August 22, 2024 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[6:17] evening and welcome to tonight's study okay good evening and welcome to tonight's study session of the Boulder City Council my name is council member Tara Wier and thank you for joining us we we have on tonight's agenda two items our first item will be a joint discussion with the planning board on the Boulder Valley comprehensive Plan update draft scope schedule and engagement strategy our second item is the minimum wage update I would like to take this time to welcome the chair and members of the planning board to this joint study session welcome before we go into our work items I would like to outline how the meeting will be conducted we'll staff's

[7:00] presentation for each item and then we will have a time for questions at the end of the presentations we will conduct our Joint Council discussion with staff on item one once we have completed item one this plan the planning board can leave the meeting and go watch television we all know what you're going to watch and Council will continue on with item number two if you have any questions please wait for staff to complete the presentation and now we're going to turn to our city manager Nua Rivera vandery to introduce our first item thanks so much council member and uh hello to our planning board members today is uh and I guess I should say hello to our council members as well we we see you all the time um today's an exciting day uh it is Boulder Valley comp plan time an exciting Visionary document and we're going to be talking about a bolder future uh we got a big meeting as well because we know we've got another Hot Topic uh later on today

[8:01] a big full mey topic both of these and so without further Ado I will pass to our director of planning and development services Brad Mueller thank you Nia uh good to see you all planning board members and Council um we are super excited to be able to follow up on the study sessions that we held with you both individually uh a couple months ago or a month ago I want to just share with you how unique of an opportunity a comprehensive Plan update is it's really one of those rare opportunities where we can step back both as uh a community and those involved in its leadership to ask ourselves the big question of what would and should the community look like in the next 20 years which is the planning Horizon for the comprehensive plan um we will be working hard to lean and understand the community's vision in the next 20 months which is the time frame we'll be laying out in front of you here 20 months may sound like a long time but it's actually um pretty short in terms

[9:02] of trying to make space for the big ideas and I will say that um in my half dozen or so uh opportunities I've had in my career to do a comp plan update they are always exciting they're always a little bit unpredictable because you are talking about aspirational things and trying to gauge really a community consensus at some level around a vision for 20 years from now so we're excited to be able to present this to you tonight and uh look forward to uh a much longer engagement with you all uh but just starting in Earnest tonight so I'm going to turn it over to uh Christopher Johnson who is the city's senior manager for comprehensive planning great thank you Brad uh and good evening planning board and council members it's good to see all of you and exciting to see you all in the same virtual room uh as Brad mentioned in next sort of 20 months or two years time

[10:02] I am very hopeful that I'll be able to begin the final adoption hearing for the next comprehensive Plan update in the same way that I plan to tonight which is with a few thank yous and introductions um and really to say that this is a significant undertaking and that it really quite literally takes a village to be successful on this journey um first and for foremost that's going to include our community and I mean community in the broadest sense including our residents our workers our visitors we truly could not do this without their voices uh it also includes you our elected and appointed members that represent the views of our community through through your various policies and actions and ultimately what will be uh included and adopted in the in the comprehensive Plan update uh our city of Boulder leadership and staff and also um in all of our different departments because as they will either directly or indirectly touch this process at some moment uh through through the you know through this next two years and then uniquely the process

[11:02] also includes our partners in Boulder County this is a a jointly adopted uh document and a few of which have joined us this evening so I did want to take a chance to introduce Hannah hippley who serves as my counterpart as the County's longrange planning manager uh Kim Sanchez who's the deputy director and Dale case who is the director of Boulder County Community planning and permitting and then finally I just wanted to recognize and introduce all of the core team that have worked so hard to get us to this point and that you'll be interacting with at at one moment or another throughout the next two years Sarah horn will be serving as the project manager and the primary point of contact she'll be kicking off the presentation this evening Kathleen King is really going to be our content lead and drive uh you know some of the big decisions and policies that that will ultimately go into uh the comprehensive plan and then Vivian Castro wridge and Chris rangos are going to be tasked with all things engagement so no small effort

[12:00] there um and in a variety of other important roles are Tess sha Kanani POA Tucker horch Kate stanic and then absent this evening is is Becca hee uh and there's a number of other P ands team members like Charles phoh and Carl Gyer and others that are going to be of great help as we get further along um so with that I do want to pass it on to Sarah horn to lead us lead us off on the presentation thank you hello everyone can you see the screen yes all right well as KJ mentioned I'm Sarah horn senior city planner on the comp planning team in planning and development services and I'm really excited I think along with the rest of the comp planning team to be here tonight to talk to you about our preparation for the comp plan update last time our team was with you in July Tess and Chris provided a general overview of the comprehensive plan tonight we're going to dig a little

[13:00] deeper and talk about our process for the major update and our first big engagement event is coming up on October 19th the community openhouse kickoff after these activities we'll officially launch into the major phases of work for the update our purpose tonight is to describe the proposed bbcp update process with you and receive your feedback I'll start with an overview of overarching themes and the project schedule Kathleen will then go over the proposed scope of work Vivian will talk about our draft communication and engagement plan and our community assembly Partners will share some information about this engagement tactic then I'll quickly go over key milestones in next steps as we move through the presentation we have three questions to focus your discussion do members of planning board or Council have any questions or feedback related to the draft project schedule or scope of work do you have any questions or feedback related to the communications and engagement approach for the project and lastly we're curious about what a successful major update process looks like for each of

[14:01] you as a quick reminder the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan promotes the Boulder Valley community's Vision goals objectives and policies this is one of the most influential plans we manage and it impacts many city-wide efforts including City budgeting in the capital Improvement program subcommunity area and individual Department plans and development standards and Zoning IT addresses both the current and future needs of our community and guides decisions on a variety of topics including land use and growth the built-in natural environments transportation and climate the economy Housing and Community well-being and safety because the bbcp is such an influential document we're being very intentional about bringing in equity Focus to this update and integrating Equity throughout both the process itself and the process outcomes we're doing this by including Equity as a central consideration and focus in the design of our Communications and engagement strategy we've also allocated staff and

[15:00] budget Resources with the intention for this to be the most inclusive comprehensive planning process to date we'll be using the racial Equity instrument during each phase of work and identifying racial Equity strategies and Consulting with historically excluded communities to ensure we maximize opportunities to advance equity in our strategies and decisions for engagement and in the policy outcomes of the plan we'll work with the equity data team to help guide our engagement efforts and for our analyses of data and policy Alternatives throughout the process using these tools will help us create policies with the community that the team is confident will work toward advancing our Equity goals for the last major update we didn't have the strong set of tools we do now we're really excited to be able to use them on a large scale and feel empowered knowing that we're now better equipped to Center Equity as we look to the future of the entire Boulder Valley Community to successfully complete the update by quarter 3 of 2026 we've prepared a schedule to keep us and the community on track after we get your

[16:01] feedback tonight and finalize our scope of work schedule and Communications and engagement plan we'll start working on phase one and the major deliverable for this phase the existing conditions analysis then 2025 will be a big gear for Community engagement as we move to phases two and three to confirm our community's Vision Values and focus areas and to propose and evaluate policy options then in 2026 we'll work toward plan adoption by the four approval bodies including you along with the Boulder County Planning Commission and the board of County Commissioners so we have a busy and hopefully interesting and engaging two years ahead of us and now I'm going to turn it over to Kathleen to talk about our proposed scope of work and project phases in more detail thanks Sarah good evening my name is Kathleen King I'm a principal city planner with the team in pnds and I am so excited to speak with you all about the draft scope of work for this update project and the scope is broken into

[17:00] four major phases and so I'm going to walk you through each phase okay so let's go the first phase a boulder today is focused on understanding existing conditions and learning about the Boulder Valley with the community the purpose of this first phase of work is to deliver a comprehensive understanding of the Boulder Valley as a place how it functions who lives works or visits here and what changes might have happened since the last major update I always um really love this phase of a project because this is where you get to dig in and really learn about a place from the community's perspective in addition to collecting a baseline of data about existing conditions the project team will also work with the community to consider Trends in topics like population and demographics land use economy social infrastructure and arts and culture culture this will give us

[18:00] insight into how the area has evolved in recent Years and may hint at what we should consider preparing for in the future over the 20-year Horizon of the plan Community engagement during this phase will focus on collecting some of the more qualitative information about how people think and feel about Boulder today potentially following up on some of the issues described in the 2023 Community survey this will help us fill gaps that we might have in some of our more quantitative analysis this phase is also really about building excitement and activating the community to participate in the comprehensive planning process with that in mind your role in this phase of work will be to help the team build that awareness and excitement about the project and then also as policy makers we'll be coming to you with a comprehensive look at how City systems are working today we will need your direction to zoom in on the most

[19:00] valuable issues to address in the major update so that we can collectively keep the project on schedule and move into the next phase of work this first phase will result in two major deliverables there will be an existing conditions and Trends analysis which provides that Baseline of understanding about the Boulder Valley and then we'll also produce an engagement summary that collects and summarizes all the input we receive during this phase of work we'll continue to build on this engagement capture for each of the subsequent phases throughout the rest of the project so Community feedback can be used to inform your direction and decisions once those deliverables are completed we're going to move into phase two of Boulder tomorrow so the purpose of this phase is to talk about the vision for our community for the next 20 years learn what our needs will be and where Community priorities lie

[20:01] Community engagement will focus on that long-term vision for the Boulder Valley our current bbcp has a vision statement we will ask community members if we need to adjust this Vision has anything changed or does it still ring true this is also the phase where we'll begin to hone in on some topics of Interest or Focus areas to see how those Focus areas align with the city's sustainability equity and resilience framework then also identify how the community prioritizes those different issues we'll meet with planning board and city council during this phase to share the draft Community Vision and gather your feedback on prioritizing Focus areas those issues and how we Define them will determine where we spend a lot of the community's time and attention evaluating policies that affect the city and unincorporated Boulder County your feedback will finalize and formalize those statements and then serve as guideposts for for the community's work on revised bbcp

[21:01] policies and future land use strategies major deliverables for this phase will be the updated vision statement and Community Values then we will also finalize a list of focus areas for the comprehensive Plan update and that takes us to phase three which is a boulder Direction This is the most intense phase of work where we will dive into policy options discuss tradeoffs with the community and try to make some tough decisions the purpose of this phase of work is to take a deep dive into our comp plan policies we have around 210 policies right now the community will weigh in on policy updates potential removal of policies and filling gaps by adding new policies a policy framework outlining the big moves will be created to help guide the analysis of different strategies that will determine the direction the valley is committed to for

[22:01] the next 20 years this phase of work also includes the public change request process whereby any Community member has the opportunity to request changes to the comprehensive plan including the future land use map the public change request process is a formal process def defined by the current bbcp to help streamline this effort the team will create a digital platform to manage these request submissions the project team will analyze those submissions and present public requests to planning board and city council for consideration engagement during this phase of work will ask the community to wrestle with trade-offs and potential outcomes for the future we'll be collaborating with community members to identify which policy options best address our challenges and provide the greatest opportunity to achieve Our Community Vision the bbcp policies influence a series of important city and county

[23:01] programs and regulations including but not limited to budgeting Capital Improvement programs and zoning and development standards city and county review bodies will be responsible for evaluating a draft set of comp plan policies specific to the city of Boulder these policies will be considered alongside the city's sustainability equity and resilience framework to ensure that recommended policy updates are consistent with the community Comm feedback and our shared SC goals the project team will be working across City boards and with Council pretty intensely during this phase of work and then um you will have seen in your packet that there's a potential additional task related to the area 3 planning reserve the second step of the area 3 planning Reserve process is to prepare an assessment of priority Community needs this step must be incorporated during a midterm or major update to the BB BCP by integrating this

[24:00] task into the bbcp update process it allows the community to consider Area 3 within the context of the entire city rather than as a isolated element public hearings at planning board and city council are scheduled to be held in November 2024 to decide if staff are authorized to proceed with the assessment as part of this bbcp update if authorized staff will incorporate the community needs assessment task into this phase of work the community needs assessment would likely begin during phase two to incorporate feedback on Community Vision and priorities an analysis of the potential benefits and impacts of allowing development of the area 3 planning Reserve in response to those needs will be integrated into the Citywide analysis of the policy framework and land use strategies as part of phase three staff are still developing the details of this particular task however the goal of the community needs assessment is determine

[25:01] determine whether there is sufficient Community need that cannot reasonably be met within the current service area which is areas one and two and would therefore require expansion into the area 3 planning Reserve so at the end of phase three we will have created a policy framework that describes the general direction at a high level and guides our analysis of options a policy analysis describing potential trade-offs and impacts this is a key moment where the racial Equity instrument will be an important part of that analysis so that we can consider outcomes that may unintentionally disadvantage any members of the community and then finally we will have reviewed and developed recommendations on all of those public change requests so this phase is going to have a lot of detailed work um a lot of modeling and potential modeling of potential outcomes um but we're really going to strive to

[26:00] make the deliverables of this phase clear and accessible for the whole community and all of that will get us to a draft update of the comp plan which we will take through an adoption process in phase four so the purpose of this phase is to take all of that work and put it into the form of a comprehensive plan that the community and approval bodies can review provide Fe back on and make any final changes to before being adopted by planning board city council and your counterparts of the county during this Final Phase of work the community will provide feedback on whether the draft plan aligns with the Vision Values and draft policy Direction established in earlier phases and will have opportunities to express levels of support for the plan Community comments at a draft plan stage will provide the project team and decision makers with potential revisions to

[27:02] consider the scope of work allows for major decision making to occur throughout the process primarily in phases two and three so you know the hope is in phase four the four approval bodies will review the draft plan for consistency with Community feedback and other relevant values such as the SE framework to provide staff with Direction on any significant revisions that may be necessary city and county policy makers will also review and provide Direction on the public change requests that have been incorporated into the draft plan and the future land use map the final M Milestone of the project will be plan adoption and renewal of the intergovernmental agreement the plan requires a majority vote by all four approval bodies and the IGA requires approval by city council and the board of County Commissioners so major deliverables for this phase will include a draft of the

[28:00] complete bbcp update for review and comment and then following any necessary revision the final version of the major update to the comprehensive plan so that version will go through the 4body adoption process and that will complete the scope of work for the project should be a piece of cake um no problem no we're really we're really really excited and I think it's going to be a really fun process so I'm going to turn it over now to Vivian Castro wridge who's going to dive a little bit deeper into our engagement work for this project thank you greetings all I'm Vivian Castro wridge planning engagement strategist and uh the team is really been thinking a lot about engagement and I'm excited to share our approach with you and then hear your feedback and we've heard earlier from Kathleen how these Community conversations will be framed for each phase of the work through the big questions she shared and that build on each other and be speaking more to the overall approach um to centering our

[29:01] community in the process so community members will have opportunities throughout the process to participate and we've really carefully aligned our engagement Windows here in blue with the scope of work and I just want to share with you the set of principles that um the team has developed that really helps explain the spirit and intention of our engagement approach we are seeking to honor new voices and input throughout the process and also building on input that we've heard from earlier engagement and taking the opportunity to go deeper and some of these past engagements include Community survey recent engagement around the S framework and budget priorities child-friendly City initiative and many others and we're also aiming for this to be the most inclusive bbcp update process to date and centering equity and engagement to ensure we hear diverse perspectives because we know that's important to achieve more Equitable outcomes and for all engagement tactics we want to ensure we're circling back and sharing how the community's feedback was used and we also want to be sure that we use community's time well and make space for

[30:01] conversations that provide meaningful and useful input for the process we'll be continuously evaluating if we're being effective in our engagement and whether they're gaps in who we're hearing from and adjust our approach as needed overall the bbcp engagement will be in the collaborate level of Engagement in our spectrum and at this level the promise to the community is to work together to formulate Solutions and incorporate communities advice and recommendations into the bbcp update to the maximum extent possible um and while while saying that collaborate is our highest level of Engagement and it reflects our overall intentions but we will not be in that space for all tactics at all times collaborate involves a high level of time and energy from the community so some tactics across the process will fall into consult and involve parts parts of the spectrum to increase accessibility and reach and ensure we're hearing from as many community members as possible and Communications will complement

[31:00] engagement to ensure that our community is informed about the process and knows how to participate throughout we have a creative team excited to try new things and Reach people we don't typically hear from and we know that we need to offer a range of opportunities to appeal to different people and you'll recognize many of these because we do them routinely so I'll just highlight some of the newer ideas we're planning Partnerships with Community leaders who can help us to reach historically excluded communities and hold what we're calling community-led conversations with their own communities and providing us back that feedback we're planning on a community assembly as a process for collaborative problem solving that you'll hear more about from our consultant partner shortly and internally we're also coordinating to understand how we can thoughtfully dubet tail or leverage any other department planning proc processes that also require engagement we are striving for everyone living working and visiting the Boulder Valley to have opportunities to participate in this process process and to be heard and we know that some

[32:00] audiences are harder to reach than others um like commuters Runners University students is just a few examples and we're going to look specifically at how to make sure we we hear from these and other harder to reach groups and also work closely with the county to reach people in unincorporated County and when we met with you in July you asked us to be very intentional about our engagement with local and Regional Partners such as bbsd and CU and we're building their involvement into our approach also partnering with growing up Boulder for youth engagement and um so we can build on the child friendly City initiative action plan because the comp plan is our best funded and resource process we saw this as a great opportunity to innovate and try something that moves the needle in the way we engaged and we'll be introducing a community assembly into this process and are very much at the foundational learning stage internally and this fall we'll start a thoughtful design process uh with a very experienced partner Mass LBP and Community assemblies are a relatively new practice in the US but MTH has worked on over 50 assemblies in Canada

[33:00] and will be guiding us on our journey to design an assembly specifically for Boulder and specifically for this process and to build our capacity to do this in the future and to build the capacity of uh local experts that we intend to bring in to help us um for other roles including meeting facilitation and evaluation um and potentially others so now I'd like to introduce Peter mlead of Mass to talk to you a little bit more about the concept of the assembly and the best use of an assembly um based on their long experience so over to upier that's terrific and I'm very happy to be able to join all of you I'm sitting here in Port Hope Ontario which is about 100 kilometers east of Toronto in the North shore of Lake Ontario and I appreciate that Canada might seem a ways away from where you are in Boulder uh true story one of my best friends Jesse shapin uh born and raised in Boulder and it wasn't 5 years ago that I was I think in the lower level of the boulder bookstore doing some serious damage and spending a

[34:01] few very contented hours there as part of a a great trip to your city um I had the opportunity to meet some of your colleagues at a recent um event that was uh organized in Washington uh that brought together different leaders from across the US and around the world uh really trying to find better ways to engage members of the public in the work of democracy and in the work of government our organization in Canada has really been at the Forefront of this movement if you're wondering about our name well you can probably guess about the mass part uh LBP it's not some um strange legal entity uh that you've never uh heard of it stands for led by people uh which is really the essence of what we do I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking a little bit about these Community assemblies what differentiates them from other kinds of participatory processes give you a few

[35:02] examples of how we've been using them and of course take any questions that you might have uh as well um I I never Tire of citing that the Washington Post maybe this is a Canadian chip on my shoulder uh in the 1980s held a um a headline contest it wanted to find the world's most boring headline and could you not the winning uh submission was worthwhile Canadian initiative announced well um I'll leave it to you to judge but I actually happen to believe that Community assemblies which began 20 years ago in Vancouver British Colombia uh maybe Canada's most significant Democratic uh and I think very worthwhile uh export um we used them in a quite a transformative way uh to increase access to Pharmaceuticals to

[36:00] regulate social media uh to deal with um reforms to primary care but also scores and scores of Municipal issues from very nuanced land use planning uh challenges uh to the development and informing official planning processes working with some of our largest Transit providers um and also dealing with important questions of Municipal governance and for uh reform we'll move to the next slide uh this is just a smattering of um the the assemblies that uh taking place in cities like Toronto Calgary Lethbridge uh Vancouver the greater Toronto region um we are excited to be able to bring some of our expertise to inform the work that uh your colleagues are doing but ultimately to help build a local team it's not going to be me or my colleague Sarah who are uh working to deliver this assembly we're going to

[37:00] help support a team in the design of that assembly uh to help ensure that it succeeds it's something that we do with jurisdictions across Canada increasingly in the US and in other parts of the world uh next slide um Community assemblies I mean because they're using two words that are kind of in common parlament I mean everyone has ideas about what community is and they have ideas about what it means when you bring folks together to work community assemblies however have a fairly specific function you know they're they're not there to replace focus groups or town hall meetings frankly they're not very good at brainstorming really they're an adjudicative group they're they're there to to weigh uh different tradeoffs and to wrestle with complex issues some people say that a community assembly is what people think when they actually have a chance to think about something and become better informed and one of

[38:00] the tricks to any good assembly process is that at the end of the day you don't just tally up the votes and you know um the majority wins they actually have to reach a kind of working consensus and that forces an intensity of deliberation which obviously isn't part of many of the uh approaches to participation and Community engagement that are often employed so the way we like to think about a community assembly is that uh it isn't a sounding board it's not there to you know get a bunch of ideas it's really there to solve problems and the more specific the problem in fact the thornier the problem um what might feel like the the more politically sensitive the problem the more helpful we've seen these Community assemblies to be um let me just conclude by talking about the three major components on the next slide uh that make up a community

[39:00] assembly first is the Mandate and that's ultimately what um needs to be determined what is the community assembly going to deliberate on we like to call it a big ask and a clear task because ultimately we're inviting people to volunteer 40 50 or more hours of their time over a series of days in which they're going to have a chance to hear from a wide range of professional and Community sources of expertise to take the measure of an issue to turn it around and then ultimately provide that consensus advice so the Mandate is really critical and as I've said The more specific and tangible the problem uh the more insightful and clear uh the result the second component is well who are the members of this community assembly how did people get in the room the fancy word that political scientists we use as sortition uh we prefer to call

[40:00] it a Civic Lottery because we want people to feel good about winning at some point thousands of letters will go out to randomly selected households and it's going to invite uh anyone likely over the age of 18 uh to volunteer to serve on the community assembly there'll be a period of U several weeks or a month in which they're able to call a 1 1800 line get any questions answered really feel supported in deciding whether this is is something they want to take on and also knowing that there are other ways to contribute if for whatever reason this doesn't feel like a good fit for them we typically T send out 10,000 letters and believe it or not at a time where it can seem like a real lift to get folks out for a town hall meeting we have about a 5% to 7% response rate so it's a pool of five to 700 people and maybe you'd be surprised and I hope reassured to know that they come from every conceivable Walk of Life but we don't leave it at that we use a

