from proceeds of the land sale we acknowledge that there are limitations to this analysis and more study is needed to fully understand the additional financial implications related to scenario 2

[117:00] including refining the fair market value of the airport land the cost to reimburse the FAA for land purchased with FAA grants the cost of lease relief and any additional cost for site remediation and urban services to summarize Improvement and financial investments are needed in order to remain compliant with our FAA obligations while also reaching Financial sustainability in the meantime regardless of which scenario is chosen staff will continue to move forward with these key work plan items and we will continue to operate the airport per our FAA obligations we have started development on the primary management compliance documents and expect those to be published in q1 2025 the remaining items here will move forward in the coming

[118:04] months and with that this slide shows the questions we have for city council but before we get to that we just wanted to open it up for any clarifying questions on our presentation all right thanks so much everyone for all that great information so uh Council let's stick for uh for now to clarifying questions strictly and then we'll we'll move into uh feedback for City staff so clarifying questions please I've got Mark Tina mle okay yeah a couple of questions in the arlex document they assume there's a gap between um revenues and expenses over the next 18 years years um without grants of about 9.5 9.9 million is that

[119:00] accurate so good evening Council I'm Natalie Stiffler the director of transportation and Mobility I'm going to act as facilitator again as I did with Iris because we have a whole team of folks here um as Allison said we've got the consultant team and our staff um so for that one I will let Karen Steiner take that question thank you so yes the in the aeroplex report under scenario 2 the anticipated or um what the modeling is showing for the expense to the city would be 9.9 million okay then how in scenario one at 100% sorry no that's not what I I thought that document said um they were I thought they were saying that there's a gap uh even in scenario 2 of about 9.9 and going back to your earlier chart

[120:01] you showed a uh a set of revenues and a set of expenses um for the 18-year period and that didn't look anything like um that looked like $9.9 million also right it was it was 9.9 for scenario to I think Karen misspoke on that one yeah so do Karen do you want to jump in on the difference between the the aeroplex report and then what's shown in that 100% P3 um versus 50 and zero again just to reiterate that Alisa do you mind sharing the presentation again sure I'll pull that up just one moment and can we start on slide 28

[121:18] so this is a slide we had prepared that just shows the calculation of how we got to the 11.8 million in scenario 1 and the 9.9 million in scenario 2 the first row is shows our beginning fund balance that we started 2024 with of 1.7 that's the same in both scenarios the 18-year projected revenues are the same as I showed on the revenue graph earlier 40.4 for scenario 1 and 25. six for scenario 2 and then the third line is the 18-year projected expenses again the main driver for the

[122:00] difference there is the CIP um and so when you start with the fund balance add the revenue minus the expense we that's where we're getting the 11.8 in scenario one 9.9 in scenario 2 in the aeroplex report I'm and I'm not questioning that but if this is the case case is not that a gap of about5 or $600,000 a year not 2.6 so yeah I will explain the Nuance there if we can go back to slide um 17 Allison thank you I'll go ahead and find that just one moment so what when we get to slide 17 we'll see the 11.8 and the 9.9 which tied to the aeroplex report then we from that Assumption of

[123:01] 100% P3 we also wanted to look at well what would it look like if we only had 50% and what would we look at it if we only had if we had zero perc okay let me let me just ask one more clarifying question neither the aeroplex report nor your tables uh indicate that that 9.9 million doll Gap is based on 100% P3 it's simply a difference between uh revenues and expenses it's subtraction and the Gap appears to be $9.9 million over 18 years um and I I I'm trying to understand why that's not the case since it's um because the so the Assumption and and others jump in here but the Assumption around the revenues to get to that 9.9 is that there are there is some development happening and some public private partnership or 100% public

[124:00] private partnership for the developments and so if you don't have that public private partnership we were trying to play out some scenarios of if you don't have private investment for those those developments to bring in that additional revenue and cover that upfront capital and ongoing on andm then you get you know in that worst case case scenario you're subsidizing the 2.6 million a year or whatever the figure is best case you're at 9.9 over 18 years does that make sense yeah but I will tell you that it's entirely opaque um and uh requires a little bit of of clarification okay thank you all right thank you okay next we have H Tina Nicole Tara Matt yeah and um thank you Mark for asking about that um because I had some similar questions uh because some of the

[125:00] differences over 18 years aren't as large as it uh looked initially when I looked at it um the one question I had is uh it was mentioned that the plan that's referred to as a master plan um in 2007 uh requires development of the Shaded purple areas um how much development has happened since 2007 until today John can you take this one for us yes Tina thank you question uh there's been two hangers built in the airport uh since the last 2007 airport master plan uh although the graphical depiction shows and it's a planning document it's not a design document but it shows primarily tea hangers or individual hangers although we have a seven-year waiting list none of those hangers have been built because the economics the two hangers that were built were small box

[126:02] hangers and that's a relative term right anywhere from about 60 to 60 by 60 two hangers built uh since that period of time and is there has there been a lot of interest in development in the area in the last since 2007 well there was only I would use what developed as gauging actual interest I so you've had two box hangers built and You' probably had half a dozen or so individuals maybe six to eight individuals stopping in the office for the last two and a half years seeking to build some type of hangers um but the economics are really diminish ing that so did that answer your question I'm sorry Tina yeah so I guess it's the new kind of development envisioned is there different economics that makes it more

[127:03] appealing well we I think there there was some confusion or or uh assumptions made that by some of the graphical depictions that we show uh in the kimley horn report we were just trying to show areas of where you could build box hangers box hangers you get the economies of scale they are not to attract Jets you could build them like the last two that have been built out at this airport jets are not in those hangers they could be in terms of the size but that's not what Boulder attracts we attract small recreational Sport Aviation and that is the plan to go forward so even though we have some of those depictions of big red uh box hangers that's really representative of what the market is gone to for the economies a scale you can build it and then put in multiple aircraft to cover recoup your capital investment so that's some of the Dynamics going on with that

[128:01] those Graphics I I may just add there um just to your question Tina around like are the economics there or is the demand there and I think as John referenced there there has been we've heard interest um I think the conversation we've been having over the last couple Years also um causes some just um maybe hesitation from the development community and so that certainly is I think at play at the moment and John correct me if I'm wrong on that no I think you're right I think it's also a combination of the unpredictableness in that people would need to recoup the capital investment over a longterm period of time and we've been um a little bit of a timeout as we've gone through this community public process that we find our discussions in tonight so that that's been part of the delay for the market to uh respond to demand I

[129:00] think that's a great um segue to my next question is if we um indicate that we're not going to accept grants and thereby indicating that we're looking to decommission the airport um it seems to me that there wouldn't be much interest and I wouldn't be very confident that the 100% P3 scenario was even attainable is that so right so one of the strategies that I think John spoke to in the presentation is that we would need to offer lease relief clause in the any long-term contract um and that we did not do the further analysis to look at what that Financial impact would be um on the city to eventually be able to buy out the amortization of those leases at you know the time at which we would want to lawfully close um so that would be some additional study that we would need to do to look at what that additional cost would be but that would um we assume be

[130:01] an attractive um you know option for people to develop if they know that their costs are going to be covered when we lawfully if we were to lawfully close at the end of that period I do think that's an important financial analysis um in terms of thinking about what our uh Revenue would be gener um what kind of Revenue we might generate if we're going to incur a different um an an additional cost upon exit so um I am I do have some concerns about that whole concept on an 18-year timeline for private Capital development but um would defer to you as you look at that analysis further um and then my second question is just more of a and it actually doesn't relate much well kind of relates to the financial analysis um we're part of a county and the airport is mentioned and our IGA with the county in uh section six and uh it just makes mention that um you know that we should be developing housing near the airport

[131:00] which is kind of interesting and uh or or explore it does the do we talk to our partners or our our neighbors in Longmont and in Rocky Mountain even though it's Jeffco but it impacts Superior in Rock Creek in particular are we speaking to our neighbors about how our uh potential closure would affect them and do we have to um communicate with the county about the airport at all because it is mentioned in the IGA to my knowledge we haven't started those conversations with our um you know partners and local airports adjacent to our community or with Boulder County um John is there anything to add there that's certainly something that we could engage in if that you know is a desired Next Step yeah given the uncertainty of a decision we we we have not had any of those discussions I I will say and I just want to add because uh I've had brief discussions with some of our County parties and uh County barners um and I

[132:02] believe I uh I can say that they have expressed some concerns about um potential closure and they are just waiting to see what conversations happen um at this level and I don't believe I can say much more than that uh other than just to realize that they have the jail nearby in proximity um and that perhaps they had um had some language in the comp plan um or plans uh regarding the airport site but they've expressed some concerns thanks um and then I'm going to respect Erin's request to stick with questions and not do comments but I would like to make a comment afterward if that's okay we'll get to it for sure thank you thanks uh Nicole Tera Matt Taisha thank you um I just have a few clarifying questions here um One John in the presentation um there was a slide

[133:00] that said there wouldn't be any new development and then um you're kind of talking about new development and makes me think that I'm not understanding the different ways that development is being used here so I wonder if you could just um U kind of help me understand what what that distinction is there can I John do you mind if I I jump in here because I think maybe this was actually confusion that I may have added um so we we were trying to make clear that the city would not invest in new development so no City dollars would be used for new development we're looking for new development from the private sector in order to generate Revenue so I think if that is what you were maybe what caused some confusion does that help Nicole yes yeah no that does so you're basically just saying no City invest in new development but it is the plan is very clearly that there would be new development just invested thank you that that does closey it and then my my

[134:01] um kind of Part B of that question is just around the um whether we have any data on how this um kind of new development of hangers and things like that impacts on um traffic and use and uh I heard John say that this it you know not expected to really um increase use since we had a couple new hangers come in since 2007 do we have any data um is there any data out there in kind of the universe of um small recreational airports that um Can can address this question definitively of what the relationship is between kind of building new things at an airport site that serve airport users and airport traffic John do you want to take that one yeah difficult uh question to to answer and to quantify because the very nature of a general aviation airport is everything is unscheduled um whereas you go to other airports that have scheduled service you

[135:01] can quantify it down to any aspect of that flight rental cars parking anything so it it makes it difficult for general aviation type airports um the FAA complicates it a little bit in a sense to to also answer that question in that we're not allowed to discriminate or restrict any particular class user from accessing the airport so for example if you brought in a flight school you would have far more operations than if you brought in someone who was just a single aircraft owner um or maybe a maintenance shop so depending upon the activity it would have a very different level of operational count traffic count uh to answer your question so some airports do create the character of their Airport by encouraging specific types of users to come into the airport because that's the market Niche that they serve whether it's because of the community or would just have what they want the airport to

[136:00] be in terms of fitting and complimentary to the character of the community so I'm not giving you a great answer other than to share with you that there's many variables uh uh in play but we don't have the ability to say we will only accept these three operators who have fewer operations which can encourage it um what is a subtle new on so basically it sounds like depending on um who the developers would be and what would go in there that would have a really big um impact on the traffic at the airport and that's not really something we have direct control over though we can certainly try to encourage um certain certain folks did I get that right correct okay thank you um and then my kind of moving on to my second question um you know you mentioned a couple times that this is a primarily recreational facility and it just in my mind I immediately go to our parks and wck department and one of the ways that they have been dealing with kind of rising

[137:00] costs and things is to um change how they're doing user fees and I'm just wondering if this is a way to explore like rather than thinking about taking money from the general fund or something since these are primarily recreational uses can can user fees be a way that we can um generate more Revenue rather than kind of going through this um uh process of trying to encourage um new folks to kind of come in can we uh can we um expand fees or change the way that we do fee structures kind of like parks and wck has had to do um over the years go ahead John okay I was thank you um yes definitely user fees are an element in the recipe of how do we make the airport as affordable as possible possible uh the reason we framed it up is it's a recreational airport our volumes are very low I we have about 65,000 annual operations and you know

[138:01] you go over to an airport just to the south of this Rocky Mountain they have over 285,000 annual operations 1,700 acres to develop uh $900,000 in annual revenue just from the fuel sales alone we have $7,500 you could quadruple our fuel volume and it's still going to be just coins in the bucket to try to address the capital plan that we're required to uh Implement because we've deferred maintenance for so long now it's really the more expensive options remain to fix this pavement so yes You' look at user fees of Landing fees you could raise uh rents through renegotiation of existing leases uh you could Institute some additional fees but given our volumes so low it makes it really difficult and unfortunately the pavement out there is our number one expense in our Capital