[41:01] series of randomizing filters when ultimately selecting the members of the community assembly we can talk more about uh what those demographic and Geographic criteria might be but suffice it to say that we're trying to create a composite of the community and all of the breadth and depth of its diversity the random representativ selection process helps us do a great job of that once people have been selected we staff them we treat them as though they are there to perform a critical public function because in fact they are and so a local team will be the ones reaching out communicating with them onboarding them and getting them ready for the deliberative phase and you know we can talk a lot about putting citizens at the center and citizens with a small C all members of the community really but the deliberative process really is a

[42:00] conversation between different sources of expertise including the member's own and in a process that leads big picture of values to talking about issues settling on priorities and ultimately cashing out a series of recommendations I have every confidence that Boulders First Community assembly is going to be able to to reach a a good um agreement um last slide is simply to show you a photo of one of our national assemblies this is a canidate believe it or not if you put it in a room 36 individuals who helped write some major reforms to how we provide pharmaceutical access uh in our country they're standing in spirit Hall in the museum of Canadian history in AWA um time and again when we're working with clients whether it's the smallest Community or a federal minister they say that their interactions with these assemblies have been one of the professional high points of their careers and like I said I look very much forward to a quick conversation tonight

[43:00] but really working with you and your team to help deliver a great process in Boulder I'll stop there and hand back to Sarah thanks a lot Peter and I might be willing to bet that we might get some exciting headlights for this community assembly in Boulder um so um with that I'm going to quickly touch on key milestones and next steps for the bbcp process in terms of milestones we have a few to mention tonight as Kathleen discussed ear earlier a decision on steps 1 and two of the area 3 planning Reserve service area expansion process will need to be made in November of this year then in December we plan to have the existing conditions analysis completed moving to 2025 we hope to finalize the Plan Focus areas and open the public request process by quarter two and in early 2026 we'll start reviewing the draft plan with policy makers and community members as Kathleen mentioned and finally in quarter three of 2026 our team will bring the plan to you and the county approving bodies for

[44:00] adoption and what are our next steps well we're preparing for two upcoming community events our team will be sharing information about the update process at the Citywide what'ss up Boulder event on September 7th and as I touched on it the beginning of the presentation will be at the dairy Arts Center on October 19th for the bbcp update Community kickoff event the state demographer Elizabeth Garner is going to join us to talk about Boulder specific and Statewide demographic and economic trends and we're looking to work with local artists to help facilitate a variety of interactive engaging child-friendly and hopefully fun activities for the community to share information and get everyone excited about the update and finally we'll post all of our project and engagement information throughout the process on a new website at a bolder future.org which will be ready to go in the next few weeks now that your brains are full of all things bbcp we'll leave you with the three questions we shared at the beginning of the presentation do you have questions or feedback related to the schedule or scope of work

[45:01] do you have questions or feedback on our Communications and engagement approach and finally which I mentioned before we're really interested to know what does this successful major update process look like for you and with that I'll hand it back over to council and planning board thank you so much Sarah this was a great presentation thank you everybody so first before we do anything else I have to quickly ask because I'm going to change my you I'm wondering if you could actually take down the presentation so I can see everybody and somebody needs to remind me how I know who goes first on my screen uh Tara if you open up the participants panel it'll place them in the order that their hands have been raised that's great thank you welcome okay so first and always first does anybody have any clarifying questions for staff

[46:00] let's see it looks like we have Claudia first go Claudia s just getting over to my questions here um let's see I had a couple of questions about the process just um where in the process certain things will be happening um and and I really appreciate the explanation of how there's this public um process for requesting changes in policies right so that's that's a certain phase that we're going to go through when we revisit those 200 policies um I'm less clear about um what the process is and the timeline is for addressing things like map changes that's a a big part of the bbcp we've got the land use designations we've got the land use map um is that a similar process to the policy review um is that

[47:00] a different track and when does that happen yeah thank you for that question I'll take a first uh cut at that and then Christopher company um I think the first answer to that uh board member is that the two are really integrated there's policy affects the map and discussions about what the map should be reflecting is going to uh inform policy and I don't know Christopher or um Kathleen or others if you can put a finer point on that yeah I'll jump in really quickly Brad I think you're right yeah the the two are really integrated and specifically that public change request process would allow for either community members and and others board members even could can request changes to anything within the comp plan including the land use map so certainly any community-driven requests around land use changes would come in through that public request process but also staff

[48:01] will be reviewing and you know recommending any adjustments to the land use map as necessary based on the conversations that we're hearing sort of through the summer time frame of next year I'll just add one other aspect um so in addition to those that may be more specific and targeted uh an example that comes to mind if that there's High orientation around 15minute neighborhoods says a key orientation for policy it might be appropriate to have that reflected in the map in maybe a different way than it currently is or something similar currently is okay um can I ask a quick followup or related to the same question and then I'll step aside um and that is um so when we have this public request process I have no idea how many requests you actually expect to receive from members of the public but um do city council and planning board members decision makers in this process

[49:01] do we get to see these requests as they are submitted or are we only going to see them after they've been reviewed and or filtered by City staff uh I believe that and and we we need to go back and and review the there are a few um uh requirements related to the public request process but I actually believe that planning board and city council see all of them staff will put forward a recommendation and there will be a you know we will develop a set of criteria in filtering in order to do that um and and we would bring forward the recommended changes based on that staff analysis but also as part of that package um I believe that every request that comes through is is communicated don't H to both planning board and city council okay thank you is that it Claudia for now okay all right Mark you're next thanks um my first question is for

[50:03] uh Peter McLoud um I think I heard the words a functional consensus and having been part of a consensus group that was strictly defined as complete agreement by all members of the group and and to some degree in my view subject to a tyranny of the minority um could you expand on what you mean by functional consensus and how that relates to Counting votes or not counting votes and and getting people to uh reach a broader consensus anyway you get my question I think totally get your question mark and and and thanks for it um without playing semantics I do want to draw a distinction between consens and unanimity what we're not looking for in

[51:00] an assembly is unanimity everybody shares the exact same prescription the exact same Viewpoint a consensus in our mind is what can everybody live with uh not every we often say to folks that you know politics is uh you know as a grown-up profession what do we know about being a grown-up we don't get everything we want right but we all have to be able to live with it we all have to be able to broadly accept the rationale um the purpose the spirit and the intent of what's being informed why do I say that well it really depends on the question that you put to the assembly right now in British Columbia's capital Victoria we're going through an almost year-long assembly on the question of amalgamation with an adjacent municipality that is a binary question at the end of the day um we have to reach a real consensus uh where all members support um the recommendation but you know they going

[52:00] to be a whole bunch of um uh additional recommendations Beyond just the question of whether they amalgamate or not and so that's where some of the Nuance some of the discussion uh really takes place and where we don't um see people feeling as though they are um as a a small minority in a group kind of being ridden rough shot over I will say that all assembly processes uh tend to also have what's called a Minority Report um and that is if any person has anything that they want to say about the process its Integrity the recommendations some subcomponent by right unedited unvetted they get to put it in the appendix of the report it serves as a really valuable uh a safety valve against I think the concern you're you're bringing up does that address some of concern Mark great that's a that's an excellent excellent answer um I have one other

[53:02] question for for Brad um we at at at one of our recent prior meetings we discussed the urban services update as kind of a uh an initial step to the beginning of the bbcp revision process and uh some members had some uh pointed suggestions about uh a more forward looking uh View and using more forward-looking documents to uh Implement that Urban services update and did our feedback change anything or is it proceeding a pace or what what is the status of that sure uh thanks for that question and we've had an opportunity to update the council members on this but not planning board members so appreciate that uh we've

[54:01] taken the feedback from Council and and planning board which was similar and added a scenario four uh that would take into consideration a concept where some of the park land was repurposed for uh residential and other uses but then more to your question uh we are working with the consultant to add an Alternatives uh um explanation so a description of what uh various alternative Technologies or uh efficiencies in service product in service uh provision would result in um the scenarios that are being developed so there'll be a I don't know if it's a chapter or you know a section that speaks to that um again this uh as we discussed with the planning board the urban cuses study for planning area three is um is a modeling exercise and again that would inform uh future

[55:03] discussions at either step two or step and step three of uh the planning Reserve uh discussion should Council decide to trigger that as we outlined in the slide earlier great thank you very much sure okay before I pick on Nicole I don't mean pick on before I choose Nicole and Taisha and I want to say one thing if you look at the questions do members have any questions or feedback on the draft project schedule or scope of work and do members have any questions or feedback on the communications and engagement approach if any of these have to do with your questions I'm going to ask you to hold them off until we're up to those because I want to make sure to get to those and we just have a certain a lot of time all right assuming they're not Nicole you're

[56:00] up thank you um and you can stop me Tara if this is related toh to one of those so my question is um in the the first part um we're going to be looking at demographic information Trends how our community is now how we may change in the years ahead and I'm just wondering if there's going to be consideration um of other types of changes that we might see in the decades ahead um so sort of a um a more General kind of future conditions assessment um thinking about you know just because our world is a little chaotic right now um things like Mass migration due to climate change desertification of land or other ecological risks um greater risk of pandemics uh more people living with disability um and then more and more intense natur natural disasters um due to climate change as well and so I'm just wondering if that's part of that initial stage of work of kind looking at where we're at now and then um getting

[57:00] prepared to think about where we're headed and that's my only question thank you yeah thank you for the question council member I um I think that you're right as part of that initial sort of existing conditions research and then the even into phase two as we start talking about the Community Vision and and um some of those really foundational kind of qualitative discussions I think think those will be the opportunities where we can start to explore the you know kind of the big existential questions that are out there and how we might respond to those and how we also might um uh you know prepare some analyses or evaluations of those uh going forward because I think that um you know through that analysis process of the of the policies once we get to that stage we'll want to have done the research and and done the the work beforehand and UPF front to understand um you know what climate models we might

[58:00] be needing to look at or you know those kinds of things so I think right now you know we don't we don't have those defined as of as of now but certainly those would be I think kind of the big questions we'd be looking for in terms of trying to Define that over the next um you know three to six months before we really get into those analysis bases all right next we have Taisha awesome thank you so much for the presentation and I'm really excited especially about um the opportunity to deepen engagement just a couple of questions one um so I know there's a lot of existing plans so in the process just curious how some of those existing plans that we have that are overlapping um that will go into um this year so just kind of the inventory and crosswalk kind of aspect as well as um those plans that are happening in tandem so for example the climate action update uh uh climate

[59:01] Action Plan update so just would love to hear just how we're reconciling or preparing those um and synergizing around those so that is my first question um of three so I'm happy to share all my questions now or we can take them one by one you you decide oh I'll decide I prefer just taking them while and then you can decide so that one um the other piece is around the um engagement and you know again I was curious if there were considerations of how we can consider um doing more Arts Infused inspired um efforts engaging with Movement Theater dance and music um and if that was something that had been considered um in the engagement as some of the as one of the methods and processes recognizing that there is Rich data um and and evidence around the power of that um and then it also on the engagement front um just how we're engaging with our federal

[60:01] our federal and state Partners as well as our regional Partners um particularly at the state level curious about the intersections of the draft State um Wildlife plan um the draft outdoor recreation plan the or strategy and the environmental justice um reporting and Analysis that we that they've been conducting so again just how we are in addition to all the dip deep and Rich engagement at the community level recognizing that we're not an island so just would love to hear a little bit more about um that piece and then lastly from a procedural place um just curious how we are um in engaging our the cities um and and the cities in our County and in our in our in in the Front Range um at the elected um staff uh and Community levels thank you thank you for those questions uh council

[61:00] member Adams um in terms of integration with other plans um we we probably haven't done the complete mapping of that although I'll turn to Vivian and maybe others to speak to that if we have but philosophically we know that we don't want to reinvent the wheel uh we know that there's B good dialogue uh on past efforts um and of course we don't want to go too far back either so that it's fresh and then it will be a bit of art um for us to kind of juggle things that are maybe happening concurrent with this such as the Civic area 2 planning processes and some of the other ones you mentioned the good news there is we've got a lot of um interde departmental coordination uh for this particular project but also on those other ones as well and in fact there are Department Representatives already identified that will be Liaisons to the comprehensive plan and so one of our tasks to them will be to make sure that they are keeping the radar and sight lines out

[62:02] for that and if I can jump to your third question too about the state planning and some of those types of things as part of our Partnerships and engagement uh we will be asking those Partners to be reflecting on adjacent uh types of projects that would influence the discussion on any particular topic whether it's wild wild life or uh water or you know any of the other uh topics that will ultimately be um hitting on this and as far as Arts infusion just reflecting back on the Civic area they I think did a a great job of giving us an example of how to infuse art into the engagement process with some of the real-time mural making and things like that and uh I suspect that that's been in our baileywick as well but I'll turn it over to Viv now to expand on some of those three things I mentioned yeah thank you TAA for the

[63:01] Arts question I'm excited you're thinking about it um and we're thinking about arts and engagement because we know it brings new people in and it helps us communicate complex ideas and it helps people share their stories in a way that maybe they wouldn't if we hadn't used art so we are having that conversation internally and we don't have the specifics but we also want to help bring our local artists into the process so stay tuned awesome thank you um lastly I'll I'll just make sure to address your question about engaging other elected officials and such and that's where we're going to uh really rely on the partnership with uh you all uh and the networks that you have as well as County Partners and reaching out into those other U adjacent geographies uh the geography of the Boulder Valley itself and the plan uh doesn't include any other Incorporated cities uh but we

[64:02] also know that it's important to think regionally even Beyond this already Regional plan so appreciate that recognition and and we'll build that in as well awesome thank you very much I have a few other questions but I know I see some other hands raised so I'm happy to um defer and come back during comments thank you now just to clarify the next two things we're going to do are questions still so make double sure none of your questions are on this list I'm counting on you okay Lauren um I really appreciated tesa's question about the um inter how this interfaces with other plans and I've wondering if we're going to be doing any kind of assessment um a lot of those other plans have already had substantial Community feedback and trying to as we

[65:02] look at kind of existing conditions I think it would be helpful to understand where we are in terms of our ability to meet those and if there's um things related to the comprehensive plan that we might want to bring up in order to like help us meet those or trade-offs that we might be weighing related to those plans is there could that be part of the process or is that already planned on being part of the process yeah maybe I could speak to that a little bit um so Sarah showed that diagram in the beginning where we have the comprehensive plan is the overarching guide for all of these subsequent City plans and so certainly there is an exchange of ideas and policy and information that we have to integrate between the wide range of plans that we have but a lot of the other plans throughout the city you know

[66:02] these other departments do a great job with engagement a great job tracking their own data so the transportation master plan they have incredible amounts of existing conditions data they know an incredible amount about their system and um we will be working really closely with the groups that manage those other plans to make sure that our existing conditions data is really accurate and up todate and that the goals that we're working towards are all you know in alignment as we move through this process so there's there's going to be a lot of iteration and a lot of um collaboration with with other departments um but we will be kind of referencing each other back and forth throughout that process and when I was thinking about this I was thinking more of like our um climate action plan and things like that

[67:00] where we have a set goal that we're trying to achieve and understanding where we are in terms of being able to achieve that uh just as we go into this um comprehensive plan task so yeah I think that's a really great example because probably the comprehensive plan today um doesn't have the um depth of policies that our climate action plan is working towards so that's a that's a great area where we will look at updating policy to be more in alignment with with um the climate action plan um but that's you know that is a really specific plan with really specific targets and the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan is a little bit more high level when it speaks policy thank

[68:00] you all right Mason hi Mason before you speak what say sorry I just want to say that I'm hoping you're the last one because I want to move on to the questions that are in the chat W up yeah you're GNA wrap up and then we're going to go to the questions yeah so um great presentation uh super excited um to be working on this with all the great people on this call um a couple questions about process so as I mentioned I'm excited I have a lot of ideas about uh H how we might want to improve this and the part that's a little unclear to me is um how do we submit those ideas I guess I guess the this question stems from I don't want to be in the position of just responding I want to be proactive uh in this process process so I don't know if you can speak to that a little

[69:00] bit yeah I'll uh viian and Brenda certainly can elaborate but one of the uh really integral efforts in all this is going to be the multiple approaches and there'll be everything from open-ended opportunities for for comment to uh more you know pick pick a number kind of uh responses so every kind of uh way that you can imagine will be incorpor ated and importantly too we're going to capture it all in a way that's transparent so that if you've made a comment back in June uh you know there will be a place that kind of tracks to where that is um and that's you know both part of the challenge of uh of integrating all those comments but that's that's why it's key for us to also capture all of them and I don't know if brender Vivian you want to elaborate on what that might look like or yeah especially as we get further along the process we'll have more thematic conversations and I can imagine

[70:01] that we would invite uh council members and boards to select representatives to come and participate or observe at least and even with the assembly we'll be thinking about opportunities for policy makers to interact as well um so definitely we hear you and we'll build such opportunities in so it's not like you're just responding to things I think that's some really good feedback and um kind of on that same topic I know the first the first step has been described in detail here uh the Gathering and the modeling how do we provide input on the model scenarios prior to again just responding to the results of those models is that are do that yeah I want to be clear that you know there won't necessarily be model scenarios and certainly not early in the process as we get towards uh what is the land use guidance map for the comprehensive plan

[71:00] there may be some sort but uh it doesn't start with with any premise in mind and Christopher maybe you can elaborate on that or others yeah I'd be happy too so I yeah I think um a couple things to think about in terms of process is that you know we we as staff will be meeting with planning board and Council and other advisory boards mult mle times um you know regularly throughout the process so there will be you know more than more than enough bites at the Apple I think through those mechanisms but then also um as community members you are invited to uh to attend and to participate in any of our community engagement events and and I think that provides you an opportunity as an individual um you know to provide your input and provide your ideas along along the entire process so um yeah I recognize you know as a as a board member in that particular role you may feel like you're more reactive uh in

[72:01] responding to things that staff are bringing but really the intent of the process as a whole is to be able to gather that feedback um you know early on and and more proactively from from not only yourselves but from the community in particular so that then that that th that information is really what's influencing what those policy uh strategies might look like and then those models that we would develop in to test those yeah I just sorry I just wanted to add really quickly to like you know at each point in the process or the phases will come to you with what we're thinking of to see if you have things to offer and come on October 19th to the kickoff event that'll be your first opportunity to feedback okay I'm going to put October 19th on my calendar right now all right we're moving on to the questions and do not feel obligated to speak at all what I'm saying is we have

[73:02] a lot of people and we have a schedule and so only if you have something pressing I would say do want else you can just let others who haven't spoken yet say a few words all right enough about that first question do members have any questions or feedback on the draft project schedule or scope of work that haven't been asked already let's see who's going to raise their hand nobody all right going what up Kurt you haven't spoken speak I will speak uh thank you I have a question about really about the scope so if there were to be changes considered to the IGA itself or to the amendment process where would those come in the scope and I don't see any kind of placeholder for that that part of the process yeah thanks for that question and just to repeat it maybe frame it for

[74:00] everybody else um the comprehensive plan document has within it rules for how to amend it those types of things and uh if I'm understanding your question correctly um board member the the question is you know how and when will that happen am I tracking on that yeah yeah so like other aspects of the plan uh we would expect that that would come out of dialogue and feedback uh through the earlier stages and then be refined as it goes along so there's not any designated point along the way to do that it's integrated into the whole consideration those those are elements of the plan that that folks can and should you know speak to as part of feedback for what they imagine the vision for the next 20 years to be including what the vision for The Guiding document itself should be okay okay sounds great one other quick specific question my understanding is

[75:00] that the new state legislation I think it's s174 requires a water element a water water element or something like that in the b in any comprehensive plan um and I just didn't see that mentioned I just want to make sure that we're planning for that if my understanding about that is correct yes so just to repeat for everybody there is a state requirement that there be a water component of uh comprehensive plans uh throughout the state there's also a tourism one interestingly and to my knowledge those are the only two uh I don't believe it's prescriptive at all as to what depth that needs to be in the current plan would meet that criteria for an example and uh we have no doubt that'll be a key part of the update great thank you Claudia thank you I have one more question about scope um and this is having to do with the existing conditions analysis that you will be doing later this fall um I I understand

[76:02] it's going to be a broad you know collection of information about the Boulder Community um is there also going to be any comparative information provided in that analysis so for example um if we have data on on income or a demographics or housing stock and so on will we be able to see how that compares to surrounding communities in Boulder County Andor the Front Range yeah that's a great question um I I believe that I mean the answer would be yes I think it would be valuable for us to have some some comparisons to similar communities with certainly within the county and within the region um you know our our primary focus of course is going to be defining and really understanding Boulder and the surrounding unincorporated County areas that are within the Boulder Valley but um but certainly I do think there is some value in having some comparative data information as

[77:02] well so that'll be that'll be part of part of the research thank you I don't know if we're empowered to make requests but that would be a strong request um from me to have that kind of context thank you great all right it looks like Taisha and after that we are going to question number two unless it's a huge emergency Taisha you are muted council member you are muted I mean shoot all right thank you um so I just had a couple quick questions about um the uh scheduling and just when we can anticipate getting schedules for or the scheduling process to begin um you know for the meetings that we'll have in 2025 for um you know with like the planning board or Boulder

[78:02] County Commissioners or I know we tend to do our planning three months in advance but I'm hopeful that we're going to disrupt that um and and do some more planning so we can get some of those calendar hold so I was just curious if if we can anticipate that coming um as well as any kind of you know Community engagement kind of things where we are uh where we can um participate so just wanted to um make sure uh get some um clarification on when we can anticipate those coming um and then for the racial Equity framework I heard somebody say in a response that we just want to make sure that people are heard and again as somebody who has is representing multiple marginalized identity I just want to lift up that or or rather ask the question of you know I know I've been heard when there's been um changes to policy to policies and resource allocation so I just want to be careful about um you know the term that we're using um and and recognize that trust is built through actions and changed policy