[139:00] plan is usually the case for airports and it's uh as you can see is in the in the millions of dollars so we're trying to find trying to find that balance but even if you six tupled the fees at the airport it still would not be enough to cover the capital cost okay thank you no I appreciate that let me just restate just to make sure I've got this so basically you're saying that we don't because we're a smaller Recreational facility there's not enough users to pay for the Capital Improvements that we would need to make um just with user fees if we were just to kind of do it that way that is correct and that's why the Le the study leaned towards developments yep okay thank you no I appreciate that um and then my last question um is just around you know I know there's um potentially some uh conversations around negotiations with the folks who wrote The Ballot measures that are going on right now um what's the interaction if any between this conversation that we're having tonight um and any negotiation that's happening

[140:01] with the the petitioners and the ballot measures naria would you like to take that one sure and actually I'll invite Chris because he has been super instrumental on that and I'll before I do that I'll just say um we we've started and had some good conversations um we've shared some of uh the concerns we heard and some that we have but maybe Chris can um add a little more texture to that sure happy to thanks niia and uh great question Nicole the essentially these two conversations are kind of happening in parallel and it's just a little bit based on kind of the timing of where we're at but for uh the petitions that have been submitted we have we've been having some really good conversations with uh the committee and the committee's representative um and and part of what we've been able to share a little bit is at least from a staff perspective um some of the areas of the the petition language as it was proposed some

[141:01] concerns around kind of that balance of administrative um versus legislative language and so we've been having some great back and forth conversations on those um and areas where we're understanding kind of perspectives and so um I think those conversations are still continuing but um but they've been really productive so far oh I see Teresa has her hand up Teresa thank you um as a procedural matter the interaction between the conversations that are happening with the petitioner um and the conversation you're having tonight is that should should you all have a compromise measure come before you that Council would need to make a decision about whether coun wants to put that on the ballot and so um so if for example a compromise were

[142:00] reached about the first ballot measure which speaks to dis decommissioning the airport Council would then be faced with the decision about whether Council wants to put that on the ballot as a council measure and so just wanted to make that clear thanks for the clarification Teresa Nicole was that everything you had yeah no yeah thank you um and I I just just wanted to try to restate what Teresa just said if that's okay just to make sure I understand um so Teresa you're basically is it that um if we are uh if there is some sort of negotiated measure that comes through um our choice or not to put it on on the ballot measure is kind of a a choice in One Direction or another um along these scenarios tonight or a little different sorry I know I don't want to put you in a spot where you're trying to give legal advice a public meeting either so sure it's still a little speculative at this point

[143:03] um but it if if you were to be in a position where you are um where where you are given a compromise measure that speaks to decommissioning the airport um you all would would have to make a decision that you want that on the ballot as a councel okay D question yes yeah know it does thank you I appreciate um all the clarifications tonight thank you folks great I've got Tera Matt TAA Mark R well that really through a monkey Wren and things Teresa no I didn't even know about that okay so most of my questions were actually an asked and answered but I'm going to start with John do you remember when two and a half years ago John Kenny rized had a meeting is he still here had a meeting or did he leave

[144:01] here remember when we H out together that was so much fun okay so I have a question my first question is about the cracks the pictures that you showed what that doesn't look like it happened last year or two years ago I assume that it's been deteriorating for a while or did that just happen no that's that's over a period of time those those are substantive cracks for an airport okay so why forgetting about this ballot measure even or any of this why I'm just curious why did why was defer maintenance deferred for so long and why was that ignored to the point of now we have to spend millions of dollars or what have you I'm just curious and I'm not blaming anybody and definitely not you I'm just asking ask asking for a friend yeah you know it was uh it was before my time uh so I can't address all the variables that are

[145:00] in play but clearly the facilities at this Airport have been ignored for an extended period of time and you don't know why though for for I so I can I can try to um jump in on this one um so there was there was a you know you could call it a financial strategy in um deferring maintenance um because there were limited revenues with the airport fund um and the needs were greater than the revenues that were coming in and so there was a the strategy for decades was to kind of do the bare minimum um that I guess wasn't really even meeting you know the minimum um and what we focused on was the um the runway did have a big CIP project a few years ago um and so that saw through through FAA grants that saw some

[146:01] improvements but the a lot of the pavement issues out at the airport are areas in which um you can't use federal and state grants to improve the pavement it needs to be off of um you know City generated or the airport fund dollars and um there were just not enough revenues to be able to maintain all of the infrastructure and so that's the state of things right but joh do you remember when you said that they the rental the rent uh the rental fees The Hanger rent fees were low and they were being late being paid and there were no Landing fees so it seems like everything possible was done to make this a mismanage airport or just I mean I don't understand why none of those things happen and now we have to pay for the brunt why we have to suffer right now I mean it it does or should we just say that's life and move on and just unfortunately you're changing the

[147:00] oil on this car for the first time at 80,000 miles so the oil change will no longer address the issues that we have and so preventative maintenance in a lot of the areas is no longer an option it's the more expensive which can bewhere from five to 10 times the amount greater than that of preventative maintenance so it's reconstru ruction Rehabilitation um that we're finding ourselves in um City manager's office made it very clear when I was hired restore a business Acumen and run it more like a business because they detected that there was a lot of unpaid bills there was a lot of um loose lease Administration there was a tremendous amount of kind of doing what was convenient as opposed to what was safe um a couple years ago you had some extraordinarily concerning behaviors out here that are now are turning around and people are being more of a partner with us which is awesome so I think we're making a lot of progress but

[148:02] um the damage to the pavement has been done and so it's it's limited options the more expensive ones are what's really uh at our disposal at this time unfortunately and those are Engineers assessments that's that's not a administrative staff assessment for sure you'd wonder why they would defer maintenance didn't anybody ever hear of inflation but okay moving on um so the 18-year scenario 2 call me negative Nelly but I'm going to agree with I think it was Tina why would somebody spend money to lease for 18 years on and it can only be Aviation related correct so can you just Somebody explain to me when you talk about lease relief which sounds really scary by the way what that does sound like it's a great idea so tell me what does that exactly mean are we going to be paying for people's leases paying for whatever buildings they build or what's do you