[79:01] and resource allocation so um just a mini comment on that but but es especially about the scheduling and then um also on the Knowledge Management so I just want to commend and and uplift the work that the CMO team and Megs in particular have been doing for on the council side to bring all of the plans and things together into our shareboard site in our into our SharePoint site and I was curious if either we can create a uh duplicate for the planning board or if the planning board already has something that has all of our Bolder plans and you know whether it be climate or housing or transportation in one in one thing so just a a Knowledge Management question thank you yeah thanks for those questions and and comments council member on the scheduling we have uh committed to at least quarterly throughout 2025 having uh touch base with Council and uh we we have a parking lot for quarter 1 for

[80:00] example of next year already and that's that's already in there and uh we will make sure that that Cadence gets uh held and uh City manager's office is aware of this as a priority as are the other departments and we're confident we'll get that uh held in there as far as the individual engagement elements uh some of that's still being developed I don't know if uh bror Vivian's got more specific point of clarification broad when you say the quarterly is that inclusive of us meeting with the board the County Commissioners and the planning board or what is that quarterly looking like generally it's going to be uh staff with just Council we may we may do some joint ones I'm not sure we've thought through that yet Christopher do you have any more updated info on that uh no not not more than you know that certainly there will be key Milestones there will be key moments where we would be more effective to have you know the council and the board of count Commissioners in the room together um I think it'll

[81:02] obviously it'll be a bit of a scheduling you know challenge but the more we can think about it ahead of time we can we can get ahead of it but yeah as Brad was mentioning we're we're kind of anticipating a quarterly checkin with uh with Council and the boards and then at those key Milestones making sure that we create some joint joint meetings where everybody can participate okay um well that is wonderful to hear and again I'm hopeful that we can you know it's much easier to take something off the calendar and to put it back on so especially with the meetings with our County Commissioners I think those will be absolutely critical to out outline those um as well as our planning board um and again you know I don't want to do marginally better than what we did last time I want to do things radically differently thank you so much you all right we are moving on to question number two do members have any questions or feedback on the communications and engagement approach if you haven't already asked them and spoken about

[82:01] this notice how I'm trying to move this along but all right we see Claudia then Nicole then ml I seem to be the fast one to get to my raiseed hands but and apologies to folks that I'm making queue up um two questions and comments here um the first one is about the community assembly um I really appreciate the goals of this kind of tactic to get more kind of ordinary folks in the community involved um but I have a question about compensation for that group you know we're having a lot of conversations in the community right now about uncompensated and undercompensated work um and how that affects representation and the views that we end up hearing um and so I didn't hear anything or see anything in the packet thus far about compensation for people who may participate in this assembly is that something you could talk about at this time yeah I can just jump in and say

[83:00] that Our intention is to compensate people who participate in the process and we've budgeted for it as well um and we're thinking about you know whether it's uh some people can opt out if they don't need that payment necessarily um and so just to share for now you know we haven't settled on the final compensation or anything like that but but it is planned and it is important thanks yeah I'm glad you recognize how important that is to getting a a representative group together um the only other comment I had here for um Communications and engagement uh was around um engaging other um large stakeholders in the community and I think in the packet there was at some point a listing of some of the the um governmental organizations and the like that you might be engaging and dialoging with um one that I would really hope for some focus on um perhaps more than others is the RTD I think our transportation

[84:01] system is going to be a huge component of having a realistic and successful um comp plan so um to the extent that we can engage that group and even if it's not a successful engagement just to get some realistic um input what we can expect for public transportation and then one that I saw that missing from that group um is our new library District um and I definitely hope that that group will be part of consultations and conversations because they really do have a key role in equity and arts and culture in the community that's it for me H looks like Nicole's double dipping go ahead Nicole not double dipping separate topics um so I just have a comment uh on this topic of um engagement and uh this is related to tisha's last comment as well um one thing that may be nice to see on the way is what's changing because of the engagement that we are receiving I know we often ask you about this at the end

[85:02] and so just putting out a general ask um at the beginning if there's a way and not like every single detail word things like that but if there's a big shift because of the engagement that we've done I think that would be really interesting to document so that we have that as part of our learnings I know one of the questions you were asking us to consider is does the draft reflect the engagement and I think that's looking at those places of change where something changed um in a significant way because of feedback we received I think that's a great way for us to be able to answer that question when we get there in a couple years um and my second comment is just I'm really excited about this process of Engagement I love that we're going to be bringing in some of the art stuff the the thing we did for the Civic um area that that was really fun um I love that we're going to be bringing in our own Community leaders um within the community to lead some of those work um and I love that we're going to be training people in our community um in some of these new methods so that we're building our own community's capacity

[86:01] along the way so just wanted to lift up um those things that I'm I'm very excited about with this thank you my apologies Nicole you're right you were not double dipping just okay just want to say thank you thank you for that engagement feedback ml thank you hello everybody um so key issue number number two I have two questions uh around the community assembly um Peter I just I think that's just such a brilliant strategy thank you so much for your great explanation and my question is will these meetings be recorded so that we can um have access to them it sounds like they're going to be or if it's only one meeting but pretty powerful well there there'll be there'll be multiple uh meetings of this group over a period of several uh months the exact time he needs to be figured out based on the topic you know typically

[87:00] every presentation that is delivered to an assembly those slides definitely find their way online a daily summary is also posted uh typically there's a community Round Table meeting once or twice during the assembly so that other members of Boulder have a chance to meet members of the assembly and there's a bit of a back and forth the question of recording is interesting you typically ad clients to um you record the Keynotes but not to record the U small table deliberations for the same reason why you might go in camera at various points and we have to recall that these folks haven't been elected either and they're in the midst of learning and it's a much easier thing to do to to learn to try out ideas um when you don't have a camera hovering over you and thinking that it's all going to be documented and living forever online so we have to strike a good balance between transparency between ensuring that the rest of the community can learn alongside while also

[88:01] giving some privileged time to the members to do that uh work together so my hearing yes there will be and some measure there would be opportunities to um have a have a look at those meetings if we're not part of the community assembly certainly the core plenary pieces I expect so but ultimately that's a decision for Vivian and her team okay Vivian do you think we'll we'll be able to part I mean they sound so Dynamic and again because it's a focus and they're trying to solve a problem it would be nice not to just get here's the solution but what was the thinking how did we get there I I personally like process yeah thank youl I see Sarah's also put on her camera so I'll let her jump in as well but um one thing we're thinking about is how do we have that interaction between the policy makers and the assembly so there could be some um once we get into the design process

[89:00] more we'll think about how to create those opportunities and even with the broader Community as well if people can come and share their perspective so there is that kind of like cross germination of ideas um and we're not there we are thinking about privacy and sort of like respecting that as well um and we'll be guided by our Consultants from their experience as well I don't know if you want to jump in Sarah and she's green it looks like um okay I have one other question and this is regarding um the stakeholders and again I think my peers have asked this question but I'm asking a little bit differently in identifying the stakeholders they were all kind of organized they seem to be kind of organized and identifiable groups and the one that doesn't seem to be represented um are the longtime residents so uh and that's that's the demographic I'm in but aside from that

[90:02] it's like I think the people that have been here 20 30 40 years um we kind of see our city evolve and unless we have jumped in and volunteered to be on a board or something we don't really um participate in the change discussions and I'm curious as to whether there's a way to articulate and reach out to the people who have been here you know for decades is that on anybody's radar trying to unmute myself we're certainly thinking about how to reach all members of the community and not excluding anybody so there should be plenty of opportunities for everybody to participate if they want to participate in deeper conversations because they're passionate about something in particular

[91:00] that's great and we'll make uh we'll use lots of communication channels to make sure that everybody is aware of the different opportunities available I just didn't see it um even Loosely defined in any of the stakeholders or you know under represented groups or anything you know longterm residents have been um important yeah definitely but we haven't to date kind of like segmented our engagement groups by uh years of how many people have have been living here but yeah yeah okay I I mean I know it's kind of an OP there'll be space for all right how to reach out to that demographic is what I'm yeah is what I'm concerned about so anyway I'll jump in a little ml um just in my work I you know I started in my role at the city as the neighborhood leis on hi Brenda written now our community engagement manager um so yeah I've been in conversation with folks who live in Boulder for the last seven years as my role right um that's

[92:02] how long I've been here and and so I have found that often I feel like I'm talking to folks who have been here for 20 plus years um through the different avenues that we tend to offer um so I would say that that that's not usually a population that we feel like we're missing during processes um and and we'll keep our eye on that the same way that we'll keep our eye on any demographic um I'll site just one Communication channel that we often use just to push out information is next door and we know that on next door is our homeowner population primarily um and that's a way that we feel like we get um communication out to those folks to let them know what's going on so we'll keep our eye on at EML thank you Brenda I I I love the neighborhood coordinator or Gaz on person um and uh those are my questions thank you so much all right it looks like we have three

[93:01] this is exciting three people who have not yet spoken tonight we have Tina and then Ryan and then Matt thanks Tara and thanks for all the information you're sharing tonight I have um two quick questions and one is um with the engagement we do a lot of Engagement across the city and because the comp will overlap with so many other efforts um how are we making sure that this engagement gets the sort of the I mean all engagement is important but I think this is very important how can we kind of isolate some of these efforts so that we get a lot you know attendance and um make sure it doesn't interfere with other engagement um efforts going on that make sense yes council member that makes a lot of sense my name is Sarah Huntley I'm the director of communication and engagement and one of the things we've been really

[94:01] improving upon with our engagement Coordination Committee is looking ahead to what kinds of Engagement is coming up in the next year quarter half a year so that we can really look for synergistic opportunities and so it's already been talked about today the climate Action Plan update we might be asking very similar questions so we would want to make sure that we're augmenting that um engagement along with bbcp engagement um we expect there will be overlap there child-friendly City initiatives we've been doing a lot of Engagement with we're already planning to bring some of that feedback into a boulder Futures engagement so it is important for us to make sure we're capturing audiences where they naturally are gravitating to and then looking for the places where there's overlap and making sure that we're sharing the feedback in lots of different places I also think as it's been said before this will be our most intensive engagement um project of the upcoming year and a half and so people

[95:00] will have lots of opportunities to plug in at whatever level of depth they wish okay and then another um question I have that sometimes I think would be helpful and this borders on a comment but I'm going to try to do it as a question is just trying to understand do comments it's questions or feedback or comments you do you oh okay um is trying get to um our our comp plan is very big with lots of priorities ideally I'd like to see if our engagement can get us to a place where we can figure out the top priorities uh what would be sort of the most urgent places to focus on um based on what our community comes back with thanks that's it yeah I'll just respond real quickly to that I think we've recognized that uh the evolution of the comp plan over time has been Maybe additive over time and it it's a big document I think somebody counted 209 policies um so we have an eye towards

[96:01] winnowing and and parent down but we do want to make sure we're balancing it against comprehensive and one of the things that's interesting about um land use planning is it does touch on all things so we don't want to give short shrift to that uh but we we do have an eye towards that board member thank you all right Ryan what do you have for us I have one point of feedback and it's about um making sure we have a good step to establish robust and transparent assumptions when we get to the policy phase and what I'm thinking about is when we go from um hearing ideas towards policy I think that in land use and sustainability this is a place where we have continually developing science there's a lot of uh mechanics at play that are complex counterintuitive and not to mention that

[97:00] there have been a lot of changes in our atmosphere and in the biosphere since the last um comprehensive plan and so um I have a little bit of uh butterflies in my stomach thinking about you know going swiftly from getting people's the community's feedback and going into policy uh until unless we pause and have a a good sort of assessment of okay these are looks like these are some of the key issues and then here is the state of our understanding and taking the time to say look this is this is the the literature the research whatever um this is what we this is what we believe as we are going forward and then footnoting if there's you know different ideas and you know descent objections Doling science whatever but just to be really clear as we go into these the policy planning part about what we're going to try to get done that we have a good a good basis in um that you know the best modern evidence-based thinking and that that's

[98:00] that's written down as part of as we go so I think that's communication engagement because as we move through the process this will be a success factor I think in people accepting this thank you yeah thanks for that feedback council member and I think you know you've highlighted a key point which is there does have to be some fetting of of what's possible and not and that will happen kind of during the the in engagement process and then fetting that as it goes into policy development uh if something were you know patently against water law for example you know we'd have to make sure to reflect that and and not Advance something like that thank you all right Matt first time up at that thanks there always the first time uh I just sent her on a on a comment um I'm really excited about the community assembly um and big credit to Vivien for um taking a lot of work ahead of time to get ready for this and certainly with our partnership with the national civic league um they've helped really kind of

[99:00] push us in this direction we've been hearing for a long time that you know a community simply doesn't feel like they are at the table when the decisions matter most and that's usually earliest in the process um so this is just a tremendous opportunity to kind of uh get into a new paradigm and and so I'm just really excited for this and certainly most excited for us to have gain that local knowledge to be able to do this ourselves for other things that are upcoming so um you know Peter great to have you um really look forward to working with you and Vivian great job for grabbing the bulll by the horns and getting us moving on this so thanks a lot awesome I see no other hand so I'm excited to do the last question and before we do this question it's a little bit of a vague question so I'm going to read it first what does a successful major update process look like for you and I want to take the opportunity to ask Brad what you looking for with this the this question what you're not looking for so we don't get too into the weeds yeah it is an no thank you um

[100:02] Terry it is it is an open question because like we talked about a little bit earlier starting with Comprehensive does mean we want to have open answers but we we would want you to stay focused on kind of policy uh kind of um observations or or responses to this more the what not the how um for example if the what is uh boy we really think that we need to Define uh specific policy around 15minute neighborhoods that's that's great feedback maybe on I think there should be 14 new businesses in a particular neighborhood is probably not the scale we're looking for but eager to hear what you've got to say this is this is the aspirational part of planning that's really exciting remember you don't have to feel obligated to speak not that we don't all want to hear from you but we're out of schedule so Aaron first timer do it right long time listener first time

[101:00] talker um so we just and to your previous questions I just think you all have set put together a a really fantastic uh schedule and engagement process uh as Matt mentioned I'm also excited about that Community assembly it's going to be a great new um experience for our community and I'm hoping that we can use it to tackle some of the one or two of the thorniest questions that we wrestle with in our community so I'm really looking forward to defining that moving forward with that and I mean I could talk for a long time about a successful comp plan but I'll just say fundamentally uh it the update will be successful if it rises to the challenges of our times um you know a lot has changed since the last comp plan from eight or 10 years ago and we have a long way to go in terms of working on missing middle housing and the climate crisis and equity and racial equity and resilience and wildfire protection the list goes on right we have huge challenges but hopefully we can take a really significant step forward in terms of how we address them

[102:00] with this comp plan update and hopefully to do so in a way that engages people from all cross-sections of our community in a way that they felt brought in on and brought along with so um really excited about this process and going through through it over the next 20 months with you all thanks all right Tina yeah thanks um yeah for me I think I hope that we look at the last 20 years and how we've done meeting some of the thoughts and ideas and Visions in the comp plan and where we fell short and how we can specifically pick out what is working and what is not working and also to be really clear about being creative and looking at at different ways of reaching our goals that maybe we didn't um do before and one of the things I was rereading some of the long-term and short-term affordability measures mentioned in the new hp24 1313 land use Bill and there's

[103:04] just a lot of different tools and Frameworks to think about affordable housing that I think we should explore um to to support our community and affordable housing and I also think we should look really hard at the the climate plan and make make sure that we can measure whether or not we we are um using our Water Wisely preparing for Wildfire um I'm just concerned that we haven't gotten the last 20 years what we are hoping for in terms of um non-student population growth um the types of housing we are hoping for people with children feeling comfortable here and young people having a pathway to stay here rather than being here for three to five years so that would be my My Success metric would and ultimately would be to measure how our Visions sort of produce our reality thanks

[104:02] Matt thanks Tara um I appreciate what was said by Ain and Tina um for me this comes down to just I think an exercise of humility that we actually don't know what we what this community needs 10 years from now we can we can take a good guess at it but we probably don't know and that means this comp plan needs to reflect the flexibility and openness to meet those needs whatever they are um we are currently finding ourselves partially handcuffed by our current comp plan because we're trying to meet the needs the needs of really yesterday and we can't quite do it in some Fashions that's because the comp plan was restrictive and so you know we have to think differently and I hope that this next comp plan stays really high level and and stays open to the possibility that we actually might not know the answer um and and that flexibility is Paramount um in order for those councils you know 10 years from now to be able to still be free to meet the needs of our community which is a little different than we have today so future proofing

[105:01] this comp plan um and maintaining flexibility and openness for Creative new ways of meeting the needs of our community is going to be essential um so so that's my my main main hope for for this comp line thank you Taisha thank you um it's really wonderful to be able to have um this opportunity to share um some of the the overarching ideas and hopes um you know I ran on climate and cultural resilience so I'm really excited about trying to strike that balance um and to the point around the goals right now our climate goals are all carbon reduced space and um I would love to round that out with our best available science which includes Rich biodiversity goals um also the water plan uh and component and hopeful that um um people's shared knowledge and understanding is beyond our engineers and our staff working hard in those areas but but our community and

[106:02] and other departments that are working outside of the water department and utilities has a deeper understanding but in general just the ecosystems approach how did the things tie to each other um you know the um yeah how do all the different pieces connect with each other um and being specific around accountability systems monitoring and Reporting um and to Tina's comment around a shared uh understanding of where we are and where we've been I actually call us to move Beyond just the 20 years um there's a a real um misunderstanding of of how we got here from 1851 to today and so I'm hopeful that we can use this as an opportunity to have a shared understanding um of the strengths of our community as well as um the policy choices that have led to the disproportionalities that we see right now um and then lastly I hope that we're audacious because um the climate crisis and the poly crisis that we Face is Going to require us to move Beyond um

[107:02] incremental change um but really uh being bold um like we were with the blue line so um and again the quality of the implementation of any plan anything that we come up with is going to be in direct alignment with the quality of the relationships that we have with each other thank you so much okay it looks like Ryan I have three points um first I'd like to agree with Taisha and Tina about having a a robust look at where we've been with tesa's um discussion about making that go back further than than we've done um previously uh and to take that really seriously uh to Tina's Point uh uh well at least what I took from it um is terms of the more modern where we have been in the last 10 20ish years I I hope we can do a real stocktaking of some of the out bigger outcomes that we have been managing for over the last

[108:01] decade or so um that intersect with bbcp and have a have an evaluation about how have we really had a handle on these things or not and and really bravely look at do we need to refresh the way we think about things like just as an example maybe it's vehicle miles traveled like are we thinking about this all the right way um but having a really Brave look at how how we're doing against the outcomes that 10 years ago we would expected to have been at now and and what that tells us so that's looking back um looking forward I want to agree with something Nicole said earlier which is um being uh very thoughtful about future Trends how the world is changing ahead of us what that means for everything else um and then the third one um my own and I was thinking about um the idea of strategic issues to the Boulder Valley Community that we might not control but we have an

[109:02] interest in influencing so a lot of the discussion topics we've this Council has dealt with have involved Regional issues and I'd like us to have permission to really take that on in in this this comprehensive plan with respect to policies and commitments that relate to intergovernmental Affairs or Andor collabor oration beyond our physical borders that it is in our interest to um be set up to to manage for thank you okay it looks like our next three are Nicole Mark and Lauren and I'm hoping that nobody is going to speak we're actually on schedule so I'm hoping everybody keeps going in the way they are with nice short powerful statements no pressure um so what I'm hoping for just kind of concisely is a plan for the future that people in our community know

[110:00] about understand and feel represented in um so three kind of key themes that come to mind for me with this in terms of um outcomes through the process that we're doing our imagination healing and connection um so I'm hoping that this plan can bring our community's imagination back especially our young people who um many of whom are struggling to see a path for a sustainable Equitable and resilient future here um I hope we can use it to heal some of the harms that we've unintentionally done um over the years of our city um and I appreciate the inclusion of some of the tribes um with um who are connected uh to this area in that regard um I hope we can also use it to bring our community together and really use this um process to build connection with each other um and if we can give our community those gifts of Vision healing and connection through the process that we are following as we develop this comprehensive plan I think we'll be setting our city on a really

[111:00] good path for the future thank you beautiful Mark so in the two and a half years that I've been on planning board and I've grown more and more familiar with our current plan and its current uh form I think this plan the current one has actually aged really well and I I routinely am impressed as I go back and revisit it and evaluating projects what the thing that I I hope for this future plan is that the process we use to create it is strong enough and robust enough that the plan can focus on implementation and changing people's lives in meaningful ways in the Boulder Valley now out and that the other thing I hope is that the engagement process and the plan result in tools so the

[112:01] department heads and the city can move forward without having to reage and reengage in in battles so that we can tactically move forward and make changes uh I'm not saying don't engage with our citizenry on giant issues but you know there there's a lot that we um uh I think that we implementation sometimes has to win out over over process and I think that if we have a strong plan if this if this process yields a really strong plan then the test of that will be are we actively implementing it even though it's an aspirational plan are we actively implementing it in the day-to-day functions of the city and building housing and including people in our processes so that um we don't have to wage uh the same battles over and over

[113:01] again we can refer to the plan and say the community adopted this plan this is what the plan says to do in this circumstance and we're going forward and we're doing it that's my thought really nice now we're going to move on to Lauren thanks I'm hoping that this comp comprehensive planning process can bring together the intense thought that has gone into so many of our more focused planning processes along with this additional Community engagement um because yeah I think that in doing that we can Pro provide um and focusing on creating future flexibility and actional guidance for how we meet our future needs if we do this well I believe it will allow us to streamline future city visioning and planning processes and ideally allow us

[114:02] to think about the largest challenges facing our community in deeper more comprehensive and intersectional ways thanks beautiful next we have Taisha no okay your hands up next we have ml my hand is up thank you um so um I'm I'm excited for the update process and I think there's been some excellent points being made my excuse me my main input is to consider kind of following what Mark was saying the usability of the Boulder Valley comp plan so planning board relies on this document to focus the Community Values and vision um when we get the applications we use broad language such as does this application is it generally compatible with the goals objectives and