[149:02] have any time to go into a little more detail or do you want to do that at a different time yeah I think we can quickly speak to that go ahead John yeah thanks Natalie so we we have the grant obligations that are still in play with the fa and their expectation is that we will operate the airport maintain the facilities safely in doing so that comes back to your Capital plan that comes back to the pavement condition and a variety of other Capital components that make the airport safe so it's an induced overhead in which we are now trying to catch up on and address now so that the expenses even two or three years down the road are not exponentially greater but the only way to address that induced overhead is you either raise rents rates and fees but a lot of the leases are fixed so you have to offer some type of incentive to have the discussion to open the lease up and

[150:00] that usually comes with extending the terms um and I'm so sorry I lost my train of thought did I don't it always happens to me um so you have to I I got it back so you have to one of your most effective options is to develop because that will bring bring you the greatest Revenue but as you astutely pointed out in other council members who's going to put in two three four million dollars to build a hanger where they need 25 to 30 to 35 to 40 years to amortise it properly so unless you offer some type of long-term lease that makes a business sense them to be able to amortize the investment of building that hanger and start the revenue flow into the airport coffers so you then can use those revenues to address the capital obligations to the

[151:02] FAA that's a formula that you need and Lease relief is an element of that meaning if you were going to spend $3 million to build a hanger you would want some type of lease relief to say look I'll put up the $3 million but in by the time I design it get the approvals it's probably closer to less than 15 years remaining which makes it even more challenging you're going to be asking for some type of lease relief at the end of that 15 years so that you're not holding a $3 million amortization schedule so if we don't provide you some type of financial incentive or relief from building that and giving us that Revenue stream the likelihood of anyone wanting to build it airport is probably extremely low oh I'll save my comments for later I one more question

[152:00] why why I don't understand what there seems to be some thought that we would get 100% Buy in in scenario 2 that there would be a market for a public private for a private investment in scenario to I can't where what is the E is there evidence that they're that I know who was it that was pressing that we should do public private partnership for scenario 2 that there is there evidence that there is actually a market for this in scenario 2 or is that just a hope and a dream I'm just curious and I don't mean it sarcastically no it's it's a great question Natalie I don't know if you want to engage Kurt on that who has kind of a and that's it for me that's perspective on that or you yeah it would be it would be great to hear from Kurt I I don't know that he was promoted the panelist so we may want to come back to that if he can join us to speak to it um and Kurt has some experience just

[153:02] nationally with general aviation airports and potential for development um and he could probably speak to what the possibility would be in the case of a lawful closure on the horizon um it looks like he is with us now and he's popping on so um Kurt did you hear that question I did get it as I was switching over it I lost a little bit if you don't mind repeating it that would be helpful do you want to repeat it Tara gosh it was hard enough to say it the first time well I I'm happy to um so tera's just curious about just the likelihood of in that scenario to when we would you know pursue lawful closure in 18 years is there really any likelihood for private development if we were to offer lease relief is there any likelihood of any market demand I know would me that wasn't my qu of course if we're gonna

[154:00] pay people to of course they would take advantage of it no that definitely that's not my question I guess during the presentation there was a lot of excitement by the pres by the presentee that we should do like the uh 100% public private partnership um I can't even imagine that there is there evidence that that there is 100% private partnership uh Market interest I mean that's a whole lot 100% private partnership I don't personally I don't see how there's a world that there would be that but you know I could run on the negative so and sorry you're asking under either scenario correct is that just the industry I think is your question is that correct no ask us for two okay thank you so if I may um and mayor brocki it's pleasure to be here and the committee I have been following on along and

[155:00] listening and appreciate the opportunity to talk about this one topic um public private Partnerships in in private airport development at an airport like this um it often is very typical because the industry is bringing the money and the airports bringing the opportunity and the land for private development to come in and invest and so I think in either scenario the risk that you have is that um you have an airport that's discussing potential closure and the interest in the development Community um is going to be skeptical of making investment in development of and regardless of what type of use John mentioned that you know the airport is um focused on recreational use so the likelihood of you know large um you know private aircraft is is unlikely um you might have small um recreational type businesses and John named a few when he talked about it in the slide presentation maintenance operators flight schools and things like that um

[156:01] if you were to offer rent relief and it's a very hard thing to um estimate because you're not only going to be you know discussing possibly relief for their unamortized portion of their project but if they're a commercial operation they're going to possibly wanting some um you know relief relative to their commercial investment that they are going to lose um with the remaining years that they may have had left if the airport had remained open and so I think you know testing the market through either negotiations or uh request for proposals or request for information if people were going to invest in certain developments might yield some information of the willingness but um it it seems unlikely that you know as from a background of doing development I would be really skeptical to want to come into an airport and invest um you know significant dollars with the thought that it was going to uh be taken away and or possibly um you know my cost

[157:02] purchase because a lot of these folks that are here are there for either private aircraft storage or again small business interest and so I think that is somewhat of an uphill battle okay just to be clear it was really kind of a rhetorical question like obviously the answer you gave was the obvious answer so my real question was really not a question was why in the world will we spend so much time talking about this hund this this thing that could like is never G to happen but I'll just leave it at that and let the next person come thank thanks Tina and so as we move forward I'll just uh note to folks that we uh only have half an hour and our originally allotted time for this so if I can encourage council members to be focused in your questions and for staff to be uh brief in your answers thanks so much we got uh Matt Taisha Mark Ryan Tina appreciate it um a couple couple questions um I think the I hopefully my question

[158:02] can help sort of reconcile what seems to be some differences between how we for what what may seem like we formulate our master plan in a vac vacuum and so my question is does the FAA retain a sort of signoff SL approval Authority with regards to our Master planning process as a function of having these Grant insurances with the FAA John or Steve do one of you want to take that one uh have Steve okay good evening everyone I'm Steve oet with Klan kersch outside Aviation Council for the city um the uh FAA uh frequently funds Master plans um if they fund a master plan the master plan needs to be executed in accordance with FAA guidance um but ultimately they accept a master plan they do not approve a master