[115:00] recommendations of the Boulder Boulder Valley comp plan the Boulder Valley comp plan itself in the introduction talks about that it doesn't prioritize um policies and no one policy needs to be satisfied however it also says that um any act that it also says that careful consideration of tradeoffs among the plan's policies is necessary when implementing the plan now I have not seen a tradeoff between the policies as we discussed the Boulder Valley comp plan on planning board and I'm wondering so my feedback is if at the end of this of this fabulous process we undertaking if there can be a um a way that the Boulder Valley comp plan can come to life through the process and I like this statement in the introduction that says carefully consider the

[116:01] tradeoffs so we're not putting weight on prioritizing policy or this but we're thinking comprehensively here's here's the landscape and and we're looking at this particular project or this particular application in this particular vein how does the boulder uh comp plan uh inform that and right now we really don't have that but in a kind of a vague way that we're kind of meeting it and so we can't really say it doesn't meet it because there it'll have two or three things that it does meet it would be nice to get um to have some means to carefully consider the tradeoffs as we um review applications and how they they are uh supported by or enhanced because I think at the end of the day we want the bbcp to come to life

[117:02] and and I'm just saying let's get a pathway um in our in our application review to help us accomplish that thank you ml oh Kurt looking forward to hearing from you thank you uh lots of great comments here that I agree with so I won't repeat all those but following along the theme that Mark and ml have been following I would like to see the policies to focus more on actionable policies rather than sort of values policies that we have on that say the city will do X and so for example one that we've recently seen there's a policy that says the city will consider I don't know the exact framing but we'll consider re uh possible alternative uses for the airport so no matter how you feel about the airport we are indeed

[118:00] moving to act on that policy but there are lots of policies that just say basically the city likes X and when we're trying to justify a particular project or or um thing that we're doing we will often cherry-pick those policies that the values policies and say see this is supported by the comp plan and that to me doesn't feel very useful because I don't think that it actually affects outcomes it just kind of makes us feel good about what we're we've already decided to do and so I would like to focus less I would like to see as an outcome a less of a focus on those values kinds of policies um and more on specific actions where we can say either we did it or we didn't well that looks like it wraps it up for this subject and I am not going to even say anything because I'm actually saving all my comments for the next subject so nobody can complain if I

[119:01] talk too much anyway just kidding that a joke um council member I can yeah do go ahead no do it I was just if I can just take 20 seconds to invite all of my colleagues to go on screen again including count any County folks or other departments and just acknowledge again that it's taking Village to look at the village and we appreciate that you understand that and we do that because we want to make sure that we are really meeting your expectations um of this as one of your Council priorities so thanks for giving us the opportunity to speak with you this evening and thanks for all the great input and uh more to come thank you staff for a wonderful presentation I'm oh looks like we have one more Aaron I just had to give a shout out to the coordinated Boulder future backgrounds they're just to amazing thanks also nobody else needs to

[120:00] say thank you to staff I just said Thank you to staff for everybody so nobody raise your hand and do that um I'm gonna actually say thank you so much to all of our friends on the planning board you do a you such a great job and you work so hard and your comments were great and also my Council colleagues your comments were also great I appreciate you all so much and so goodbye to planning board and hello to the next topic bye guys I mean people all right let me get my notes where I should have been more prepared than this right all right here we go we are now going to go to the next topic minimum wage update um who wants to take it from here I will take it thank you so much council member and I'll say this evening we've been

[121:00] talking about some a very exciting topic and and really about the aspiration we have for what the city of Boulder will look like in the future and I'll say that the next topic is a very similar one and I think it's really about the the vision we have for those in our community at an individual level and it's a topic that I know you and Community have been considering so thoughtfully uh so much so that I believe it has set a record for the most hotlines certainly in my tenure so before I turn it over to our assistant city manager Pam Davis I just want to thank our team in advance not just for all that they have done to get us here but really importantly for all the Mad crazy work they've done to try to respond really thoughtfully to all your great questions and your hotline request and while I will call out Taylor Ryman in particular as she started this work alongside council member folkart I'll say that so many individuals from Communications and engagement the city attorney's office Finance Health and

[122:01] Human Services Parks and Recreation open space and Mountain Parks utilities and even in our own City manager's office has really contributed to the body of work before you today so with that I will pass the Baton over to Pam thank you so much and good evening Council my name is Pam Davis I use she her rounds and serve as one of holders assist managers um as maray mentioned I'm joined tonight uh by my co-presenter Taylor Ryman senior Su sustainability program manager along with another several colleagues from multiple departments who are leing backstage to support any questions this evening's presentation is going to kick off with Taylor really level setting the Milestones that have led us to tonight's discussion of a potential local she'll summarize our findings from extensive Regional Community engagement over the past year and then provide highlight in depth economic analysis

[123:02] provided by our partners at I will then rejoin the conversation to provide some summary tradeoffs of policy options for you and transition in answer questions Pam I'm sorry you're kind of going in and out you may just have to get a little closer to the computer got it no thank you do I seem clear perfect y okay I think I had a instruction on um so before I turn it over to Taylor and we get rolling I just want to plant the seeds of the questions that you are facing this evening first you will be asked generally whether or not there is majority support to establish a loal minimum wage if there is we will then work through discussion and Direction on the details of a future ordinance including your desired Target wage escalation path long term indexing any desired exemptions to the wage and so I'm pleased now to invite Taylor

[124:00] Ryman who as Mar mentioned has been a dedicated and steadfast leader of this project for two years thank you so much Pam and you are cutting out just a little bit still so um I know you're going to do more talking uh later on but thank you so much for that introduction and of course I couldn't be here without uh your great leadership um I I wanted to thank Council my name is Taylor Ryman as I think a lot of you know I had the honor to work with a lot of you more closely uh up until about a year ago um but had the chance to continue working on this project uh so my pronouns are she her and I'm going to get us started we're going to begin with the enabling legislation just as a refresher reminder um that the adoption of house bill and if you could go to the next slide Pam adoption of house Bill 191210 lifted the preemption for local minimum wage laws and communities in Colorado began exploring these

[125:00] opportunities to date we've had some action from Denver Edgewater and unincorporated Boulder County as described in the bullets there are limitations to how we can enact these policies including guard rails on tipped wages exemptions they're not being a lot um only unemancipated Miners and independent contractors when a policy can take a effect and caps on how much the wages can increase in any given year next slide as many of you will recall we've talked to council about this topic over several occasions May 3rd 2022 was the first one when Council unanimously supported council member furts participating participating in a regional minimum wage working group with the Boulder County Consortium of cities about a year later we really formally launched the regional undertaking with a more defined scope and a possible implementation we were working towards in 2025 a few months after that um in

[126:02] August this meeting was in response to unincorporated Boulder counties separating from the working group to pursue an earlier policy implementation in 2024 Council chose to maintain the city's participation in the working group and still with a possible 2025 implementation track which we are still on and in March most recently this wasn't in a meeting but it was a a packet item Council received an update on the work broadly as well as a draft scope of work for the economic analysis next slide okay this is probably the most important slide in my opinion of our whole presentation because it's the one where I get to give gratitude to a bunch of really incredible people and I will spend time naming some specific names um what we're presenting with you you with tonight was accomplished through a massive multi-jurisdictional undertaking and Community Partnership representatives from each of these groups had a seat at the table from initial scoping stages

[127:01] through development implementation and Reporting their participation has added significant benefits to our work between New Perspectives and very healthy disagreement that shaped the findings that you will see today I'd like to shout out a few of the many individuals that spent the last year consistently showing up and adding value to this work on the community Community side of things Anna Fernandez Frank with the Emergency Family assistant Association Jonathan singer with the boulder chamber Morgan Royal there we go Morgan Royal and Ian cogins with the self-sufficiency wage Coalition Kate Kelly with new era Colorado anamarie Jensen with East County Housing Opportunity Coalition on the staff side of things from Boulder as well as our other cities Longmont Sandy Cedar and Francy jaffy from Lewisville s Fox and Grace Johnson from Lafayette Alexander Nelson and Debbie Wilmont from Erie Stephanie pittsnogle and James Everett and of course from Boulder Joel

[128:02] Wagner Ryan Hansen Meg valier and anhela Maria Ortiz Roa thank you all so much for everything you've done to bring us here today next slide this graphic demonstrates what the minimum wages currently are in Colorado as of this year 2024 all Colorado communities are at the state level of 1442 except for those three that I mentioned earlier Denver being at 1829 an hour Edgewater at 1502 with an escalation schedule in the next few years that reaches Denver's minimum wage and most recently unincorporated Boulder County um which is at 1569 an hour this year with an escalation schedule to reach $25 an hour by 2030 next slide the regional team developed a standard engagement model operating at the involved level of the engagement spectrum and the regional report that

[129:01] I'll walk through is basically a meta analysis of the individual Municipal reports so really a summary of summaries later on we'll get into more details of what we heard in Boulder specifically but before I get into all of that I want I wanted to talk a little bit about the engagement limitations that we um anticipated and ended up um finding throughout the process early in the team um had discussed what our anticipated engagement barriers would be which mostly revolved around access like language barriers and Community availabilities making sure to offer diverse participation options there was a desire uh for us to offer multiple language access and at the time participating communities only had the capacity and expertise to fully support English and Spanish however after engagement launched feedback during in-person Outreach highlighted participation barriers not directly related to access staff noted that many people especially people who are unemployed immigrants non-english speakers assume that their

[130:02] feedback is not appropriate for this topic explanations all paraphrase include I don't make any money this topic doesn't apply to me I make more than minimum wage this topic doesn't apply to me I am not an economist I don't own a business this topic doesn't apply to me I'm not used to being asked questions like this by my government from this we further acknowledge that creating accessible spaces is important but it's only a piece of the more extensive work that needs to be done to build Community Trust and efficacy so people feel like their voices matter next slide I actually so getting into the regional perspectives I actually think this is one of the more intriguing engagement findings people do have very different beliefs around What minimum wage is intended for on one hand minimum wage should enable people to afford their basic needs improve human dignity and a sense of community on the other

[131:01] hand minimum wage is not meant to be a living wage but instead a strategic business option to address unskilled labor needs while also providing the chance to build experience Knowledge and Skills next slide slightly different from purpose people questioned if local control is an appropriate role for setting minimum wage policies when other and possibly disconnected forces are at play like policies from state and federal agencies and the market broadly on the other hand some believed that this is an opportunity for municipal governments to be stronger in their support for local workers next slide many participants describe different perspectives on more direct impacts of an increase and how the policy could influence the ability to build an attractive Community for workers and businesses for example a raise could create greater Workforce attraction but putting additional

[132:01] strains on business environments may make it harder for those in operation and may disincentivize future prospects uh and this was especially highlighted in conversations about supporting our small business Community next SL people also described the broader and perhaps indirect way that they believed individuals and the economy would respond to an increased minimum wage would it lead to more stimulation of the economy with greater disposable incomes or would it eventually spur more inflation next slide thanks getting into some more specific sector specific impacts and there were a few different ones listed by each Community but these three are are really ones that bubbled to the top um across all of us and it's restaurants and other tip-based Industries child care providers and the agricultural Community for restaurants to add a

[133:00] little a little bit more context for each of these typically people me making tipped wages are considered front- of house staff those are servers and bartenders whereas back of house positions nor normally kitchen staff make the regular minimum wage in 2006 Colorado voters adopted an amendment that set the minimum wage for tipped workers at $32 less than tipped than the state minimum wage so it's why it's called the tip credit and at the time that was $685 in 2007 so the tip credit remained that way and hasn't changed since Set uh and at the time it represented 56% of Colorado's minimum wage versus today it represents 79% according to the Colorado Restaurant Association most tipped employees take home much more than $32 cents an hour in tips and based on a 2022 survey conducted by the Association tip workers actually take home all around $38 an

[134:02] hour whereas kitchen staff making regular minimum wage take home about 1940 an hour so over time with a fix tip credit at $32 an hour tip wages will proportionately get closer to the standard minimum wages um as each increase takes effect and we'll go over this a little bit more later in the presentation when we get into the analysis for child care providers um folks in the child care industry stated that they currently employ a lot of high school and college youth to provide child care and summer youth programs an increasing number of or and increasing the minimum wage um may result in fewer of these positions or less Child Care availability or increased prices for child care which are already those prices cost prohibitive for many families this feedback is particularly important to consider in a decision to include or

[135:00] exempt unemancipated minors the agricultural Community um is one of the larger minimum wage employers many farms are on Rural lands of Boulder County where Farm Farmers may already be paying higher minimum wages if especially if they're in unincorporated areas uh some farmers use machinery and chemicals but specifically with Organic Farms they can't use those things which uh increases their labor needs and wage compression will compound payroll cost increases next slide all right now drilling down into what we heard specifically from Boulder Community members next slide among those hundreds that participated in focus groups and questionnaires 98 were self-identified as community members and 390 questionnaire responses also those Boulder Community members um focus groups and questionnaires these opportunities were designed to

[136:00] accommodate different audiences between community members and employers so that's why you'll see some of the some of the feedback is structured that way but it's not meant to suggest a binary opposition we know and we found that uh workers and employers participate in the economy in many different ways they can and often do hold multiple perspectives uh soon after engagement opportunities launched staff identified gaps with regard to business types racial identities and socioeconomic status that were represented in the feedback we were getting so in response like during the engagement window staff um in Boulder supplemented two additional proactive strategies organizing in-person teams to perform direct Outreach to small local businesses and food bank program participants so that's captured there in four dropin visits to um engage with program participants at EA and then 252 conversations with local and small

[137:01] businesses throughout the year-long process our human relations commission received three presentations with updates and feedback opportunities next slide even though the engagement model was not structured to be very scientific um the analysis used a hybrid method when we looked at the engagement feedback to organize the very high volume of comments into a descriptive storytelling approach an initial scan of response data identified 25 overarching topic areas and from there comments were categorized and coded into two buckets so that's key themes consistently repeated across questionnaire focus groups unique themes may be mentioned less frequently but if their outcome came to be it would be particularly impact to a specific group um and doing it this way acknowledges those persistent barriers to participation that I described and brings VI visibility to perspectives without a

[138:01] thorough accounting of their frequency next slide key themes from community members and employers some of these are going to be a repeat of those Regional themes like increased ability to meet basic needs improved quality of life economic growth higher wages making our city a more attractive place to live work and play but then concern about the rising cost uh of goods and services and that leading to inflation for employers they noted increased pressure on local and small businesses businesses may be being forced to increase their prices to adjust other adjustment moves being reducing employee hours and benefits wage inequity and compression and then just um the inherent changing character of bold unique themes on the community members side reducing the wealth Gap was noted um benefits Cliff the idea of benefits

[139:01] Cliff where a minimum wage a higher minimum wage may push people out of eligibility for public benefits received mixed and sometimes contradictory feedback in engagement and the analysis did not clarify this with conclusive evidence um as being a major concern better environmental outcomes were noted greater societal benefits and More Union leverage enabling students to stay in Boulder and also challenging child care expenses on the employer side of things commercial leasing costs were noted quite a few times just how high they are and the fact that um those contracts are on different um lengths of time for for different folks concerns of worker exploitation and I'll I'll describe this a little bit more um some framed a potential connection between higher wages and worker exploitation like for example while large corporations May pay more they

[140:00] also share less profits with employees undocumented individuals without paperwork may be PID less to compensate for higher wages for un for documented employees and finally some minimum wage earners may need to work additional hours to keep up with inflationary increases to costs and goods so those were some of the things that we couched under concerns of worker exploitation industry specific it's a bit of a repeat of the regional one with um the one difference being nonprofit service providers next slide all right so this is where I'm getting quite a bit out of my depth but um we're we're going to be in good shape because we have our Consultants on the call and I want to shout out um again Andrew and Melissa thank you guys so much for being in here and hanging on with us through this ride um the report includes a tremendous amount of detail as you probably well know um I'm going to walk through some of the key findings

[141:00] and Melissa and Andrew are here to answer very specific questions on what's presented next slide another reminder just like with engagement on what the scope of the study was and some of the limitations that we should keep in mind the economic analysis with our consultant looked into existing conditions in our five communities that being business indicators labor market structure economic Trends and then they did a comparative analysis with cities of similar size and characteristics that have uh put in to place minimum wage policies and what were the trends in their economy in the Years following those policies an impact analysis assessing the ma magnitude of positives and negatives both with regard to direct and indirect impacts and then a set of scenarios there were five scenarios Al together one being Baseline and then the next two being unincorporated Boulder

[142:02] County and matching Denver each of those next two with two escalation paths so cumulatively like five um and the limitations of this analysis uh first off no forecast is 100% accurate so the model that was used to to study all of all of these effects um may not represent external factors because they can't all be included for example what happens during a recession or an e economic down term it doesn't account for that not all data of Interest are available at the municipal level and this was something we knew early on when we made a decision about the project geography and decided to use public use micro dat areas instead of census data um because those Pumas as they're called um provide a more granular look at race and ethnicity but at the cost of being able to disaggregate by municipality for all data sets hidden populations are

[143:01] communities that can be difficult to reach and count with traditional surveying D due to factors like experiencing reg irregular housing language access needs confidentiality concerns complex households resulting in an undercounting of people historically speaking there are deeper bodies of res SE Arch into the negative effects of minimum wage especially in employment and prices there is a smaller but growing number of researchers and economists exploring positive effects of minimum wage as well as other impacts on wealth gaps capital investment social health outcomes and and other things lastly as a reminder of the limitation uh the scenarios explored are not representative of all options and my plant light just turned off okay with these limitations in mind we caution being overly reliant on any one data point and instead encourage people to consider the full scope of information presented tonight next

[144:03] slide I found this to be a really helpful graphic when when I saw it first and I hope other folks do too the Consultants used a framework based on a model from the University of Colorado or University of California Berkeley's Institute for research on labor and employment uh the model accounts for direct and indirect impacts of increasing the minimum wage on both workers and businesses including increased Automation and productivity you see in that middle blue box to estimate the net effect on employment using this kind of a model allows us to understand potential impacts Beyond any one-time immediate effects like a reduction in employment or a spike in prices and with that we will begin looking at existing conditions which is a landscape overview of what's going on in the region based on the most recent data next

[145:00] slide Boulder is a college town I hope that comes as no surprise to folks um one of the one of the biggest takeaways was the fact that Boulder is a very big outlier outlier compared to our neighbors with regard to popula or age demographics um the age distribution having higher concentrations of 18 to 24 year olds and lower concentration of children and older adults the bipot communities in Boulder make up 22% of the City's population and especially in Boulder we see around a 30 to $40,000 difference in those median annual household incomes compared to White households next slide drilling down a little bit into minimum wage earner Dem demographics there are disproportionate representations among minimum wage

[146:00] workers compared to all other workers in the region there are uh much more people under the age of 24 people that identify as female people in bipot communities especially those that identify as Hispanic and Latino and college students for example in this Regional analysis um you'll see 12% % of all workers identify as Hispanic or Latino yet um the Hispanic and Latino workers make up 18% of minimum wage earners in low-wage Industries and occupations approximately 5% of bip workers are unemancipated minors compared to 2% in all jobs industries that employ more minimum wage earners and therefore May face greater impacts from a new policy include accommodation in Food Services retail trade and arts and Recreation next slide this slide demonstrates kind of like the infographic map we saw earlier it demonstrates where we're at right now

[147:01] and the current trajectory of wages in Colorado assuming a 3% increase through 2035 um and these are the policies that we use to inform scenario development and our analysis as a point of reference these graphs represent um in green and orange Dash lines their estimations of where the self-sufficiency wage may be in 2030 and 2035 so we can see kind of the difference next Slide the scoping team um the scoping team worked with the consultant to identify and explore four scenarios like I had said the fifth one being that Baseline scenario I'm getting a pop up sorry um so the first two is increasing to align with Boulder County on the faster schedule B1 or on the slower schedule B2 in the Boulder County scenarios um we're assuming a 15% increase in 2025 for that B1 for faster

[148:02] scenario next slide and then in Denver similar or in the last two scenarios in Denver increasing to align with them on a faster schedule in D1 and a slower one in D2 also in that uh D1 scenario assuming a 15% increase in 2025 again as a reminder councils May choose different Target wages and escalations than the ones modeled here tonight there is no restriction on what Target wage can be set but an annual increase in any year whether that's an escalation to a Target or an annual adjustment based on an index can't be any higher than 15% or a175 whichever is higher next slide and you can blow through this one impacts of minimum we lost you

[149:13] Taylor your mic went out there we go okay there we go sorry about that um did I just cut out or have I been out for a while just now yeah just now great that's not so embarrassing uh okay this this is a a very busy visual uh but I think that it also tries to help us understand the the scope of the problem in different ways um it attempts to color code the estimated magnitude of those impacts from every minimum wage scenario for workers across dimensions of earnings income and poverty for businesses with regard to operating costs prices employe retention worker productivity profits failures and

[150:03] migrations the region with regard to consumption GDP poverty substitution away from skilled labor and governments in terms of revenues and costs colors are represented and are probably fairly intuitive with green representing a positive change red representing a negative change with lighter Shades indicating moderate impacts darker Shades indicating more pronounced impacts all impacts represented are relative to the Baseline a horizontal view shows each how each scenario Compares over time so from 2025 to 2030 to 2035 if you kind of read left to right there and then a vertical view shows how all outcomes collectively are affected by a given scenario some things to point out here are that the faster scenarios those being B1 and D1 have impacts earlier on in comparison to the slower scenarios B2 and

[151:01] D2 and the dimensions projected to experience the greatest impact over time those being just the the colors that are the darkest in the furthest columns are worker earnings operating costs and employee retention next slide for these next few slides we we had a couple of different time markers there's you can look at 2030 or 2035 for the sake of consistency and because it's sooner just the the rest of what we'll walk through here is all through a 2030 lens across all scenarios um and we're just it's a good point of comparison um for faster and slower escalations uh in terms of increased earnings the number of workers directly and potentially affected ranges between 1 and 8% of Boulder's current employment in general the unincorporated Boulder County scenarios could produce increased wages for more than two times as many workers as under the denver-based scenarios across all scenarios the