[159:00] plan now that said one element of the master plan is the generation of an Airport layout plan which is a map that you've all probably seen before which depicts you know existing and future facilities that is a document that the FAA approves okay um okay so that that's helpful um so I just appreciate it because that that helps maybe reconcile a little bit of what maybe our our our Master planning isn't just a document that's just done unto ourselves there is the FAA has has hand in it in one form or the other um I appreciate that that clarification um the other question I have asked to do with um in in this process have we done any sort of direct comparisons with airports uh that serve similar size communities and are thus of similar size um just to get a sense of where does that sort of capital investment uh compare Andor um operations the scale of what type of aircraft are coming in or the volume of flights do we have any are there any uh

[160:01] comparable ones out there just so we and our community just get a sense of where are we are we in the middle tier or higher below average just just curious John go ahead and speak to that one we have done some um just kind of peer review around like operations and uses so um John can speak to that yeah Matt as part of the aeroplex uh report there's several comparisons of I think 10 or 12 airports of like type size but most of them are out of state so we also then asked the Consultants to roll in like Centennial and Erie and Longmont and Rocky Mountain I think most of those made it in there um so um yes those those comparisons are made um thank you um let just helpful have that out there and the last question is I appreciate staff acknowledging um the the couple points that I brought up in my hotline about the environmental

[161:01] remediation costs that are going to be there as well as you know the assumption that closing the airport doesn't mean we're just going to let it lay fow and that there's going to be a something we're going to do with it and then if the city retains any sort of ownership there's going to be some development cost that either we or developer would have to assume and with that Mike my ask would be that if we continue you down any more financial analysis uh would it be possible to sort of hire a real estate development consultant because I think to really understand the true cost of going down closure and ultimately doing something with it we kind of need to know what that looks like and that is part of a financial analysis from which to understand the actual true cost of what closing the airport would be because it's final right closing the airport isn't like we get to then we we in 30 years we could open another one up it it it ends the story of an airport in Boulder forever and so really knowing the true cost as we run out would be helpful so a development consultant would be something I think that would be really helpful to understand those costs so hopefully that's something that we could embark on if we continue going down uh this financial analysis pth

[162:06] path do we have I saw a nod so that that's good enough for me if I saw a nod I appreciate that's all my questions great Taisha Mark Ryan and I got one awesome awesome I almost was going toqua on Matt's thing around but again a point of clarification and all seriousness around so if the FFA has the authority to approve something what does that also give them the authority to do not approve it so I just W to clarify that if they have the authority to approve they also have the authority not to approve um but for my questions I had a few around and I'll make them all qu and then you can answer them in order or however you want one question was If energy generation was considered as a as a revenue generating opportunity for any

[163:01] of the scenarios listed number two I noticed that in 2021 the runway was repaved and I believe around 90% of the pavement was my understanding um is still in good use and so although I appreciate all of the Deferred maintenance and I've had the opportunity to tour that area myself and the hangers are deplorable I also would love to just get some real cost around things um so I had some questions about that um number three is around um if you build it they will come category which is to say if we are trying to keep this airport small and neighborhood as you indicated John then why are we considering anything that would allow Class 2 to engines uh which to me is really Jets which is private jets which is loud more is louder um and again to the to Nicole's question of how because we uh we the city does not have the authority to determine who gets to use the airport

[164:01] but it it but we can incentivize who gets to use it based on how we design it and so when we have when we have any kind of renewals and this is where my concern is around um scenario number two or 1B or whatever the one that allows for the Class 2 and also whatever it is that allows the um planes to operate when the weather is bad um both both of those things are indicators of a bigger airport not maintaining or making our current airports more efficient so my question is um since the request was how to maintain it at its current thing I'm wondering how the decision was made to actually create offerings that would actually go against that original request and and incentivize fancy hangers right that fancy people will pay a whole lot of money even though it's only going to last US 20 years and so that's another big question that I have and then lastly can you please clarify

[165:02] the use of our airport because right now when you say majority it sounds like nothing else happens outside of recreation but you all and I know that other things happen like science and education so I just wanted to confirm that in addition to the majority of our airport currently being used for recre that there are aspects that significantly contribute to science and education concerns so those are my four questions John do you w to take all of those did you catch them sure sure in terms of the scientific uh Aviation component yes we definitely have a uh robust presence here one is neon Aviation who does mapping of all North and South America and shares that data with anyone and everyone who was interested um they have aircraft here about four months out of the year and the rest of the year they're John that's plenty of information on that one I just wanted to confirm that other science related things outside of recreation are

[166:01] happening on site so you got that one what about education and I'll just Pile in John just to keep those short answers please that's why that's why I was like do we have this yes no do we have that yes no energy generation was not considered Runway two z uh Runway 8 was resurfaced in 2021 anticipate in 2026 it's going to be some type of preventative maintenance um if you build it will they come private jets they're here today you can't yes I know but they're not we can do but what you have done is incentivized so my question is is in that second scenario um would that scenario incentivize more private jet usage because they we will have had facilities that will accommodate those um even in the waiting of the of the what the the weight of the

[167:01] runway can can ascertain I so I think on that one and we can follow up but I think that one I'm a little bit confused because the for senerio one were we're just the CIP is consistent with the 2007 master plan and in scenario two there's no assumption that we would be incentivizing large aircraft like Jets when we so I guess what I'm saying is is is when we increase and and defend more depend more on private right there is going to I'm qu the question is is what is the market going to allow and so my question is were private jets considered in the analysis of how we are doing these updates the the impacts of will we rather you know would that attract kind of yeah we don't expect so because of the constraints of the facility so the length of the runway and the the lack of precision GPS we don't

[168:01] expect that that those types of uses would come at but with the current plane that we have now but as e planes and others expand and the technology advances would there be a potential so that's the question that's a good question yeah we can we can we move forward thank you appreciate that in terms of your last questions in terms of a Precision approach of the runway and identifier lights staff has not pursued either one of those in the last multiple years that's a state recommendation we've not pursued awesome thank you John great thanks so much Mark and Ryan okay one just one question um in my previous hotline and this applies to both scenarios one and two um I asked if we had looked at any alternative financing mechanisms to bridge the gap between revenues and expenses and that could include use of the infrastructure tax uh certificates of participation