[152:01] impacts to earnings for people employed in restaurants which account for 6.5% or about 7,000 employees of the workforce in Boulder are the largest compared to other Industries other Industries with high impact to worker earnings include grocery stores retail trade and other services families with lower incomes benefit more from minimum wage increases and tend to spend a higher portion of their income and families with incomes below 300% of the federal poverty line experience an increase in incomes in all scenarios in Boulder between 38 to 179 people would be lifted out of poverty by 2030 relative to the Baseline and due to dat dat limitations we can't disaggregate or we can't accurately categorize workers subject to a specific minimum wage in other words we can't directly distinguish between tipped and

[153:00] untipped workers and we're not able to disaggregate earnings and change in poverty by age group employment losses are lower in Denver based scenarios than in unincorporated Boulder County based scenarios and in general teenagers and young adults are most likely to lose employment due to an increase next slide while restaurant worker earnings stand to make notable gains uh those employers would face significant impacts to payrolls which in general represent 30% of business operation costs in general across Industries operating costs are approximately one of the percentages of increased payroll costs looking at GDP tax revenue and prices by 2030 Boulders economic output under all scenarios increase is minimally or remains unchanged and additionally impacts to local County and municipality combined tax revenue are expected to be

[154:00] negligible compared to overall municipality budgets under scenario B1 prices could be about a percent higher in 2030 and under scenario B2 they could be about half a percent higher versus the Denver based scenarios showing a slightly lower price difference of about 3/10 of a percent or 610 of a percent side city of Boulder is also a major employer and like other businesses in the community we are going to we would have an increase um have to account for an increase in the minimum wage and adjust our own personnel which would have significant fiscal impacts next slide U we went ahead and modeled the organizational fiscal impact of increasing minimum wage to 1657 an hour in the 2025 budget and then reaching $25 an hour in 2030 um this really uh was

[155:03] just modeled on what Boulder Count's trajectory is uh we needed we needed some place to to look to to figure out what this might look like in our city um so the pay ranges of titles related to those impacted by minimum wage for example um were changed like lifeguard seniors currently making 17 15 an hour and head lifeguards making 1821 an hour while there may be um title changes we also want to include the premium for higher positions which accounts for the compression impacts so in in these in this example um for lifeguard seniors and P lifeguards the difference we want to try to maintain is about a 5% premium um the budgetary impact modeled is $46,000 to $242,000 in the short term but grows to

[156:00] an estimated 1.5 million to $2 million in 2030 important to point out is that St staff estimates that the fiscal impact of unemancipated miners is approximately half a percent of the total estimated impact reflected in the staff memo um while we've included these impacts in our 2025 budget and the associated compression that will need to be addressed um if Council impa implements the new minimum wage policy will need to consider future year funding or changes to service levels to support the increases and wage compression associated with the escalation of minimum wage I now turn to Pam Davis to summarize your policy options and lead you into questions and discussion and take it away Pam thank you so much Taylor and uh thanks to Mercury retrograde for our volume issues this presentation can you all hear me better now that I have my headset on okay great appreciate

[157:01] it okay so given the complexity of this minimum wage issue we want to conclude the presentation with just some high level summary slides of the policy tradeoffs uh issue by issue for you and I'll inform you that if Council does direct staff to draft an ordinance tonight pursuing an increased local minimum wage we would tentatively be scheduled to return for a first reading on September 19th and a second reading in public hearing on October 10th the other participating municipalities in the region the cities of Longmont Lafayette Lewisville and the town of Erie all have Council and trustee presentations scheduled over the next month to consider the same information that we've presented tonight and provide staff Direction on pursuing an ordinance or not so for this slide as demonstrated there are Myriad perspectives on increasing the minimum wage and a variety of impacts on our community as a result generally through both engagement and

[158:00] economic analysis the potential benefits of a local minimum wage increase include but are not limited to maintaining Workforce competition with neighbors with higher wages quickly increasing the purchasing power for low-wage workers particularly Hispanic Latino and female workers who are dispropor for ately represented in both low wage occupations and industries and to reduce the gap between the minimum wage and the self-sufficiency standard over time potential drawbacks include but are not limited to impacts to businesses including increased payrolls costs maintaining the status quo supports more predictability for businesses and their current Investments due to constrainted City resources this action could potentially limit our ability to implement other ways of addressing affordability challenges without also gaining new resources legislative rest restrictions at the state level do not allow us significant flexibility to address some

[159:01] of the disproportionate impacts through this policy so the way that perhaps a increased minimum wage would affect one particular industry we can't distinguish across our economy in that way and then finally consideration of the City personnel cost increase particularly for parks and recreation open space and Mountain parks and utilities funds in addition to the decision whether or not to increase the minimum wage you have some smaller policy components to consider including indexing as well as enforcement of a new minimum wage when it comes to indexing staff is would recommend if you choose to move forward to index to the CPI which is the Denver metro area um CPI index consistent with other City practices advantages to this sort of indexing would help minimum wage workers maintain their purchasing power as prices change over time potential drawback would be during a period of

[160:01] economic downturn or high inflation indexing could lead to a runaway minimum wage that would cause economic harm in terms of enforcement staff does recommend that we take advantage of existing enforcement channels provided by the Colorado Department of of labor and employment um the advantage here is that the state currently has capacity to support enforcement and wellestablished processes to take complaints pursue investigations another Advantage is that creating a local enforcement mechanism would require significant additional resources to start and maintain a potential drawback might be that a local mechanism could be more tailored to support Boulder Community members specifically the final policy dimension for you to consider as we turn to the questions is related to any exemptions in a minimum wage policy these would be permitted in just two categories unemancipated Miners and independent

[161:01] contractors for unemancipated minors advantages would be that often unemancipated miners are supported by other means that it would significantly reduce payroll costs for certain types of businesses that employ higher numbers of unem unemancipated miners it would require less wage compression adjustment as a result and create a greater incentive for miners to acquire skills and education needed to move into higher paying jobs potential drawbacks would include that higher shares of Hispanic and Latino workers versus other racial groups are unemancipated minors in the workforce some of these miners do make contributions to household living expenses wealth building and planning for their own Futures on the independent contractor side we do have a staff recommendation to maintain consistency with neighboring jurisdictions by exempting independent contractors an advantage here is to ensure that employees living outside the

[162:01] city are treated similarly to the residents within the city who work in other locations and it does not create an incentive on the on the con side it does not create an incentive for independent contractors to perform and Boulder over other communities so that we are in the home stretch and over the past few days as you all know we've received several hotline requests for additional uh with additional feedback and questions from Council Members specifically we had two council members present additional scenarios to consider for Council um to move forward with a minimum wage increase and so we went ahead and quickly created some visuals for you to represent those two scenarios um so I want to show those briefly and then I will turn it back over I do see Taylor your hand up did you want to clarify something yeah just before we get into Council questions uh wanted to clarify that it's actually just Andrew online

[163:00] tonight but I don't regret saying Melissa's name because uh she definitely needs a shout out on contributing so much to this great thanks for that those are the Consultants Okay so to finally wrap up and then switch to discussion here um so we have created this pretty simple line graph that just shows what has become um many more than the original scenarios so we wanted to just demonstrate um the the all the proposed scenarios on the table as of this afternoon's final hotlines um so in this graph the gray line that you see on the bottom represents the Baseline and the current path for the state of color minimum wage if we move up from there you'll see a dotted Blue Line This represents council member wier's proposal that would increase minimum wage by 15% over two years and then

[164:00] would be indexed thereafter here it's modeled at 3% the dotted black line above that represents council member folker's proposal over hotline to increase the minimum wage 15% next year and 88.5% each year for the subsequent years before indexing to inflation the orange line above that represents Denver's current path of its minimum wage and the green line represents unincorporated Boulder County we have also visualize this information for you um by hourly wage value in according to all scenarios over the next 10 years happy to toggle back to this as you need explicit numbers to help your uh discussion and then we also have it uh visualized here by annual salary if the way your brain works prefers to look at the estimation of a

[165:00] 40-hour work week for an entire year and what a a worker would bring home in that sense and so I will now welcome back council member Wier um as we start to proceed through the following questions for Council beginning with whether or not council members have questions for staff on the presentation how did you how did you know that was I that was what I was going to ask do council members have any questions on the staff presentation I actually have one comment on this uh one question Pam if that's okay okay so when you were showing the last slides 40 and 40 one I tried to be as clear as I can but I think um if you go back one to 40 go back one um my proposal actually this is not

[166:00] exactly accurate because at the two or maybe the threeyear level I was going to bring it back so I wasn't saying that we should keep it at CPI but I was saying that we should at that point reconsider so that we don't have uh we could look at any issues that might AR uh might arise economically so I'm not sure how a graph would be better honestly this is the greatest thing and you did the last minute just shout out to the great and wonderful staff um but I would say for the next slide as well you can see that in 2026 or 2027 do you see where the 15 drops off um that is because at that point I wanted to reassess so it doesn't necessarily mean at all that that is the way it looks from 20 28 on but just that I wanted a reassessment there at either year two or three one of those two that's helpful Tara and certainly um

[167:02] as part of council discussion we'd take any direction about what sort of assessment period you'd like to employ when we look ahead to wages so apologies if we got the line a little bit off for you but um Point well taken about that direction okay are there any questions wait a minute I need to look here okay looks like Tina has a question great thank you um and thanks for all your work um so my first question is could you just explain a situation where about with a contractor so how that works and which person would be exempt um I think I can try to jump in on this and I know that our city attorneys uh are also online if they have anything to add but uh in terms of who is an independent contractor that's defined by the Department of Labor and

[168:02] the IRS um that oversee independent contractors and employees and regulates who is considered an independent contractor uh there are several rules around who can qualify including how much control one has over an employee um or an individual and whether there are benefits associated with a position usually a sign of an employee uh what matters is that the employer has the legal right to control details and how services are performed I don't know if city attorney's office wants to jump in on that or if that answered your question I was just trying to think of what would be the what would that would look like in sort of an like which kind of person would be a contractor we'd be interacting with in the city of buer I can try and help jump in and give an answer Taylor um hi everybody my name is Laura Whit I'm with the city attorney's office um and this was something that I

[169:01] actually flagged as something to to bring up um as it's something that we see in some other ordinances that have been adopted such as Denver uh so for an example for independent contractors the city does a lot of independent Contracting work with uh organizations and groups that come together they put in a bid um um for whatever work that the city needs to do they go ahead and fill out that bid and then they become an independent contractor of hours now that being said if they are an employer of multiple employees um within the city of Boulder they would still be required to pay their employees minimum wage it just has to do with this independent contractor designation that the IRS um defines it as independent contractors are separate than employees so we just wanted to flag it as something just to be aware of um and something we would recommend not including in this particular definition that doesn't mean that um if we do work with an independent contractor and they do have employees that they would still be paid that minimum wage because anybody in the city would be required to be paid that minimum wage if they are an employee in that employer employee

[170:00] relationship okay and so if you were a landscaping group that was um registered in Longmont but you were doing work in Boulder um for over four hours you would be paid Boulder's minimum wage not the the minimum wage where your employer and business owner is yeah that's correct if they're doing act like work here in the city and they're not just passing through you know sometimes people pass through um the state law says we can't include those folks but if you're talking about actually working in the city of Boulder for more than four hours per week then yes you would qualify as an employer employee relationship and is that pretty well enforced uh what are the enforcement mechanisms for that do we know well so uh that's one of the questions that comes before council is how you want to enforce the minimum wage generally um but as far as who is an impendent independent contractor and how you can qualify um if you're an individual say and you're an independent contractor that's all defined by the IRS the Department of Labor um yeah and so I would say it's pretty well enforced but

[171:01] I'm not the IRS so okay great thank you then I had another question about um how are the increase in minimum wage in Boulder County and the city of Boulder I was wondering if that would then increase the Ami for the Boulder County which is what we use for the I think what we use for public housing qualification um and how does that kind of connect with minimum wage increases in people who are living and qualify for public housing and then another a public another public housing question is what does anyone know the rate of and I'm sorry I didn't ask it before the rate of increase in rent for people participating in public housing in the city of Boulder in general so I think the first part of your question council member marus is a good time to introduce Andrew who's one of our Consultants from Echo Northwest Andrew if you're able to come on I think

[172:01] the first question was really about um adjustments to Ami based on a minimum wage shift um well my answer is not going to be very satisfactory but I mean it's not something we looked at explicitly here and I I'm sorry Andre can you introduce yourself formally oh I'm sorry yeah um so I'm Andrew Dyke I'm an economist and and Project Director at Eon Northwest and led the economic analysis that that Taylor walked you through um brilliantly I will say um so so apologies on that but um and this answer will not be any more satisfactory than me forgetting to introduce myself because we did not look at this issue um we do show through the economic analysis um that reasonably size minimum wage increases do increase incomes up to some relatively high levels of income which suggests the potential for some changes in the the median income calculations I would expect them to be relatively small but again we did not look into that or

[173:00] attempt to quantify that um just because if you look into the report um the net impacts are are not large they're meaningful but but not large okay um and and then the second question is do we know do we have a schedule for rent increas inrees within our affordable housing program I think we can phone an HHS friend on the call to see if that is possible I'm just scanning yes we have Elizabeth Crow thank you um Elizabeth Crow deputy director housing and Human Services um hate to repeat Andrew um but I would have to consult some data before being able to respond I'm happy to to try to do that this evening I I appreciate it there there are rent schedules I just I think um everyone's situation is so unique to

[174:00] them I think it would be very challenging to give any specific answer um but certainly happy to provide some basic information about the rent schedules if that's helpful that would be great and obviously we're we're thinking about how people can live better in the city so I'm just looking at just beyond minimum wage the other cost that people encounter and struggle with um just trying to live your day um okay and then I was also wondering about you know what I'm I'm actually good for now thank you okay next up is Taisha really I think so unless I'm doing something wrong oh wait maybe I am doing something wrong I think Nicole is that well I just go in the order of the things so I'm not

[175:00] a genius at this but do you not want to go next I mean I will I just feel like Nico you know there were two more before me feel like Nicole and Mark and then it's me but I that's what I think it is I'm gonna go with that Nicole Mark than me sure yes yeah it does look like that Tara if you click on the um participants tab instead the windows that that often has it um okay I just had a couple of questions um and uh both are well kind of both both related to the economic analysis um and first thank you for the presentation what an enormous amount of data and information so thank you for that um so just kind of putting on my social scientist hat um what struck me about the economic analysis was how with decades and what seem like hundreds of studies there isn't really a consistent impact of raing raising wages unemployment or business viability or inflation or anything like that the impact seemed at best minimal on just about every

[176:01] variable that was explored um and I just first wanted to check that that was that I was kind of reading that correctly um and then also um kind of related to that um typically that means that there's not really a strong relationship between the two variables that you're looking at or there so much noise that it's just impossible to measure it effectively so I was just curious on if I am reading that correctly um if you have any any thoughts on on what's going on there yeah thank you know that's a great great question counselor um I I would say um that that's close to how I would interpret things but not exactly I think uh the one of the first slides Taylor showed you was a diagram showing some of the negative effects of the minimum or theoretically negative effects of the minimum wage and also some of the positive and she also noted that um the the the long history of research started out decades ago focusing on the negative the so-called disemployment effects um and that literature has evolved and it's only much more recently that we people have started in Earnest

[177:01] really looking at the maybe last 10 15 years primarily the positive benefits um the world's complicated um and I I think one thing we can say though is that those negative effects are um some would tell you that they're seen as non-existent now I don't buy that but I would say that the the needle has shifted somewhat and that the consensus view if there is one is that they're much smaller than people would have thought you know 30 20 30 years ago um in terms of the overall magnitude I I think I I would agree that there are no eye popping results from what seem like reasonably strong increases in the minimum wagees we've modeled them but I wouldn't say that they're non-existent or unimportant um for example one of the I think there's a question from one of the jurisdictions in the study about interpreting the the poverty reduction numbers and it's not huge numbers of people as a percentage of all employees or all population it's relatively small but it still represents a reduction in several percentage points

[178:00] of poverty and that that's not nothing um so I would say that um small numbers don't mean no impact the other thing I would say with respect to the outcomes is that just because of the nature of the exercise we're modeling aggregate impacts Taylor mentioned the impact on prices which um we find to be relatively small overall but that's not to say that prices in every industry or for every business are going to be unaffected that doesn't make sense and that's not the case but in aggregate you see these results and what I think it's important is to recognize the the puts and takes um as you're thinking about the decision yeah no thank you I appreciate that and I um I think the report was also highlighting some of those just the the sort of magnitude of changes so there was um something I was looking at before the meeting around I think it was maybe like 1% of um loss of Youth of workers uh or uh employment basically but like an 8% growth in um in income or something like that so just sort of the um where there were magnitude differences it did seem like sometimes the positive impacts were a little

[179:01] bigger but again in the great context of things the numerical impacts didn't didn't seem that huge okay we'll take comments later but weing thanks for keeping me on track um and then so the other question that I had this was actually I thought um Lauren sent out a really great one on our hotline earlier today and I don't know that it was answered um basically just thinking about when we might have some uh data that are ready for us to look at what any impacts of if we decide to raise the minimum wage what those impacts would be basically when can we do a data analys because because it seems to me like if we're looking say um if we want to find out in August 2027 uh what we want to do uh we would need to start in August 2026 but in the report Denver wasn't included because they were still it was relatively recent and I think the report started like maybe three years after Denver raised their minimum wage so um while I I like

[180:00] I like to think that Boulder is a little bit better than Denver um I'm not sure if like can we really do in um 18 months what Denver what we were not able to do with Denver in three years after increase does that that was really long I'm sorry that that makes perfect sense a couple of thoughts along those lines one I I think um so the department of labor and employment cdle they do issue minimum wage reports when new um you know municipalities Implement a minimum wage increase and if Boulder were to pursue one there would be a report there those are indicators that are worth looking at I I will say we did not include Denver because it was so recent and you don't get the full picture um and one data point does not prove that the think they're happening but I think those indicators are useful for understanding the evolving context um you know we're sitting here 's predicting a recession in the next few months but the economy nationally and locally regionally has been slowing um you'd want to be looking at those things as well you're thinking about well do we want to adjust any escalation schedule we've implemented in terms of when you

[181:02] can get a good look what we did in our comparative cities analysis was make sure that the cities we were looking at had at least two years of data after the first year of implementation that allows some time to pass so that it's not just the initial shock there's some chance for thing you know for adjustment of businesses and employees and that feels like an appropriate uh time period you get some data again the comparative cities analysis was not a formal empirical rigorous economic study but does provide a little bit more information with which to to judge how things are changing so can I call so were you saying that three years is better than two years uh you just get indicators in the first two years but by the third year you should get more data well yes um more com ensive data um in terms and some of the the American Community survey that Taylor mentioned that we used for our analysis comes out with a lag and that's the best source in a lot of cases for getting a detailed

[182:00] understanding of sort of the wage structure and the demographics of low wage earners and so on and it just takes some time for that to to come out um but but you you get employment counts very quickly um can I call a quay on that I was about to call a quay on that but you I was just wondering what the lag is and what like the amount of time it would be to do a report if we're looking for three years of data it seems like we need to add some on to that to potentially some additional time for sure yeah and I think you know the specific questions are going to drive it I think um if you really wanted three complete years of data you would wait four to five years to do that and that's maybe not quick enough and so I think you know you have to make decisions about what indicators are the most important and I I would also say that um you know there's a lot of Engagement for this process I think that's something else that that could happen you collect that data very quickly um to pulse on what's happening with small businesses but restaurants and so on

[183:01] sorry just Council too of um changing um minimum wage policy requiring engagement like it has this time and needing time to contract with the consultant so tacking on um staff accomplishing the work with the consultant to that um and uh to the extent that getting we could get better definition around what council would like analyzed I think would also help with the timeline on a future assessment thank you that's helpful and just one one more question about that um assessment timeline um so you know some of the scenarios for the county for example is doing uh 8ish percent increases for five years and then they're um slowing slowing down just I think just going with h inflation at that point and um in in terms of that I mean if if things are still not sort of landed to their normal is that what are your thoughts on um on analyzing sort of mid

[184:03] mid process versus like waiting until say the couny if they were to go in 2030 and do their analysis in 2031 for example that's when things are starting to stabilize a little bit they've got that whole chunk there right yeah no I mean definitely you know you not would not be able to analyze midc course and say Here's what the the full increase does but I I think particularly given the nature of some of these increases um stepping back a second um a lot of the research that's been done is on things that we've seen out in the world and there's increasing proposals for increasing minimum wages relatively rapidly to relatively high levels which isn't necessarily a bad thing but that starts to get beyond the bounds of what the research has looked at and you're sort of extrapolating um some jurisdictions will do it and things will go swingly um some might not it's hard to say which is why I think um looking midc course is very useful and very helpful because you do get some of those leading indicators of the impact of you know their most recent increases okay thank you um and that's

[185:02] all my questions for now Tara Okay do um next we have Mark yes thank you uh first Taylor terrific presentation very very detailed and I'm grateful for the amount of work uh you and the team put in on this um back in March we were discussing this issue in terms of a regional approach um is it accurate now to say that there is no such Regional approach on offer and that each city is going to be kind of going its own way some may you know adopt this uh scenario Others May adopt that but we we no longer have any sense of um uh going in lock step with one another and that's really a two-part question and if that is in fact the case have we done any analysis as to the impact on Boulder of various scenarios

[186:02] where we may be putting ourselves in a less um in a more uncompetitive position relative to some of our neighbors uh whether it's Longmont or Lewisville or Lafayette thanks Mark um council member wallik uh as Pam mentioned there are four other Council meetings scheduled to give similar presentations that we gave tonight longm is going to be this Tuesday and I don't have the rest of the schedule off the top of my head but I can find it and drop it in the chat for councel if they'd like that um they will be considering the same information and providing Direction so it's yet to be seen on where the other councils go um and it is still possible and it is still I think a a hope a continued hope of the the effort to try to come together on Regional decision making we could have

[187:00] entered into this um through an IGA um but the I the process of the IGA would have really restricted um our decision making and added sort of another layer of complexity to being able to walk through these five Council meetings ultimately this entire project started with come along with us do the study together let's create comparable information so that we're making decisions on Apples to Apples um facts and then uh from there the promise continued to be that folks could either disengage from the partnership and decide not to do anything at all or make separate decisions um but not trying to uh use this joint effort working together to tie anybody's hands so it it remains to be seen on what communities will decide the scope for the analysis didn't include what would happen if one city were to go alone um Andrew might be able to chime in a little bit more on this um in terms of business migration