[169:01] bonds land loans uh some draw down from uh from reserves um have we looked at any of that do we intend to look at any of that we have not looked at that yet I think those are all things that if there's additional study that's desired and I see Cara jumping on but um Cara feel free to chime in here um but we to my knowledge we have not looked at that yet good evening Council car Skinner Chief Financial Officer I did just want to share that um I did talk with our uh Municipal advisers and sort of issuing debt or traditional Municipal finance options really um I don't think solve a problem here we would just be issuing debt and having to have Debt Service payments um instead of funding coming up with some other maintenance or Capital funding source uh along the way so I

[170:00] don't know if traditional Municipal Finance Solutions um would work certainly we we can consider a general fund or ccrs but of course that's trade-off discussions I mean there's other needs and uses for those dollars and so Council would simply have to make that a priority uh use of those dollars um your ideas in terms of that are more like a reverse mortgage type of concept I think um I think it was Matt's suggestion that we would need to consult with a real estate development consultant um that's really a real estate transaction we haven't investigated those yet okay thank you thanks fine thank you mayor I just have one question about understanding uh our control over the airport and its impacts in a way that we we haven't uh fully talked about and I'll ask it as a scenario so let's assume that the direction that follows from today um and the vote in November leads to Greater investments in

[171:02] the airport with for capacity and signals that create an increased demand for air traffic both in terms of volume and perhaps in terms of size of aircraft so let's say that both happens and then the community decides that that that is not what we want that that's problematic for whatever reasons maybe there's a you know something happens for whatever reason we have enhanced levels of the of this trff traffic we then as a community say we don't want this anymore do we have a practical ability to contain and then reduce heightened volumes of air traffic um I guess it's sort of about is what's pract do we have something we can do this practical is it legal um such that we might do with transportation on the ground you have you have a toolkit of Transportation demand management um I'll leave it at that that's my question thank you Steve do you want to take this one sure um the short answer is no you

[172:00] do not have that Authority um there's a variety of federal laws um and your grand Assurance obligations um which number one restrict you from imposing any sort of a restriction um on access to the airport in terms of you know a curfew or a limit on the number of operations um there is a mechanism to submit those types of requests for restriction to the FAA um those laws have been in place for 34 years um and nobody has obtained approval from the FAA to impose that sort of restriction um and the way that the FAA has administers those laws makes it extraordinarily unlikely that you would ever receive permission to impose that type of an operational quot um as John uh alluded to earlier um you also uh presumably would be under uh A continuing Grant Assurance obligation to provide access to the airport on reasonable and not unjustly

[173:00] discriminatory terms you're not allowed um to restrict any class of aeronautical user so you couldn't say only small planes you know only large planes only non-commercial traffic um or anything like that um so uh unfortunately the the short answer is um you have little control over um restricting operational capacity um moving forward that said you do have control over how the airport develops the types of facilities that are being built um you know what's being prioritized um which has an indirect effect on the types of of operations um but um but you can't directly regulate that in that area thank you right and I have uh one question uh which is so we're talking about financial analysis here tonight and there have been some questions asked about remediation thanks for the response to that uh earlier today Natalie um one area that I haven't seen possible numbers attached to is in the scenario two where we're pursuing lawful

[174:00] closure of the airport I imagine there would be legal costs involved I know those would be very uncertain but Teresa I'm going to look to you do you have a sense of a very rough range of what kind of costs we might be looking at in that scenario too you know I'm I'm afraid I don't um um that's certainly something we can look into and get back to you about I would appreciate that thanks okay uh that looks like all of our questions here so now we're going to move uh forward to feedback from Council uh we have the memo covered scenarios one and two but I do want to note that there was a hotline with a kind of combined proposal from Mark and Matt about a possible third option which would be to not weigh in and pick scenario one or two and particularly because we have a ballot measure on the table with an approved number of signatures that were the voters are going to weigh in on precisely this question here in November so there's

[175:00] this uh idea of not selecting the scenario tonight uh going through the election processes and then coming back to these questions after the voters have fleed and I I've gotten a sense there may be Council support for that approach so I wanted to start by putting that on the table and maybe taking a straw poll to see if people might be interested in going more that kind of a route but if people have a couple quick comments before we get to that um that's welcome as well I got Mark and Nicole yeah I I I just want to speak to that very briefly um uh I hope briefly um there is so much information that we don't have and I you know Matt and I come at this from very opposite points of view and I think he was as dissatisfied with the descriptions in scenario one as I was in scenario two and so we're just not getting the analysis that we think we need and I'll

[176:00] speak to scenario 2 because I'm a little more interested in that um I don't think there's anybody who contemplated uh closure of the airport and sale of all of the land at fair market value um I I think people think of it in terms of if I'm going to go through all of this um uh effort and expense to do this um I'd like to get some Community benefit in terms of of Middle Market housing or or affordable housing and so I I think we need to refine uh these analyses a little more and and maybe refine some of the premises and and so I am I am in support of um what my colleague has drafted and I think it's this is one of those times when um it's better to step back uh take a breath and and let's look at this going forward um we're not in a particular Rush um uh you know if we if

[177:02] we choose uh scenario two we're still going to have an airport for 18 years if we choose scenario one we still have a lot of work to do to refine um what that would look like and and how we would want that and I don't think there's a rush for either uh and so um I want to speak in support of that hotline proposal and I endorse it entirely thanks and Nicole and then Tina and then maybe I'll try St try a straw pole yeah um and this I I think just goes back to my uh question that um that uh Teresa had waited on too around how this overlaps with the ballot measures so we will be discussing next month putting um measures on the ballot and because this uh these two measures related to the airport and future uses um are are were petition driven measures um we have the option if I'm remembering

[178:01] correctly from last year of putting um the original uh just kind of not not doing anything the original petition measures go on of um putting a competing measure on or of um with the the negotiations that are happening of having something that is more of a u something that we've both contributed to uh the petition group and and Council and what I heard Teresa say before is that that is a choice point that that that is us making a choice and so I don't know if we can actually kick this down the road until after uh the voters way and though I'm very eager to hear you know what the community's interested in um it feels like that that process of deciding whether we will take ction or not is a a choice point and so I guess just I don't know if there's any more clarity there to offer Teresa I just want to make sure that you know for deciding to wait a little bit it is we

[179:01] can actually do that and um rather than uh the ballot ballot measures and how we're responding to that um being a choice do you mind if I offer a thought on that Nicole um because it's a it's an excellent point I mean we we will have a a decision Point next month you're absolutely right between those three choices and that third choice of a of a compromise measure may or may not come together because there may or may not be interest in doing something like that I I will say that and and so we'll have to uh tackle that choice when it comes to us it is its own distinct Choice which is a little different from saying we should keep the airport open or we should do everything we can to close it but you're absolutely right we we'll have to wrestle with that and it's still like this is where you know I'm just I'm curious about the if we are choosing to put a compromise measure on um is that us signaling a choice to move in that direction does that make sense right

[180:00] like is that where where is and this this maybe for offline legal kinds of discussion but um but that sort of it feels like a choice point to me in in terms of what what we're deciding about the airport's future I think it's an important thing to keep in mind as we move to that decision point that question Tina uh yeah um and thank you for putting out the proposal Mark and Matt I'm also interested in not weighing in tonight um but one of the reasons I'm not interested in weighing in is because and and I want to just appreciate how we got here that this conversation started with a different Council about a year ago and is responding to a financial analysis at the end of the day however our two choices one of which is to stop taking grants if with the intent of decommissioning the airport this doesn't feel like a direction to me but a decision and I think it's important that if we make a decision like that we have

[181:00] a process that does include a public open comment um and and go through that process so um this is a big decision from in my from my point of view um and so I prefer also delaying and also adding to that the fact that we have a ballot measure um and whether it's a choice point for us I do think it will be a choice point for our community and it looks I I would imagine there will be some kind of ballad issue on the Bel regardless so um that would be my preference I have one clarification about the um the wallak Benjamin proposal um right now in that would we be pursuing development development is in both proposals would we be considering that development opportunities would be pursued Ed in the interim or Would we not be uh pursuing those so I can I can respond to the intent of the uh of the hotline um one

[182:01] of the key pieces is that there was it was very clear that there was work that needed to be done as strategies and elements as stated in the staff memo and um delaying this wouldn't hinder that work but I think it's pretty clear that in the in the coming months we're not going to see a new hanger built um so so I think that there's uh for for a lack of better words we have plenty of Runway from which to um meet those needs and allow staff to kind of get moving um and and more discussion will occur but but I don't think that in a delay it made sense to delay our decision or choice to also then pause continued staff work on either financial analysis Andor what's in their strategies and elements so so it was a way to kind of uh give give give staff what they needed to continue to move forward but that that was the intent of it um but I can't imagine that any of that bigger stuff would be occurring in the short time frame that's in front of us before it comes back to us I I can cqu on that go ahead my participation in this was on the

[183:00] understanding that we're basically not deciding um these these big decisions today we're not going to be building hangers tomorrow um there are a number of things that are going to happen if staff I would urge staff to continue to plan for either scenario in a different way because I you know and we can get into that um at a later time because I think there were a number of defects in how we approach this um but I I you know my understanding is that no we're not going to be building hangers tomorrow um we're going to continue analysis we're not going to decide tonight and we're going to um see how things unfold after taking a deep breath so it would include continued analysis through the election but not construction or The Taking of additional grants absolutely I think is the intent yes well and I would say I would say that is accurate From staff's perspective that the consequence of

[184:01] allowing us to preserve a decision at a later Point means that we will not currently seek additional grants now which we don't need to do to to continue to comply right now with our current obligations um with the FAA um but there is work to be done on the work plan and that work will continue right and so that will move forward um but knowing the faa's now current position um and the current place that we find ourselves um in wanting to explore more research and get some additional information we would not want to put ourselves in a position of binding ourselves in one way or another um and

[185:02] so administratively we would not right now be seeking any further um FAA Grant support because that could have some consequences in the future that we do not wish right now to incur um but we fully intend to continue to comply with our existing obligations that's the clarification um Taisha thank you um I Echo um you know I don't feel I'm feeling a full sense of urgency around having to make a decision around anything um this evening without the following pieces of information one the mitigation cost of transitioning it the a property to anything other than its current use the finalized housing study which Nicole um thank you for your hotline request and offer to and um to discuss and and um take us through that and having some more specifics around the infill

[186:01] possibilities as well as the other areas number three the litigation costs um estimated litigation costs and then number four um I would love to see an exploration of energy Generation Um and just a consideration and conversations around that so I just feel like we don't have and this is what my concern is even with the ballot measures at hand um I'm hopeful that some of that information can be made available prior to the election vote um and prioritize that information um I have some concerns around the 400,000 um million doll profit um component there um and and and yeah so I I I'm I'm just hopeful that we can get um some more um meaningful data to inform um the voters in in the conversation um Etc but those are are the specific feelings and I don't feel uh comfortable in weighing in today thank you thanks TAA Nicole another thought yeah sorry just just one one more clarification um niia as you were

[187:00] talking you know we we still have of a obligations that we need to fulfill and if we're not doing that with grants the only scenario I mean the only thing that I saw was this you know continuing this path of of new development right or I mean at what point do we start taking from the city from right do we see that for next year's you know for this budget we're going to be working on in a couple months is it the year after like I mean there's we have obligations to fulfill and money doesn't grow on trees definitely know that certainly know that and maybe I'll defer to um John and Natalie I mean it depends on um what we Define as as meeting like right we have to meet our our obligations um as we move forward there are some improvements that we need to do there frankly um some enhancements that I think we'd like to pursue like continuing to look at unleaded fuel

[188:00] we've mentioned that in some of the work that moves forward all of that comes at a cost um and so the ability to do that at what level at what pace will be dependent on what funding source we're able to do so that is a reality and we will have to go back and take a look at what that looks like it is certainly not Our intention knowing that we are currently continuing to consider the future land use potential in 18 years of the site um not wanting to invest City dollars in a wholesale expansion of airport in ways that we don't know what the future of that um of the site will be but we have work to do we have some maintenance to do we have some repairs to do and we certainly would like to continue to think about um ways in which we can continue to do noise abatement um some of the great work that's been done