[188:01] uh we don't believe to that that that will materialize in a significant way um it might make the relocations of new businesses a different story um but it also depends on what side of being competitive in the you look at because increasing the minimum wage also does make us more competitive from a Workforce perspective uh Andrew did you want to chime in anything more um yeah just a couple of quick comments I think in terms of some of those comparisons about you know what if it's eerie and Boulder and not long mon La at Louisville and so on that that's starting to split some hairs that you know we certainly can't address quantitatively but qualitatively I think we like Taylor suggested uh even if Boulder were the only one of the five municipalities to increase minimum wage we wouldn't expect the um positive impacts to be much larger or negative impacts to be much larger uh in magnitude um in general this is an area that's not as well studied as employment

[189:01] with respect to minimum wage increases but business relocation there is some evidence that minimum wage increases do not lead to Greater business migration out of a region um I think the the workfor component is also important there is some empirical evidence that suggests um you know you can talk about climate in terms of community but low wage workers are more willing to commute to Regions that have higher wages not too surprisingly okay thank you that's all oh Mark is that it okay the next person I believe was Taisha you still up want to speak next Taisha who was Ryan Ryan was it yes I do no I'm I'm actually but thank you I've been I've been tracking it very rigorously alas um I wanted to I just have two questions one uh actually both are around the limitations um that impact the the reliability of the report findings and just to remind those who are not in the

[190:00] science research areas reliability refers to whether the results can be replicated under the same conditions um and so that reproduction replication component and so um knowing that I was curious to hear or rather can you speak to the rationale and decisions that resulted in the exclusion of climate projections like the anticipated 25% increase in water bills over the next two years as well as the anticipated energy rate increases which are um still being negotiated and codified but the initial numbers are quite startling um so that's the first question um is just what is the rationale in decisions it was my understanding that that was something on the initial scope but um just would love to have uh shared understanding of what happened to that component of the report um and what you may feel um how how the uh the lack of that information might impact the interpretation of the results

[191:00] the second question I'm grateful that the report lifts up sector specific impacts to tip workers restaurants child care providers and agriculture but I noticed it does not address um what we the anticipated disproportionate impact to minimum wage uh or low-income workers uh related to generative AI um we know that the McKenzie Global Institute estimates that those working making under 38,000 annually are 14 times more likely to have positions eliminated by the technology can you speak to why there was not there was no reference made to the projections uh uh projected impacts to minimum minimum wage in this report and how these types of anticipated changes could impact again the report report findings thank you council member Adams uh so the original scope of the analysis did include what we covered in the slide which was existing conditions the impact

[192:02] analysis in the scenario modeling we did originally have an optional analysis Arena that we were planning to pursue um that I really hats off to the the team that put together this scope because it tried to take a more holistic view to what could be the impacts of climate change and adapting to um different temperatures inclement weather and and how could that play a role in minimum wage um what are the impacts of minimum wage amid an increasingly demanding regulatory environment with more utility fees and um Longmont has a a new waste ordinance that's putting a fee on businesses and things like that um as well as deeper looks into the disperate impacts on different racial racial um groups in this decision this all could not ultimately be pursued we had to allocate some of the budget to cover some of the

[193:00] unexpected um roadblocks in moving forward with just the core analysis work um and we really uh were trying to meet a timeline to bring a decision before Council on that 2025 possible implementation um and and giving our business Community time to respond to that before the year a possible increase took over in the year so um while while that was considered in original scope it's not something that we we could have pursued um because of some timeline and budget constraints and then your second question I think wait I'm sorry before you go on though I'm just curious because again uh some of that data like the projected water rates data is information we have at the city level these aren't big projections that require all these big scenarios so I'm just um again curious how the lack of having that data would impact the results that have been projected that specific one the 25%

[194:00] increase in water bills across the board over the next two years and how that um impacts the result findings I don't think this was an example of not having information I think it was an example of um amid the project moving forward it was it was not ultimately explored um and Analysis do that I'm sorry to hear that thank you so much Taylor yeah can I cqu on that so I I'm not completely following I am wondering is the so the increase in water rates are we thinking about that as one of the um parallel increase cost of living as we look at minimum wage is that the and I'm asking it specifically from the perspective of the impacts that it's going to have on both commercial and residential just as an expense um and the disproportionate impact that that's going to have um and that is not added in the calculations and so that is the

[195:02] specific question and I'm just asking specifically about why we weren't using the data that we had we don't have that data for the energy side we just know that it's going to happen but we do have it on record that over the next two years that bill is going to go up 25% by 2026 okay and and so then that cost isn't included in there's some lines that talk about what our self-sufficiency wage or uh income no wage uh will be in 2035 does that bake in those increase in water the increases in water excuse me it okay it doesn't and then but there are probably a lot of costs that aren't in there I mean is that's a what is the strategy that's an unprecedented I actually did follow up and it is my understanding it is an unprecedented for that a level of increase in a two-hour in a two-year period with the exception of 2013 and the floods when there was a significant increase in water in storm water and flood water but not in the water raids

[196:00] thank you okay perfect so that but this was on the cost side not on the income side thanks I I have invited one of our backstage actors um Joe tatui to join us just to talk a little bit about our local water rates good evening Council and uh council member Adams thanks for the question um sorry for any confusion I might have created when uh we had a brief exchange on this offline but our uh we have three utilities water Wastewater storm water and flood and um the rates for 2025 for water um we're proposing an 8% rate increase and the same for uh 2026 8% and then 6% for for Wastewater and 5% for storm water and flood for both years so I I I'm not sure where the 25% number uh comes from or if it's something that I was adding it over the two years

[197:02] Joe over the threeyear period to get to 2026 gotcha so my apologies my larger point is is there was a significant um data point that was not included in this analysis and what impact that would have I feel like my question was answered and I'm happy to move on to the second awesome go and I I believe to clarify you were kind of getting at what um what happens with increased automation is that right I was just simply clarifying that that information was not included in the analysis and it sounds like um you know yeah I just wanted to clarify and and get some explanation so it was help it was very helpful to know that there was was an extra component but that wasn't included etc etc so I just wanted to get that part and I'm happy to move on to the second question about about AI generated about the disproportionate impacts to minimum wage earners uh

[198:02] generative Ai and what's being projected so I noticed that wasn't included in the analysis either and we know that there's going to be a disproportionate impact to minimum wage earners I'd like to actually this is this actually makes it for making a higher minimum w but I just want to honor that there are some significant numbers that are missing um that just makes it a bit challenging uh more challenging thank you I'd like to invite Andrew back on that one because I know part of the model includes kind of business efficiencies and that sort of thing I wonder if you can expand on kind of what's behind that yeah well so uh Council M that's an excellent question I mean all of the issues you've raised are largest or large and and important um some of them you know things like water rates we could look at those and and try to estimate the impacts on families and so on and businesses um something like AI um which you know we weren't scoped to look at but I mean that's going to be more qualitative this is you know we're still a couple years into the chat GPT era but you know we don't know where

[199:01] things are going to land I I will say um from a qualitative perspective um one of the findings in the literature or one of the things that businesses do in response to increased labor costs is they can try to automate and if AI is making that easier that makes the adjustment process more easy but it has impacts on workers um and there's you know would not would not be surprised to find significant disproportion impacts of that um but again that's that wasn't part of what we looked at appr that again I just was really struck by you know somebody was sharing at McDonald's I don't really have a ton of staff there anymore it's mostly machines um and I can anticipate this happening more so again I just wanted to just make sure a is I'm happy to know that was on the radar screen and is UN fortunate that we weren't able to um you know at this time make make that quantification but I just want to lift that up thank you so much for the opportunity for these questions Ryan thank you I have two questions

[200:00] about the population of employers I understand there's about 8,400 employers in Boulder about 88% of those are considered small meaning 25 employees are under so that's about 7,400 assuming I that right my first question is do we have a sense of uh what share of that 7400 small businesses are minimum W paying minimum wage like even is it is just at the level of is it very small is it very large is it somewhere in the middle do do we have anything on that yeah thank you for the qu it's that's that's a great question we do not have detailed information um we can look we did have some very detailed employment data by business but we didn't know anything other than just sort of aggregate payroll we don't have individual wages um so we can't precisely say we do know from other data sources and this is no surprise you know restaurants are more likely to be emplo employeed people with earning the

[201:00] minimum wage childcare workers who both have come up these kind of things um but we don't have the data to precisely uh you know pinpoint how many minimum wage workers are there in different Industries in in Boulder um so we do have a little bit of information from the engagement questionnaire um we have individuals that identified as business owners also responded with the lowest page worker uh sorry lowest paid worker in their their business but again that's a non-representative sample and it doesn't really tell us how many you know of those lowest paid workers there are in a business so the answer is unfortunately no not with not with any degree of pres okay thank you then I'm gonna uh try to do a a 1B um if I could so so to try it this way I what I'm getting at is I'm I'm trying to understand if we have an idea of the scale of employers who will see the net expense the load of of new expenses from minimum wage whether it's from one employee or multiple employees but that

[202:00] becomes a a very high proportion of their net income or you know otherwise their ability to withstand it I'm just trying to get a sense of like do we have any scale of what what those that category of employers might look like um well I'll say not from a um count of business perspective but we we do have a table where we estimate uh increases in payroll costs increases in operating costs by industry so you can look at the industries and I think Taylor mentioned some of this you know we would expect um payroll costs and operating costs to increase more strongly in the restaurant industry and that's where you find you know a lot of in workers um beyond that um you know we don't have a lot of data and really pinpoint that I think there might have been a second half your question that I there's a second question um so my second question shifting GE a little bit um I'm thinking about a different population of employers and this this is one that um is very important from a public interest perspective this is a

[203:01] subject highly subjective but I'm thinking you know I talked to somebody who represented an organization that um does work support of the city business they're you know through grants and like they had pointed out grants don't seem to appreciate each year and you know Accords with the cost of living are we even thinking about the um the scale in which we have um contracts or grants that are you know sort of counting on City business to to use to get done um that will be affected by this and if so do we know so yeah and I'm also thinking about child you know child care and other sort of sense of Industries but um maybe I'll just put it at however you can answer that do we have any sense of of Industries uh a scale of industries that um are doing work that we would say is really in the public interest it's really important from the city's perspective continues um or not uh well so I'll say a couple things I think part of the question is probably better answered by by City staff or others but um so we did

[204:01] not disaggregate in that way I I think again we do have um I I don't remember all of the tables um we do have some information on employment by industry so we you could with the data we could pull out childcare I don't think we did the report specifically um that might be true so there is some information there in terms of businesses by industry and some Industries are more um you know more oriented towards the things you were describing I I think another another component or Dimension to what you're asking though I I think one thing we would recommend is not to pursue a you know maximal increase at all cost for a large large number of years because it's important to understand some of the Dynamics and see how you know say childcare workers within Boulder respond to that first couple of years of in inrease at maybe a more modest level and if everything goes great know you can revisit and if you want to increase more rapidly you can or or not but really important to allow systems to adjust okay thank you Andrew thank you

[205:01] Taylor and everybody for all this this work I believe that Matt is next thanks ter um well first to say what a Monumental task to try to bring all this together and try to keep community unities together and not just do our own work in our own insular bubble and Boulder so uh tremendous lift to get where we are um and I appreciate some of the questions that have come beforehand I I want to Circle back and just clarify something that Andrew said and then I'll move on to my questions because I I was pegging a similar question I think Nicole sort of got there is what kind of Baseline do we need to see an enhanced minimum wage in order to have viability in looking at impacts and I think that's kind of the general question and what I heard was like probably four to five years uh to to get a study that has some relevance to it is that is I just want to make sure do I understand that correctly uh I say you maybe not required but that mean that be my guess

[206:01] right now I mean there are different ways to approach it and you're not proposing a very expensive uh study where you know you bring in the economics Department from the University of Colorado to do you know interview people before and look at their individual wages before and after and that's how you prove impacts but short of that yeah I mean to wait a couple few years for data to reflect change that have been happening on the ground well I'd expect our University Partners to do that for free anyway so anyway y well you go out I'd love to see the results yeah appreciate it um so a question I have comes down to so in the questionnaire it was sort of the question was about what like I think the question was preferencing what's your wage rate um and in respondents obviously people would say 1442 or in case is 1102 you know depending on if they're getting the if they're on the tip credit but what I was trying to understand I think mentioned it but I really want to get down to and I think Ryan's getting to this extent some who's really impacted because the front of house restaurant worker who's making 3840 plus dollars an hour is sure could benefit but isn't

[207:00] really the target audience here because they're making 38 $40 an hour it's maybe the it's the non-tipped worker and how do we separate the the impact of getting that non-tipped worker elevated versus someone who's making $40 an hour and were we able to really separate that in terms of understanding the volume the scale in our Workforce of who's who's in what category because I'm I'm worried that that if we've got all these we've got a lot of people that are making $38 $40 an hour that's skewing our understanding of who we're impacting in that most uh critical state of needing some wage growth um yeah I think that's right and I mean one of the big limitations is there there's just very little information on who's earning a tipped wage versus and who certainly who's front of I mean you can look at occupations but there's just not enough information to do a very good job um really at any scale and very precisely say here here are the potential impacts I think super important issue um I I would suggest that some of those

[208:01] Dynamics um create disparities and that there's maybe there's there are separate policy conversations or Communications um Dimensions that that would address that opposed to I we s we just can't see that dimension of the data sure and sort of along those lines um sort of looking at the the the number of people who would be impacted by a wage increase and trying to sort of understand where that resides across the board across some Industries and and and as as Nicole sort of brought out and I think there there's some you know certain the truth is some of those impacts of of you know businesses hurting and that sort of stuff may get lost in the noise because some businesses can compensate rather easily While others can be devastated by it but on average there's kind of like it's net zero right I mean it kind of they can cancel each other out a little bit but do we have a way of really knowing where those disproportionate impacts are in a clear way or are we just kind of looking at it at aggregation I know we touched a little bit on the restaurants and those

[209:00] will be hit it but do we do we really know how we're going to impact them in a serious way outside of the aggregation that has sort of been mentioned in the broad study well I I think in theory you could know more I mean you know we're we're all human there's only 24 hours in the day so we could only do so much with the you know the time and the resources um like like I said we did have um and that these are available to you know valid uh entity governmental entities U employer specific information from cdle where we knew the employment and the industry and total payroll which still doesn't answer the question of who's a tip workers or or or you know who is and who isn't but I I think there are data out there and one could do more analysis to try to get at some of these issues and um but a final point on some of the numbers and I think I I I guess I I would characterize most of our findings as they are Aggregate and they give an indication of or I think the goal our goal was to provide order of magnitude so are the wheels going to fall off here or are all

[210:01] the problems going to be solved no but here's some you know aggregate findings that give you some information about possible benefits and disadvantages but always more to be done wonderful the final question I have is if we do decide to go down this path and want to you know do some study I would hope that we maybe ask you and your colleague of what is the data that I that you wish you had to be able to provide some clearer answers and maybe we start with some of that in terms of that's what we Peg for information that we want to strive to make whether it's you or some other group of Consultants job easier so I would love to know like where are those gaps that you kind of bang your head against you're like go I wish I had that and feed that back to us so we know what we're working with uh and asking for for a future study yeah absolutely I mean have to provide some input and I think I'll stop rly but a combination of things that are out there just need to be accessed and you know there are potential surveys and these kind of things you don't want to burden people but there's a lot of possibility appreciate it thanks

[211:00] Andrew oh sorry I got distracted you're laughing at okay Tina looks like you have another question or so yeah just to um could you remind me if the exemptions in minimum wage and the part part about the state minimum wage law around the difference for the tip credit wage are can be changed through legislation or whether those are constitutional would you like me to weigh in Taylor sorry yeah great uh thank you for your question council member um so the actual dollar amount the 302 is put in the state constitution we can't change that um which is an interesting dollar amount I tried to figure out where that came from and I think it's it's from several years ago or they created that dollar amount but um that's in there and then the actual bill says that um all the local governments who adopt some sort of minimum wage shall provide a tip offset

[212:00] for employees of businesses or Enterprise that prepares and offers sale food or beverages for consumption either on premisis or off premises so there's this shall language in there so we have to include it into our ordinance okay and and and for constitutional changes it has to go to a state ballot it has to right yeah it has to go yeah so if you were looking at the $32 Cent change yeah that's a state ballot measure and then it would have to be approved by 55% majority of the whole state of Colorado okay now this included into our local at the state level could be changed at the state level okay thank you um and then my second question is um is there I I think it's for Andrew is there any um relationship between companies will willingness or likelihood to offer benefits to employees uh based on minimum wage levels in their communities um I I can speak to the theory but not not the empirics um I think I mean well one of the concerns

[213:01] raised about raising minimum wage is that employers might raise the wage and then compensate by reducing benefits for workers um I'm not aware of any compelling evidence one way or the other okay all right thank you all right that brings us to Lauren thank you um so Matt brought up kind of the front of house back of house disparities in restaurants and Andrew mentioned the potential for business practices potentially to address some of these issues I know some of our local businesses have instituted tip sharing or service fees um and I believe in November we have an update from our economic Vitality strategy I was hoping maybe someone could pop up from our people in the

[214:02] people that are here to tell us other things going on in the city really takes a village doesn't it it really does that might help um explain what kind of supports we are looking at through that process and if it's a possibility that we might be able to create a forum for information sharing on kind of doing these other you know business practices to help address this disparity yeah good evening Council Mark wolf assistant city manager happy to start on your question Lauren and I also want to introduce Jennifer pineno our um economic Vitality manager uh who oversees uh our programs and uh has close relationships with our economic Vitality Partners uh just want to point out that uh we don't do this work alone we city has a couple direct support

[215:01] programs but we rely very heavily on our uh Partners uh including uh Boulder Small Business Development Center the boulder chamber Latino Chamber of Commerce visit Boulder downtown Boulder partnership CU Boulder so many um are a part of providing uh business support across uh Community uh to your point uh council member Furs we we do have an upcoming conversation at the end of September uh in a new community and Council Forum uh format where we'll be talking about uh Economic Development our economic Vitality strategy and some of the components of that update uh so we can we can certainly uh entertain um how we might approach uh broader uh small business support in this context as a part of uh that conversation and I don't know Jennifer if you might want to add a little bit more flavor just on some of the the programs that that we do offer uh small

[216:01] businesses um sure Jennifer penso economic Vitality manager city of Boulder um we offer now a microloan program to small businesses that helps out businesses um um that may not be able to get financing from traditional sources um we also offer an incentive program but much of our um assistance is really in the form of helping businesses um do a better job of being productive um helping with business and marketing plans a lot of Education and Training a lot of Workforce Development so more programmatic versus um um you know and it'll be information and connections to resources versus direct assistance provided by the city thank you can I cqu on that point

[217:00] Lauren you're next anyway so I threw my hand up because I didn't know if it was a cqu the next uh so given so Jennifer given that the current structure we have doesn't really focus on economic relief or assistance it is there could could you or Mark or or Joel or anybody give us a sense of what are the what are the things what are the fees that the city um incurs onto businesses that could be potentially used obviously tradeoff to the revenue to the city but could be used to maybe offset or soften the landing for businesses who are going to see uh perhaps a major increase to their their cost from wages I mean like one restaurant in particular is going to see1 if we raise it 15% they're going to see their wage cost go up $120,000 just like that so that's that's a hard pill for them to swallow they may not be able to make that work um so what what what are the mechanisms that we have that we could sort of give some offset or some

[218:01] relief to soften that Landing I think Joel will be in a good position to answer some of that but it really varies by business right so if you're doing facility improvements or you're expanding you or you're purchasing equipment you're going to pay sales or use taxes or you're going to pay permit fees if you're not doing any of that there's nothing the city can do in terms of reducing that cost another big component of cost are uh occupancy costs so a certain percentage of that is based on property taxes but I don't know that we can just really you know provide a discount on property taxes for one particular um industry so I I think it's it's a little bit hard to really isolate particular Industries or businesses um in that way and and Joel may have more to add sure thanks Jennifer and thank you council member Benjamin for the question

[219:00] Joel Wagner Finance deputy director I think Jennifer hit on a big part of it which is um you know yes the the city charges fees for a lot of services um permits reviews things like that I will note um I'll I'll list out a few that we we kind of uh inventoried but note that generally our city fee structure is based on a cost recovery model um so the fee is intended to um cover the cost of the staff doing the work um not to say that Council couldn't choose to to change those fees it would just mean we would have to find funding um other places for those staff who are doing the work um so I would just say broadly a couple of categories um one would be the the um specialty or regulatory licenses such as liquor licenses marijuana licenses

[220:01] mobile food vehicles things like that for those those regulated business activities um that we oversee um those those costs and staff if if uh asked if requested by Council can come back with a more detailed analysis but those those range from a few hundred to a few thousand depending on the complexity of of the license in the review process um the second one is is I would categorize more as um building in zoning related fees so if any of my colleagues from planning and development services uh want to boot me off and and talk more eloquently about it I'm I'm happy to let them do that um but those would be things like uh plan review fees or or use use reviews um um permit costs um and then you know going down the the line to things like development excise tax and offsets and

[221:01] and all of those other things related to building or or renovating um I'll pause just make sure that that nobody from Brad's team is is uh is on and then see if that answers the question Joel I might just um add one quick thing is all of those existing revenues to your point are are currently programmed and so I know Matt you're well aware of this but certainly all of that comes at a trade-off so if we were to wave fees or provide rebate or grants in some other way beyond the administration of whatever that program is we'd also have to to replace that Revenue in some other way so just food for thought as you're thinking through that appreciate it I just wanted to sort of get a lift of it I mean there certainly do property tax there's the food service fee there's a range of them we could consider I'll pose a question later to my colleagues about whether we want to think about some form of economic relief but it does beg that right there is an issue of we tend to want to support

[222:00] those that are disproportionately impacted and we have a tradition of doing that um and if we can make it if we're making decision on minimum wage and we are disproportionately impacting a particular subset of businesses it seems like the spirit of this community to uh actually formally try to support them and soften their Landing so just it's a consistency question as it is in figuring out what the vehicles and trade-offs are in order to achieve it thank you okay with that I believe that we are ready for our very first question and it's I think it's an easy one for us I have a feeling does council wish to pursue a new local minimum wage ordinance for the city of Boulder as Allowed by hp19 d1210 that's the first question so I have never done a show of hands because I don't even know how to do it Aaron how do I count I I think you can ask people to raise their physical hand okay if you can see everybody on