[189:01] currently to consider unleaded fuel um and that will cost time and resources and money um and so John and Natalie if you've got additional thoughts welcome I would no I think you covered most of it n and I would just add that you know on that work plan item slide we did identify there are um other strategies that we would like to move forward on um and rents and fees methodology updates will be part of that including Landing fees um and so there are other Revenue strategies on the work plan that we can move forward with um and you know as Karen pointed out the you know fund balance for the airport is at I think 1.7 um at least that's what we use for the analysis so there's some obviously some reserves there for us to tap into as we go forward um but you know as there will be a time at which we need to have that conversation as a city um on

[190:00] the near Horizon about using other City funds to just continue to operate the airport thanks for that n and Natalie and I will note that if if we're waiting until after the election we're going to be hearing from the voters in three and a half months so you know we would be able to come back and discuss further uh in the not too distant future uh based on the outcome of the about measure I would have two things mayor if I can about it I I would just you know I go to John's um uh lovely analogy uh what was it about not putting oil in a in a vehicle that the longer we go without proper investment Financial investment right the more we have to think about that down the road but that's one thing perhaps more importantly and this is a question a little bit to staff I know that there is a desire for more answers and to have more conversation about it I guess uh Teresa please let um correct me if I'm wrong but we have if we have a petition on the table we have a go dark period and staff will not be able to

[191:01] respond to some or have conversations about some of this uh after September 5th I believe is is the date um so there will be time that we will not be able to have some discussions and I worry and so Natalie perhaps I Turn to You I worry about staff's Capac capity to be able to get some of the very very detailed questions you want answered between now and that go dark period so I just want to set expectations that we may not have all the answers that you were looking for in the next four weeks I think that's very accurate point taken all right so I I'd like to go ahead and engage uh council's uh interest here so we have this option on the table to not choose a scenario one or two but in instead wait until after the results of the ballot measure while we have some questions out on the table that staff will be able to answer probably some but not all of uh before we get to that goar period and also keeping in mind we'll be coming the

[192:01] question of the ballot measure when we put it on in a few weeks but are people comfortable how many people are interested in um deferring the final decision until after the ballot measure please raise your physical hand I got let's see um everybody who's on camera is raise their hand TAA did you want to way in there okay very good so that that's a the unanimous on that sorry about that Aon I thought I was on camera so I had my hand up that whole time and I was like what do you mean no worries okay um so I think we we've talk talked this through we've had a lot of great questions and we got some good clarifications from staff and I think this also means that when we come back after the balot measure we that will be a good time to to talk through again some more of the assumptions and possibilities uh depending on the path that the airport is going down does anyone have any burning final thoughts from Council before I turn to

[193:01] final thoughts from staff not not seeing any um I'll just offer a thanks to Mark and Matt for putting that together that was that was helpful no absolutely n any clarifications that you'd like or F from us or final thoughts no I guess I defer I want to make sure that Natalie and her team has everything they need I know there's some follow-ups that we committed to and um we'll make sure to get those fairly soon and um I know that there are some questions that perhaps are more in the legal vein that um I know Teresa and her team will be following up with you on um but if they don't have any clarifications I think we're clear Natalie we're good thanks so much I know you uh Steph you all did an enormous amount of work to get this packet put together lots of detailed analysis and the the discussion continues uh we will'll stay in suspense for a while longer here but deeply appreciate all of your

[194:01] work TAA are we about to close because I wanted to get in before you get because you know y'all are fast to close a meeting so I got to get in there before you close the meeting and I just wanted to say thank you it was so wonderful to come back home um and come back up town and see flowers planted by the Arboretum sign so I just wanted to acknowledge and say thank you for wait what that's great news there's flowers in there and they like fix the the median so it looks like something's gonna happen and I just wanted to just it was nice to come home and see that done so I just wanted to say thank you working on that connection strategy on the priorities we're getting there um and then on a more serious note I want want to thank um interim Chief Red Fern I had a conversation with him about our hiring protocols after hearing about the tragedy that happened um in the death of in the murder of um s

[195:00] Massie um who was shot in the face um unfortunately of no cause of hers and uh the officer who's who at question allegedly or whatever um was at six different police departments and so I just C put a call in to say hey I just want to double double check and we don't allow people who have a pattern to we have protocols to make sure U that we don't have people with histories of domestic violence etc etc and so I was just really happy to hear that that and most certainly is not our protocol and we have strict policies and place to prevent something like that and then lastly of course the north sky Trail opening and I just want to take a moment to also thank our indigenous um and our tribal um ancestral stores who make us make it possible for us to even discuss it and I'm hopeful that in the design of this north sky Trail which was a balance of ecological um cultural um uh user groups um that this is the direction we

[196:00] need to be moving in so thank you so much but I did want to specifically lift up our both our ancestral stores and I'm eager to again um ensure that we are continuing to figure out meaningful ways to atone for the stolen land that we have the opportunity to live on um and heal relationship ships with our indigenous and tribal communities thank you than for that Taisha and um the those lovely Kudos and just to clarify we are done with our airport item um so if anybody has some some final thoughts uh so John appreciate everything Natalie and the rest of the staff thanks so much for being here and all your work there thank you um and then before we wrap it up entirely any other uh final thoughts on the meeting Ryan just one closing comment I uh I want to Express gratitude to the to Natalie and the transportation Mobility team and Allison for the incredible depth and breadth of work that they are taking forward uh this airport uh

[197:00] process on its own is is gargantuan I was a part of it as a transportation Advisory board meeting and um was um had the pleasure to watch Allison run that um just with great great diligence um but this same team is is is working on the iris Avenue new bike way and we've got Transportation enhancement policy coming up in a few weeks and I just I just wanted to thank the team um for just doing an enormous amount of work right now that um is very important for the community so thank you well said all right well we're ending almost on time thanks everybody for uh great questions and a good discussion tonight um Elicia we got anything else sir we're at the end of our agenda no sir that's the end of the agenda okay very very good well welcome back everybody to uh meeting times and have a lovely evening and take care of yourselves G's closed 13 p.m. good night