[223:01] screen at once which I can right now then that you can you can you can okay I'm gonna ask you to count for me because I can't because I have too many windows open okay I can be the scorekeeper okay a show of hands a straw P does council wish to pursue a new local minimum wage ordinance Etc raise your hand if you wish to pursue that we have how many hands Arin I got nine okay that looks like everybody okay now because we're doing that the next thing we want to discuss is um let me get my notes give me one second of all these screens okay so we currently have four scenarios Boulder County Denver and then we have two hotline recommendations and then I'm going to ask anybody if they have a further recommendation or if they want to um tweak the any of the res

[224:01] recommendations as well I also am going to ask this was just off the cuff that I decided not long ago maybe like 10 minutes ago 15 minutes ago if if Lauren who has one of the um one of the um recommendations and I also wanted to just say a few words of clarification which I always need to do so I'm GNA first see if Lauren wants to speak into any clarification of her um recommendation I'll let you speak to your clarification first and maybe that will inspire more clarification on my behalf okay let me get my notes I wish I had three screens right now but I only have my laptop so council member Wier also I'm at the ready so let me know if you want me to pull back up a chart or a table or another slide for you okay so I think all I wanted to do is explain how

[225:00] I got where I did so yeah you can pull up um 41 and how I got where I did was if you look at 41 are you sharing your screen ah okay you can see that the 15% you can see in 2025 uh that category 15% over is higher than both D2 and B2 and one of the reasons why I did that was because I'm very cognizant of the fact that there are some people that definitely do need right now help and I've heard from some of our partners that they're involved in our social safety net that that is an important thing so I wanted to start start with something that is not B1 or D1 because those are as the um what's that nice man what's your name Andrew thanks Andrew said um there is more of an impact on

[226:02] these larger increases and I'm not that type of person that likes to see a big impact in hope for the best so as you can see even in year two still 15% is higher than D than B1 and B2 at that point I wanted to then you know look at things but I've hear from Andrew that two years is not really quite enough and nor am I a wage expert even though I took economics as a major I'm not even an economics expert so the fact that I even came up with this scenario just means to what I'm trying to really say are three things first of all I wanted to be a little bit more than b uh d 2 and B2 so we could have more of an impact for those really need it but on the other hand I'm uncomfortable with any long range um plans because in the world of Economics just as an example the Federal

[227:00] Reserve as you know um there's the fomc sets monetary policy and interest rates and they meet every eight times a year so what that says to me is not that we should change the minimum wage eight times the year but that to keep a stable and uh to keep a stable well-running economy frequently looking at some of the unintended consequences SL possible things that could happen that we don't know about plus also we have no idea what you know if we're going to go into a recession or not it seems to me like I would want to not do businesses harm or people harm both so that is why and I'm happy for any of my council members to say yeah but you should have done three and I wish this and that I'm not saying this is the proposal of all propos all proposals I'm just saying that's where I was coming from when I was thinking about another option I mean in

[228:00] retrospect I could have said B2 or D2 and just stop it at 2028 and then rethink but it didn't come to me so there you have it um I think that's what I wanted to say in regards to my option and then I'll ask for Lauren and then I'll ask if anybody has want to speak into that before we go and take straw poles I didn't tell you I was going to do that Pam did I thank you Tara so I'll just start with that I think you know B1 might actually be my preferred option but um and I didn't come up with this option but it was an option that I heard that I feel like captures a lot of um it it creates the opportunity to address some of the issues that I'm really concerned of with um Tara as you

[229:00] mentioned we know that there are people in our community workers who are hurting right now and wages really haven't kept up with rent or food or any of our costs of living so there there is a need to do something relatively big um quickly and so this plan puts in place three years of Fairly aggressive increases with the idea that that gives us um or that gives workers a boost and it also gives us time to look at what these impacts are and make an adjustment um before moving forward it sets us up so that we could either um match Denver or match Boulder County um you know I I expect by the time we get

[230:02] to 2027 we probably won't have seen consecutive years of 3% increases our crystal ball is probably not that good in terms of CPI increases so these numbers will be a little bit different at that point um and we will be able to if not capture the full economic picture at least get a chance to take a look at some of those early indicators um and also uh make adjustments for what actual inflation has looked like over those years right see we're doing good on this you and I um I do W to thanks for saying that and it had me time to think of what I forgot to say and then when I said to kick in the CPI it wasn't that I wanted to hold everything from 2028 on to the 3% or whatever it's going to be at the time it's just that I didn't want to

[231:00] stop and then have no CPI because then they would people would lose their buying power just by you know inflation itself um but I'm also as assum if we find out in those three years or whatever we decide that people are really falling into poverty way too quickly and also the restaurants are doing pretty well aside from you know restaurants coming and going including child care and also our very beloved nonprofits then you know we can act accordingly so um there that's what I was thinking as well so that's why this chart isn't accurate even though I love it Pam and you're the best and I do want to take one minute to thank this most incred staff for being so flexible in this very last minute discussion I mean I'm stunned did you even sleep this week I know I didn't I didn't sleep I was stressed but anyway so that's all I have to say and then the next question I have

[232:01] is does anybody want to add after you've heard us another option before we move on to straw PS let's see if I can see or change any or tweak anything do I see a hand I see Matt's hand oh there are some people that's exciting this meeting will end at about midnight right all right Matt um I appreciate the hotlines on sort of these um different scenarios or combinations I I I I do think that you know what we heard loud and clear is we need a sufficient Baseline I I would hate to embark on this study after two years and know nothing because we haven't had enough information and then we're kind of right back where we started where we we don't know enough to make good decisions and I I feel a little bit like we don't quite know enough um but but we have just enough to make a decision here so I wanted to offer maybe a bit of a tweak to um and

[233:00] and and a bit of a middle ground between Tara and Laurens a little bit because what it does is it gets us out to five years and that's what I I think is important in terms of getting a Baseline and uh I just think two or three years is just not sufficient enough and so my The Tweak I offer I'm going to put it I I just have it in the um in I just posted in the comment section is really just eight% for the first three years and then six for the last two years to year five then we do our evaluation we're study and Peg it at 3.3% CPI and if our study says oh my God we got to ramp it up then we ramp it up but that's our check-in point to do so um and if not then we have a 3% we're not going to lose purchasing power and people's wages will at least stay pegged with that to me that's reasonable I I I think for reasons that I've mentioned uh it's it's it's balanced it doesn't throw our restaurants under the bus and our nonprofits under the bus it does give them a fighting chance to get through this um but it also gives a very good

[234:01] wage increase to um those that that need it um you know gets their wage uh up to 2042 um by 2029 so um somewhere in the middle but gives us that Baseline so I just want to put that out there um as of a compromise of the compromises if that's a thing so happy to talk more about my feelings about the whole thing but I just want to throw that out there as an option of a middle ground based on what we heard from Andrew about needing a longer Baseline all right we have Mark okay I'm going to uh take a more cautious approach um I'm going to be supportive of Tara's suggestion that we do this for two years um then increase with CPI and then ultimately do our study uh and and see where we are I think the other uh possibilities are simply too aggressive um I'm not prepared to be uh

[235:01] so casual about the impact on our restaurants and our not for-profits uh our small Arts organizations and and uh uh Home Health Care organizations we've heard from many of them that they are living handt mouth and that an aggressive um increase is going to put them out of business uh I have no reason to doubt their word um and I'm you know my my view is first Do no harm and I would like to do the increase over two years um and by the way while I'm very um uh appreciative of council member Benjamin's suggestion that we formulate some kind of bailout program um for our business Community I think we've heard tonight that that we really do not have the resources to do so

[236:02] meaningfully in our current conditions and that is also consistent with a presentation that was made to members of the financial strategies committee um that will ultimately obviously be presented to the full Council um so I I think um I'm very familiar with the restaurant industry I know how uh thin the margins are I know how difficult it is and you know simply arbitrarily saying we're gonna you know we're going to bump it by this percentage or that percentage U makes me a little apprehensive and I want to uh um support what Tara's original concept of increasing um it's not a it's not a DI minous increase it's a real increase but um it puts us in a position of um seeing where we are in

[237:01] four or five years um and not harming the very businesses who are going to be paying the minimum wage um and who are going to be most responsible for hiring those individuals who are making the minimum wage and I I you know putting too harsh a burden upon them is is not going to serveice well certainly not going to serve them well they're going to be going out of business um and I think we need to have a little bit more care uh about what we do and how we do it thank you thanks Mark so you're just saying with the original is what you're saying okay looks like next we have Nicole excellent thank you um and I'm going to just use a little bit of time try to make my case because I did not have time to send out a hotline today

[238:00] like others did um so I'm gonna do it here sorry sorry to the folks that like to do it on hotline um so I support being consistent with the county and aiming for $25 in 2030 uh basically scenario be one in this chart here and I just I want to offer a caveat um that in some of the conversation tonight um I've heard folks talk about how there are so many different um Dimensions to our affordability crisis and I 100% agree to me minimum wage increases are one part of addressing the affordability crisis that's impacting the whole community and reaching $25 by 2030 is still less than the self-sufficiency standard it's still not a living wage if we wanted a minimum wage increase be the only solution to our community's affordability struggles we'd be considering the self-sufficiency standard not this this wage increase even getting to $25 by 2030 doesn't absolve us of the need to keep working on other aspects of affordability that I know we all agree on like housing other

[239:00] folks I think are working on child care but all these other costs that people are struggling with so why why did I choose this this particular option and um looking at our 350 page report for tonight um first of all I think this course is is pretty predictable it's the same increase as the county for five years and then just increasing from inflation with there what I worry about if we're just increasing for a few years is that we're kind of leaving everybody in limbo again and there's a lack of predictability that I think um makes running a business a lot harder that's something I heard in talking to folks uh within the community and the restaurant community that just the lack of predictability is so hard to solve for uh many of our biggest nonprofits support using Denver as the floor the minimum um they would not be sad to see us go higher and I think what they're picking up on that I hear from so many um in our community including a lot of business owners too is that we all pay when workers aren't paid enough workers are harmed and so are we we pay in Rising numbers of evictions and

[240:00] homelessness Rising rates of mental illness and substance use Rising rates of people needing financial assistance more pollution traffic from people driving longer distances to work or study in our city and we also get Rising numbers of people who don't have the time or the disposable income to spend in our stores restaurants art Arts organizations and nonprofits when I looked at the the um report the negative impacts of getting to $25 by 2030 weren't overwhelming the positive impacts of doing a faster increase this was especially true for um youth for people of color and for elderly folks um it is very clear from the dozens of emails that we've gotten in the last few days that a subset of business owners are really worried despite these findings and I just want to point out it's not all right many of the Spanish-speaking employers for example noted that there were potential positive impacts of increasing the minimum wage um and I want to elevate that workers including parents and students are also worried even though we're not hearing

[241:00] from them because they're working they don't understand why they have to keep coming to us to tell us the same thing they've been telling us for years so when I looked at the survey data it didn't really surprise me that almost 60% of the survey respondents favored increasing the minimum wage and 66% when we just looked at Boulder including a quarter of the business owners who responded and what was interesting about the scenarios they looked at is that the scenario the majority of people wanted was for us to follow not the counties uh minimum wage increase but the County's hourly rate for their own staff which in 2024 is paying $23.23 an hour and about 40% of people um wanted to see that um wage increase they they wanted that option uh we can't do that for State reasons and other reasons I would not do that to um our business Community as somebody who employs people myself um but I think we can commit to following the County's model to get to $25 in the next six

[242:00] years um going slower than the county or not going as high as they do feels a little bit like kicking the hand down the road if we don't match the county for example the gap between self-sufficiency wages and minimum wages will just grow in the coming years and we already have businesses closing because they can't find workers and young people are leaving our city because they can't afford to live here so it doesn't really feel to me like we have time to waste a couple years ago it took two full-time jobs to make ends meet here now it takes four four full-time minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet Denver's cost of living is 20% lower than ours almost 20% but their wage is already almost 30% higher than ours so this feels like a similar thing so many of the other things we're looking at traffic housing climate mitigation adaptation the longer we wait to take this Boulder action um the worse our Workforce and economic problems are going to get so b one b one I didn't make a cheer sorry b one b one for

[243:00] Nicole yeah I wasn't exactly I don't know how this happened that we're here but we're we're going with it um Tina and then at the end I'll take a straw poll believe it or not okay um so just I I want to just express some um concern it's not huge but just that we're in a study session and we're not voting but it does feel like we're making some pretty important decisions without a public comment and some of the scenarios that we are going to be straw fully on um presumably to go to a single ORD ordinance on September 9th uh are pretty specific and unve they came out today so I do have some concerns about our process um let's stop right there does uh I I hear your concerns and I'm wondering if staff wants to speak about that can we okay all right staff someone and specifically Teresa I wonder

[244:01] if you might weigh in on how we address giving direction versus making a final decision a public hearing yes so um as you know the study session is designed for Council to give feedback about whether it wants to move forward and if it wants to move forward staff needs some direction about what they what this Council would want to see in a draft ordinance we could then bring the draft ordinance to you I'm I'm not actually sure about the timing um I I I think that we we may need more time than than was previous ly stated nonetheless um certainly this is a matter that you could put on for public hearing at first or second reading and so um this is this is something that you know perhaps Council would want to think about um doing a public hearing at first

[245:02] reading to get some feedback and then making any um potential changes before second reading and those would that would of course happen in a regular meeting both first and second reading and Tracy if I just might follow up and we could make any alterations we wanted at that time right we would not be bound by the draft ordinance we could change it to essentially anything else within the topic oh mayor this Council has never been bound by a draft ordinance I don't know why we would start now well put thank you can I ask a clarifying Teresa would would it be appropriate for us then in terms of direction to with little away some of these and leave kind of whether it be one great but maybe one or two in a range and let staff have at it and then we tweak later or is the preferred option uh slice it right down and pick our numbers all the way out to Rapture and hope for the best and tweak later

[246:02] yeah so you know certainly staff could legal could draft alternate ordinances um that would not be our preference our our preference would to draft an ordinance that you all think you can support and uh and go from there but you know if we were to receive direction to do some alternatives on some particular portions of ordinances that is possible okay only question is because I don't know if we're gonna actually get to the one given what I'm hearing from my colleagues so I'm wondering if we start uh whittling away what what we know doesn't have support and if we get to one great but if it's some in between then that's maybe the best we get to tonight I just worry if we stick to trying to find one we're again we're going to spin our Circle sorry just a process question of how best to that is true um that is a good point we could do before I ask yes yeah I mean I think there's a

[247:01] variety of ways to do it my only ask would be because I I think you're right right but just as you're seeing tonight and we saw on hotlines there are innumerable variations of this that the more we can win wiow down and actually know that we're trying to wiow down versus a month later having more options and variations cuz staff will need to do economic analysis of each and every one of these so the better Direction and and clear direction we can get even if it's two or three that's better than eight or nine okay we can do it Team all right can I ask another question I mean I'm not quite done yet oh oops I oops sorry that's okay um so and and so I bring this up in part um because I wanted to be clear to the community that tonight we're not setting a wage that we still have more steps to make um doesn't mean it will changea thank you and then the second thing is

[248:01] that I am personally curious is it's not I'm curious about what the other municipalities do and we will hear back from some of them prior to our first reading but not all so I am in favor of having an ordinance or two and not um binding ourselves to one solution at this time thanks all right now Taisha awesome thank you so much um I think one of the biggest um pieces uh that I'm considering is the comment that the minimum wage in and of itself and the math is just not mathing even with all these scenarios we know the number needs to be 31 today um and so I don't love I actually don't agree with um our current approach where we're doing this in isolation outside of looking at the other social service programs that we have um and and just some of the other

[249:01] components so I'm I'm I'm hopeful that as we move forward with the comp plan update we can look for more uh intersectional um and holistic approaches around our most vulnerable communities our low wealth and lowincome communities um more holistically but in the interim um I do favor an increase um because of the um primarily the climate impacts that are unprecedented I have concerns around the analysis um and although again the analysis indicates that there's marginal impacts either way um again that all of that research was done during a time when um there were not the significant U climate impact that we've seen accelerate even over the last three years um with two wildfires out my my window um and um and again uh just just the intended uh increases in in utilities and again I apologize Joe uh for not getting those numbers right but even a um you know

[250:02] 6.7 um would still have a significant impact um and that's not inclusive of the energy pills which are going to be extreme um and so I am actually hopeful uh so I'm again in favor of raising it um I actually would prefer a three-year um time frame uh because there are just so many moving pieces that have concerns around five um as being too long or maybe at three there's an iterative step um but um again I also am hopeful that we can re-engage with Superior um who who is not involved in in this um as well as um I'm I'm just hopeful for more collaboration across coalition um as well around the Universal Health Care rent control environmental justice housing homelessness um you know minimum wage by itself is not going to get us there uh I'm also interested in exploring um the U flexible rebate income and incentive programs that

[251:00] Jennifer mentioned particularly the micro uh Grant programs to small minority and women-owned businesses as well as those who are disproportionately impacted in the interim and exploring what those costs could be to Matt's earlier uh comment I don't want to make a big package but if there are existing programs that we can accelerate and we know there's going to be acute issues we need to be prepared similarly I'm hope I'm eager for the results of our Elevate Boulder uh program our guaranteed basic income program um we're seeing some incredible outcomes in the Denver basic income program uh and I'm eager uh for the review of our current health and human uh Services programs uh and the effectiveness and Financial Health of those programs as well as our economic Vitality Str strategy which our community and Council Forum will be addressing specifically in September um and then lastly uh I'm also hopeful that we can identify differentiated Revenue generation whether they are fees and taxes that are focused on those who are

[252:01] polluting excessively overc consuming natural resources are those who have not contributed to our community beyond the property tax so that might be second homeowners and or uh those who are using their airbnbs as essentially hotels um thank you so much um and again I say the three years um my pref my preference would not to be too aggressive out of the gate because of these added expenses that we had not um that were not considered in this report and I would like to offset that Gap with um the programs that we have with an expansion of the programs that we have at hand thank you very much so not too aggressive means or do you not you want you don't want to talk about it yet that's fine if you don't you know if it was three I could do S8 if or if it was 2 78 I I prefer the 78 range right now thank you okay okay okay so um now we have Aaron okay it seems like we're saying

[253:00] our piece so but I'll be um but I wanted to to thank uh Lauren for putting that that hotline this afternoon um I I'm aligning with that approach more or less um I feel as Taisha said I think three years is a good time frame and that it's it's enough time um to get some real data I get that you wouldn't have every Financial fact and figure in yet but it would be enough to have a good um test of How It's performing in the community and um like for example in Denver we know that the the sky has not Fallen um after they raised their minimum wage um that's still an economically healthy City even though we don't have all the exact analysis and facts and figures so three years feels like enough time to get a test of how a sense of how things are going but not trying to peer into a crystal ball too far into the future to know what exactly is the right answer for too long from now so I like that and then I appreciate um the getting started pretty quickly because we know people

[254:01] need the money in their pockets today just briefly um I really rely on ea uh for their their um analysis of the basic needs of the community and they report record and surging levels of basic needs um need need support the need for those supports and I walk bike or drive by their offices every single day and I so I see that in the cues in front of their office so I feel like we we should get money into people's pockets early but um like Matt and ta have talked about I'd love to look at some targeted assistance I know it's not free but maybe there could be some one-time help in 2025 as we're getting this program off the ground to maybe cushion the change uh for some of the smaller micro businesses and restaurants and such so I I feel like that that um option that Lauren sent on hotlines strikes a good balance in terms of numbers of years assistance in the short term uh but not going too far to place an undo burden on on small businesses and such that's what I got thanks all right I we who haven't we

[255:02] heard from that wants to speak uh Ryan let Ryan go I just have to add I just want to add something later on but let Ryan go and I'm gonna I'm gonna go sure I just my up I'm happy to go if I'm up okay okay so I guess yeah I'll just give my sort of General General thoughts um I just first want to um say I really appreciate what M spear put forward and um I'm just really taken by the idea that we're Boulder so far off the map um in terms of meing income and household costs and we don't have much choice but to do something meaningful meaningful uh and also knowing this um we know this is only one lever picture of affordability and self-sufficiency um and that overall the economy the data seems to show that the expect a general net positive to the economy so I'm I'm very sympathetic to

[256:00] um where Nicole's going I'm also um I have some questions about the risk of unintended impacts this potentially very large segment of our small businesses um and also those who are our city contractors granes and others doing crucial work um that I am worried about disrupting and I'm just thinking about that we have limited we seem to have limited options in the way of financial support so um I would uh generally I think the Lauren Lauren Proposal with Aaron I think i' sort of fall in that camp for now um I just maybe to close I you know this is perhaps for another another day to dig into but I feel like this discussion is limited in part because we're talking about Distributing money between parties and um not about growing the size of the pie and I would like us to think about

[257:01] ways in the future to try to create inducements or options for workers to owns of business um whether through core operators or other employee owned Enterprise is my understanding is Colorado is the best if if not one of the very best dates in the nation to give employees Financial Equity um we have a new off State office that I communicate commun today um and I I think whatever we could do to assist employers that want to help change this from a conversation about wages to a conversation about wealth and energ intergenerational wealth um I think that would be very exciting I think it would also be a longterm process so that's different than what we're doing today on the other hand whenever we you know have it's not going to start until we start so I canit that soon thanks okay so now I'm gonna say my little thing and

[258:01] then Matt has one more thing to say and then we'll take some sort of a random I'll do my best straw poll but I honestly think there's like kind of two camps so what I wanted to say was that I haven't said already is um let me see where I can find it I will start with um the restaurants for a second for me why restaurants are so important is because it used to be that people who either let's say you're an immigrant or let's say you don't have that much Capital but you want to own a business you know restaurants were a great way to have your own business um here in Boulder with that most aggressive increase I think that we can pretty much say goodbye to opening up somebody opening up one small restaurant unless they have lots of capital investors Andor three other restaurants to amortise the costs and

[259:00] because I love going to small restaurants and seeing them open and Thrive that is one of the reasons why I am the most nervous and cannot support 15% in that first year um besides restaurants you know Child Care businesses are heavily on my mind right now I know that my daughter she one of my daughters travels 15 minutes to go to what she what is her favorite child care um child care business and people are willing to drive for child care so the one play way well I might not agree with Andrew is that I think when it comes to child would somebody be willing to move their business to let's say Superior where they uh don't have uh the labor um the increase in their labor costs and then would people drive there I do think that I would that they would do that the problem is is I

[260:01] believe we need child care here in Boulder and I don't want them to move and I want there to be child care for um you know people who need it who can't drive to the towns so I think that this is kind of a big deal and lastly nonprofits I just want to say that I was told by someone in the self-sufficiently self-sufficiently self-sufficiency wave community that 60% of nonprofits want a minimum wage increase but that does leave 40% who don't and a lot of those and some of those and we've read letters are people who employ the difficult to employ the unhoused the formally incarcerated and they say that their business model will not work for these big increases at least we should see how it turns out after like three years so my thing is is we are making it difficult for labor intensive businesses to

[261:00] thrive and to say that oh that's probably not going to happen this is people's lives that they've spent their whole lives trying to build their businesses I just don't think we should take a chance yeah I'm passionate about this issue it's people's businesses they work their whole lives on you know it's hard enough to see people having to close their doors because of covid or because we have so many rules or because it took forever to go through planning I'm not blaming you Brad um but now we're adding this just one more thing and plus you know supply issues I mean just makes me sad and I'm I agree with Ryan that it's a Pity that we're having this this is our choice to take this you know who do we give it to where do we go but this is the choice that we have to make tonight and so um that is why I cannot do the 50 15 the one thing businesses and restaurants begged us to not do was 15% in the first year so I'm basically begging everybody to not do

[262:00] that is the one request that they had um that is pretty much everything I want to say I hope I sounded impassioned I just want to end with I lost a lot of sleep this week because I'm worried about the work workers I'm worried about the small businesses I'm worried about a lot of things I'm worried about people's livelihoods they're and so I will say for whoever's listening wherever we land I I pretty much think I speak for all of us when and I say that we care very deeply about this city and the people in it and our entire Workforce and that's why I want to end my little SPI all right any last words H Matt Lauren okay hold on it's 10:17 we'll um I just made my little pitch for an alternative I didn't really get to say my piece about this issue as a whole okay um and if you didn't have your alternative like are you willing like where do you you know is that your only option I guess I will I'm happy to sort of phrase it

[263:00] um you know it's a it's it's quite a you if the econom if our local economy was thriving and um we you know City revenues were busting and we were just we Russian this would be a different conversation um this would be a different conversation if we could exempt the most disproportionately impacted businesses like restaurants and child care and egg and uh our nonprofits but we can't and so this is th we're getting posed with we we make a choice that we give one group what they want at the Peril of another that doesn't seem like how we try to do business as a um elected official as as AAS is we try to find a way where everybody can win everybody can get something yeah everybody loses a little but we try to find some of that Common Ground um I'm what I'm hearing tonight is I'm I'm I'm hearing a little bit of an attempt for common ground and I'm hearing also some attempts to kind of tell some of our most you know highly

[264:00] impacted Industries you'll figure it out n too bad um yep you know you're on your own that's just not who we are and so I'm I'm struggling with how we can be so impassioned to serve one group and so Cavalier to disregard the needs of another so I I think there's a bit of we need to take a step back and figure out where is there common ground to meet the needs of both parties that are here is our disproportionately impacted businesses and the wage earners who need who need help um but they need help in a way that doesn't then jeopardize our most cherished Industries um and they're not in a great shape right now they're at 3% margins at best one one restaurant is going to need $120,000 of wages 6 and a half% increase to costs what what what at what point is that too much for all of us to bear in our community is it a $20 Taco a $30 Burger is it a $15 beer I mean when when when is too much too much where we've

[265:01] pushed um the cart over the hill um you know I have to really just sort of like it comes back to we just talked you know Mark brought up we have our Economic Development strategy coming up it begs the question all nine of us strongly supported our Economic Development strategy if we push really hard here and we kind of just turn our backs on the local businesses our small businesses H how can we really turn around and then ask them to partner with us on an economic development strategy that seems a that seems a bit disingenuous so I think we have to realize like is that really a strategy we want to pursue a priority maybe we need to rethink that so I I just I I I a 15% is is a bridge too far because the costs now I I will say a thing I want to ask and I'll pose it for another time it maybe under matters but I want to Tee It Up I would like us to evaluate our our um policy

[266:00] position and I'd like us to add that we aggressively work with the state legislator to amend um HB uh 19220 and see if we can create local ex local control four exemptions for disproportionately impacted business groups um because that would change the whole landscape of this conversation um and I think it would be better for all of us to align and so I'd love for us to to agree to do that for our policy statement and unleash Carl and our great team to work with our legislators to make that happen so that would be my ask we we'll maybe notify it later but 15% too far sorry to interrupt you but I have to I have an idea because everybody has their impassion speeches and it's going to be a long night so we all care is that good we all care oh right Nicole that was funny anyway here's the thing I do sound like you a little bit Nicole here's the thing what I see is two separate and tell me if I'm wrong two separate like two competing ideas

[267:02] one is the F start at 15% and the other one is start at like seven or 8% so I want to take a straw pull let's see what I want to do I want to take a strong PLL um to see if how many of them we had the 8% it could be I'm leaning towards three years myself now that I've heard from Andrew so let's just say starting at 8% doing it for three years asking staff to give us some options in that direction everybody who wants to do that raise your hand am I wait am I'm not making sense I cqu on that yeah help me help me are you suggesting ti no I'm not suggesting eight eight and eight no what I'm saying is is we have a we have too many ideas right now and I'm trying to reain it in we have some people that

[268:02] want to start at 15% and we have some people that want to start at 8% am I right so should we just do a straw poll to see about those two things how's that okay what do you think Nia I'm not a straw pole expert I think that's a good place to start and there's nuances to that there are forward exactly there's sounds like there are two places to start and that may be a good one that staff can start to work with Okay let's go right now ready all the people that want to do year one at 8% is raise your hand am I the only one no you've got five five five so we have the majority [Music] um what do I do now just a point of order I don't know what I what I heard giving direction yes what I heard was that you wanted us to work on a variety on maybe

[269:02] two different options and what I heard was what we heard was that there perhaps were two we want to confirm that what we're starting with is maybe an eight and a 50 yes I'm seeing is that there is an eight I want to confirm that we have a 15 option 15 everybody raise your hand 15 first year that's unical team we have a place to start that was four all right so we have 415 and we have five we did good first year hooray now Aaron what do you suggest we do next uh maybe see if there's you can get to the number of years that people want to start like use as a baseline whether that's three or five years of increases or two okay that sounds good it's a team we're doing a team effort here okay do I divide it's so late right now divide do I divide it up into team eight pick a number pick a

[270:01] number three five three okay let's start with three years everybody that wants to do three years raise your hand I I ter confused what the numbers are for the three years that's a good point if it's eight three and 22 or 15 we're kind of back in the same a great point I agree with that point can anybody uh wait could I make a suggestion here sure and so we have all those scenarios that were sort of laid out I think there are only not all of them got anybody to speak to them but I'm wondering if we can use those um those scenarios that were laid out because I think all of these things are represented in those scenarios but those scenarios represent the bigger picture and I'm I'm with Mark it is really hard to think about what one year looks like without the context of the bigger scenario that we're sitting in so I don't think it'll take too long if we just kind of bam through like all the BAM through all all the

[271:01] ones that that you know people spoke to and you can you could take plls well then not representative to what we're talking about confused I I am I am very very supportive of the caution that that Matt has expressed and the concern for those smaller businesses and if we're going to do this over three years I'm going to suggest that we're looking at something like 855 or 865 but you know some in total that gives uh small businesses an opportunity to adjust and plan uh and not at the end of the day be faced with um an increase that's going to look like a third of their wages fantastic okay so that's five people I like that because I thought match was a little high so 865 855 everybody who can get on board with

[272:02] that raise your hand Matt medium okay at this point I would like to turn the meeting over to somebody who is more aware and more energetic and can think better at this point so who wants to take over from here because I don't know where to go I'm gonna be honest I thought I did really well with this meeting but I'm starting to like you did great great yeah no it's it's good I I'm just I'm wondering if we could go back to the scenarios that people like spoke to and can we just go through those and you can say Okay B1 anybody for V1 because I spoke to that one there was like the Alternatives that people spoke to and you can ask there's only I think three or four things so can we maybe do it that way there there are four so you could you could do a quick one it's seeming like the direction of

[273:00] council might be some kind of hybrid amongst them can we start with just pulling the four of them wake up time to get up yes kind of redundant because it looks like it's some hybrid between B2 and I've worked on this for the last three years could we at least just respect the effort that I've put into this and make and do this one thing that I'm asking it won't take that long let's put up let's put the let's put um the slide up for everybody that shows what we need to see and I I the other thing I just want to note is that um while Lauren has worked on this the longest she also did not speak too Lauren so speak I don't know if it if you want to Lauren or if you don't want to but I just wanted to note that that was really good point Lauren it's late anyway Lauren speak thanks

[274:02] Nicole um I I did want to address some things I think you know first of all I don't think anyone here is taking the impact on businesses lightly I know that I am not um and I didn't really appreciate that characterization I think it's evidenced just by the proportion of the amount of conversation we're spending focusing on employers rather than employees um in our region approximately 10% of our minimum wage workers are accounting for almost 20% of hours worked so these vulnerable work workers in our community are you know clearly working two jobs um and the demographics of those workers are disproportionately young female black and brown um and we've heard testimony from people working with domestic abuse survivors teen parents about all how critical

[275:01] minimum wage is in helping our most vulnerable community members in this report it brought up how increases in the minimum wage age improve child health outcomes um and contrary to some opinions this is not report does not just say whatever you think it says on net quote the literature indicates that increases to the minimum wage can be an effective way to improve outcomes for low-wage workers I just really want us I I understand the impacts that this has on the business community and I don't take take that lightly I know that that there um especially certain industries are already challenged but I don't want us to overlook also the dramatic impact that this has on people's lives on so many of our community members who are

[276:00] struggling so severely to make ends meet and so I just really want us to take at least as much consideration of those people's lives as we do the lives of the employers thank you beautiful does anybody else I'm I'm so sorry that I did not call on you I thank you Nicole for bringing that up you worked very hard on this and so did Taylor so now we are going to move to what Lauren suggested and just go down the list is that what you'd like us to do and just scraw pull each one Lauren uh I think let's see B1 the 15 and over the 31 and over and then Matt had a um another compromise would be the the four options that I've heard that I think it makes sense to drop hole at this point and council members I can confirm as staff's been tracking those are the four that have had some degree of support so

[277:00] far can you state them one more time yep so it's B1 15% over 25 to 26 and 31% over 25 5 to 27 those are the three on the chart the fourth is uh council member Benjamin's suggestion which was 88 and8 888 for three years then two years of 6% so would it be okay if we just basically took because there's two two of them go in one camp or three of them and two in the other can we just say come up with two ordinances or do we need to get more detail Tara I'm hearing a real ask to straw pull these four to start out okay let's do it um B1 Aon are you keeping track they changed the screen on me I got

[278:00] two okay can I see that screen again sorry Pam it's okay and I I can see people's faces with the slide out okay the next one is I believe 15% is that the next one 15% or some variation there up can you explain that a little yeah can you do the year by year by year thing like you did the last one what what do you mean by 15% um oops so this is this is Tara's proposal from the hotline 8% 15% over then CPI after that 15% over two years so like SE eight and then seven and then CPI and rethink however I did want I was compelled by doing a third year so I

[279:02] would like you know that's the question I mean I don't I don't know what to do about that I did the best that I could and then you know um so let's just do 50% over two years and then a third year yet to be determined that is either eight or less does that work that's not even under consideration this is not um this is not my strength so Aaron maybe we can just go back to the original proposals so the raise your hand if you support the 8% year 1 7% year two after that CPI I want three got yeah we want three years though but Taisha wants three years so noted two and kind of a half from Taisha with a desire for a third year and I wanted this third year so that's a half for me as well likes the third year too so you got four if you get a third year in

[280:02] there now go to the this is Lauren's proposal from the hotline 31% over 25 to 27 so that's 15 8 and a half 8 and a half followed by CPI with a revisit year three all in favor that one got two and finally we have Matt's proposal which is 8% 8% 8% followed by five and five happy to trim it to just 888 for the three years since I'm hearing a lot of folks want three years there trim off the last two okay so you you so now we why don't we start over then okay so clearly there's not majority support for any of those four items Matt did you want to offer a variation there yeah just what I'm hearing of where some support is just take the first three years of mine which is just 888 you know it's uh you know a

[281:00] rendition of you know what we heard is 999 back at some uh presidential thing sometimes ago but it's 888 um we'll go from there so can we do 888 versus like 875 so we have two choices and one in the three years um okay so I guess sure okay how about we and let me just I'll just insert myself real quick here to say that you know while this wasn't my first choice I'm willing to work with these so why don't why don't we straw pole 888 ver 8875 and people live with that 8 888 versus 875 M could you live with 876 we we vote for 888 again we we can we can make these small changes when we

[282:02] get to the ordinance level and so I think we're getting a little too far in the weeds this is just a ballpark it if it ends up being 86 4.55 5554 whatever uh I'm just we're just kinding to Ballpark it here so but I I hear your point mark but let's just start with what we got also like to suggest that if between the B1 and the 31% over 25 to 27 that that had four votes and if we combined that in One Direction I know I would be willing to look at the 31% and over um be my Choice yeah I think that's still just four people though who are willing to start with 15% because we already stro holded that we had talked about potentially drafting multiple ordinances so we could get down to two ordinances that would capture it sounds like potentially all of the most all of

[283:02] council could get behind one or the other he Teresa's nodding her head which is a good sign um so yes Nicole I was just going to say that also gets a little bit to um Tina's point about the public hearing um and just making sure that there's some time and stuff there so I just want to plus one that idea okay so Lauren thanks for that Nicole so Lauren you were saying that the that the 31% over the first three years could be one option even though it didn't get majority support and then the other option could be the three-year with smaller increases um and Teresa said that's doable so I mean that's that's fine with me but maybe we can for the alternate option I'm hearing maybe 888 maybe 876 um we're not economists here so I mean that's start let start with the 888

[284:03] because we haven't straw pulled it we're we're a straw pull it see where we get and then if it need if we're tweaking a percent plus or minus one here and there like leave that for the ordinate stage let's just get the ballpark each one is liable to get tweaked a little so then we can move on okay so I'm going to straw pull 888 versus 876 so all in favor of 888 raise your hand I got six here although Ty sure you there you are okay there's your hand Erin I'm sorry my brain is failing a little bit I'm is that this isn't um this is just which version of this three-year lower rate thing we support right correct okay then my hand too please and are you saying that the 15 uh the 31% people are voting for this one as well is that what because it's

[285:03] 32 it's it's 21 or 888 24 sorry 888 24 yeah and so 876 who would prefer 876 I got I got a couple so even of the just say of the five who preferred the lower threshold the majority of those five preferred 888 as well just so you don't feel like the other people made it happen oh that's fine so then now what I'm thinking is that we have direction to ask City staff to draft two versions of the ordinance one with the numbers uh on Lauren's hotline and one with um three years of 8% increases and they would bring those two back to us then with the absolute knowledge that we can change those numbers at the public hearing you know after going through the public process right that those are absolutely not set

[286:00] in stone are people comfortable with that as a Next Step okay I'm seeing nodding heads and thumbs up we can work with that too oh go ahead sorry how does Lauren feel Lauren how how are you on this yeah I'm I'm okay with that thanks for checking yeah thanks for checking R and it was Lauren you was your suggestion to do both sets so thanks for that um I'll just know we have some additional questions we yeah oops oops Tera do you want do you want to finish out or do you want me to finish y got it I got it great thank you for getting there I appreciate it Aon oh you won okay um let us put the slides back up that had the other two questions actually they're already are also in the chat um let me scroll down okay the next question is does council support

[287:03] indexing the minimum wage to CPU for the Denver metro area consistent with other City practices I'm going to do a straw poll because we've discussed everything enough everybody who supports indexing the minimum wage of CPI which is what staff is doing correct staff raise your hand and it's also what the report recommended yes and the report recommended raise your hand can we get them in Aon what do we got how's everybody all right awesome we're on a roll should an ordinance include any exemptions this is where it's very difficult for me and I'll just tell you why un let's just do independent contractors first please independent contractors should we exempt them what does the report suggest it recommends exempting them okay everybody who wants to exempt

[288:01] independent contractors raise your hand I think I got eight it's pretty good okay the last and hardest one is unan unemancipated Miners And the reason why it's hard for me is if I would probably feel differently depending on if the 8% first year versus the 15% first year and that's why this makes it difficult um and so I am just going to do a stra what does the report suggest and what do other cities do for un unemancipated minors Pam Pam or Taylor happy to address this so we as um and I'm happy to put the slides back up as needed we do not have a strong recommendation on this one this is a tradeoff um benefits of excluding unemancipated miners would include um less of a a significant impact to budget

[289:01] um if you believe that unemancipated minors are largely supported by other means then that would be an argument in favor of it if you um sort of lean toward the value of unemancipated miners supporting family and future wealth building um that's an argument kind of in favor of uh not exempting um ultimately I'm sorry to interrupt but I think there was a simpler question about what what other what the recommendation was and some their policy trade-offs is what we're hearing yes and are there any other what did the other cities do can you tell us real quick correct I'm going to ask Taylor to come on there of a convoluted answer about um exempting City youth workforces Taylor are you able to help me out here yeah so in Denver the exemption is um like Pam described um for City youth workhorses and it can be uh fif well I it's not necessarily I'm not sure actually legal

[290:00] might be able to tell if it's an exemption or if it's just a different wage but they're allowed to pay 15% less than the minimum wage so I don't know if that makes it like an exemp in the exemption Arena or if it's just a totally different wage but that's what Denver does but we allowed to do that I'm just GNA chime in here on this one so the yeah of course so the state bill doesn't address this particular group so and what Denver did is um in in an area where the state B doesn't specifically describe um this particular group and says you know we care about emancipated miners but unemancipated matters are silent in the state law it means that the city can do what they would like to do so that's what Denver did they decided to do this 15% reduction um so you can do it in this situation but like we talked about with some other situations we have to be careful with that with doing different wages so that's why this is one of those situations where you could do a 15% reduction or some other method like

[291:01] Denver did and Denver had their reasons for doing it which Taylor could probably talk about a little bit more well should we then proceed with three options yes exclude unemancipated unemancipated I can't even say that word at this point tonight unemancipated minors no we should not exclude them or third we go with Denver with a 15% reduction how's that and Lauren have their hands up okay why can't I see anybody at this point okay sorry folks I yeah I just wanted to to note like I'm struggling a little bit with this part of the discussion because the report also had a very clear um recommendation on how we might consider proceeding Denver has a a a wage and we're not following any of that so I think I'm just struggling with that we're now in a point where we're like trying to pull pull things from the

[292:01] report when we kind of didn't really follow much of a the recommendations before so I'm not super comfortable going um just with kind of the recommendations because we haven't had time for discussion dialogue um I am not interested in getting um in excluding un unan I'm with you Tara unemancipated miners um largely because if you are um if if you need four minimum wage jobs to make it in this town those Eman unemancipated minors are um likely contributing to salaries and if they're just working five hours a week as you know fun high school thing to get some pocket money um then you know by means get a little bit extra but um but I I wonder and this may be a question for Teresa is there any way to give us some more time to have a proper discussion about this and is it something as we're we're making these ordinances anyway is this something that we could have a proper discussion about when they come

[293:00] back um and when when we're in public hearing first reading whenever because it just it's almost 11 we're fried and I it feels like we're not being consistent in our thinking at this point yeah I hear you so um we certainly could come back to these discussions I would say that tonight we need it we need direction on whether there's going to be a state enforcement um or whether we need whether you all want enforcement at the local level because those are very different ordinance Provisions we could do that we could do that right now um but if you want to wait on emancipated minors and have that discussion at a future date um we could do that we could do that and and on our end we will I think probably just hold off and not draft anything with respect to miners until we get direction from you all we can put a placeholder or

[294:00] something okay no thank you I appreciate that I um I appreciate it's also extra work for you and your team and I apologize for that and I just don't know if we're in a good space to figure this out tonight and I'm going to pop in here because thank you for that suggestion Nicole we could straw poll the enforcement and then be done that's right people are ready first to finish we fried so I do have a quick thing on the unemancipated minors which is that I've been hearing concerns around in Colorado it not being it's a legal question about whether or not unemancipated or emancipated minors whether or not you can really make thatc distinction very well and how that an making an exemption for unemancipated minors might actually be just making an exemption for all minors in practice and I was hoping maybe legal could look into that and provide some clarification around that yeah we can

[295:00] look into that we've also been talking about the Practical implications of it as well it's kind of hard to separate the two yeah we'll look into it for you thank you okay last question question um does council support relying on state enforcement mechanism let's do a vote everybody that says yes raise your hand we you like that that's unanimous all right with that I just want to apologize that I could not figure out how to do this meeting I tried my very best and did really well to the end and then it went off the rail but we seem to have gotten somewhere thank everybody for um staying here so late and for staff for their incredible work and so I'm going to G us does anybody have sorry does anybody have any last words and doesn't feel heard because at this point it's 1050 who cares can I just do a big shout out we

[296:01] have not appropriately um loved on Lauren for this work and staff as well this has been a huge effort and so I just want want some love and for leading this this amazing especially staff and Taylor thank you so much T Taylor You've Been Just extraordinary through this whole thing and so good to have you uh still at it as you're doing your amazing climate work too so thank you and and Lauren you really have just been extraordinary you know just non-stop month after about me how about the way I ran this meeting do I get no accolades at all I'm just kidding it was terrible you did great Tara thank you thanks thanks Teresa your team Maria everybody thank you thank you thank you all right I don't have a gavel but I'm G use my mouse and I'm G to gavel as close at 10:51 good night everybody